The Case for a Proto-Gospel: Recovering the Common Written Source Behind Mark and John (Studies in Biblical Literature) [New ed.] 9781433166051, 9781433166020, 9781433166037, 9781433166044, 9781433197772, 1433166054

Citation preview

In this landmark study of the literary relationship between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels, Gary Greenberg presents compelling evidence for the existence of a adult life of Jesus (excluding major speeches, such as discourses, parables, and “I Am” sayings) and which became the written source for the core biography of Jesus in Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew. While Mark used the Alpha gospel with only slight variations, John had profound theological disagreements with it, objecting to its theological mesinduced him to rewrite the Alpha gospel so that it conformed to his own very different theological agenda. Consequently, John’s gospel functions as a thorough theological critique of Mark, but the changes he introduced made it difficult to see how he and Mark worked from the same written source. By using John’s theological concerns as a filter for reading and understanding what objections John would have with Mark’s Jesus stories,

The Case for a Proto-Gospel reverse-engineers the editorial path taken by John and reconstructs the content of the Alpha gospel. Finally, the author discusses the relationship of the other two synoptic gospels to the Alpha gospel, asserting that Luke also knew the Alpha gospel but used Mark as his primary source, and that while Matthew did not know the Alpha gospel, his use of Mark as a primary source ensured that his core biography of Jesus also derived from this earlier source. “Carefully crafted, well written, based on historical and literary analysis, Greenberg’s book enhances our understanding not only of the Gospels of John and Mark but the process whereby the gospels themselves came to be.” —Barrie Wilson, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar of Religious Studies, York University; Author of How Jesus Became Christian and co-author of The Lost Gospel

Gary Greenberg is the author of The Judas Brief and Proving

Jesus’ Authority in Mark and John. He served for over a decade

The Case for a Proto-Gospel

sage about how to obtain eternal life, the depiction of Jesus, and other matters. This

Greenberg

written pre-canonical Alpha gospel that contained almost all of the main episodes in the

172

G ARY G REENBERG

The Case for a Proto-Gospel Recovering the Common Written Source Behind Mark and John

as the President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York. Presently retired, he holds a Juris Doctor degree from Seton Hall University. PETER LANG

www.peterlang.com

9781433197772_cvr_eu.indd All Pages

studies in biblical literature | 172

26-May-22 21:43:06

In this landmark study of the literary relationship between the gospel of John and the synoptic gospels, Gary Greenberg presents compelling evidence for the existence of a adult life of Jesus (excluding major speeches, such as discourses, parables, and “I Am” sayings) and which became the written source for the core biography of Jesus in Mark, Luke, John, and Matthew. While Mark used the Alpha gospel with only slight variations, John had profound theological disagreements with it, objecting to its theological mesinduced him to rewrite the Alpha gospel so that it conformed to his own very different theological agenda. Consequently, John’s gospel functions as a thorough theological critique of Mark, but the changes he introduced made it difficult to see how he and Mark worked from the same written source. By using John’s theological concerns as a filter for reading and understanding what objections John would have with Mark’s Jesus stories,

The Case for a Proto-Gospel reverse-engineers the editorial path taken by John and reconstructs the content of the Alpha gospel. Finally, the author discusses the relationship of the other two synoptic gospels to the Alpha gospel, asserting that Luke also knew the Alpha gospel but used Mark as his primary source, and that while Matthew did not know the Alpha gospel, his use of Mark as a primary source ensured that his core biography of Jesus also derived from this earlier source. “Carefully crafted, well written, based on historical and literary analysis, Greenberg’s book enhances our understanding not only of the Gospels of John and Mark but the process whereby the gospels themselves came to be.” —Barrie Wilson, Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar of Religious Studies, York University; Author of How Jesus Became Christian and co-author of The Lost Gospel

Gary Greenberg is the author of The Judas Brief and Proving

Jesus’ Authority in Mark and John. He served for over a decade

The Case for a Proto-Gospel

sage about how to obtain eternal life, the depiction of Jesus, and other matters. This

Greenberg

written pre-canonical Alpha gospel that contained almost all of the main episodes in the

172

G ARY G REENBERG

The Case for a Proto-Gospel Recovering the Common Written Source Behind Mark and John

as the President of the Biblical Archaeology Society of New York. Presently retired, he holds a Juris Doctor degree from Seton Hall University. PETER LANG

www.peterlang.com

studies in biblical literature | 172

26-May-22 21:43:06

The Case for a Proto-Gospel

Studies in Biblical Literature

Hemchand Gossai General Editor Vol. 172

The Studies in Biblical Literature series is part of the Peter Lang Humanities list. Every volume is peer reviewed and meets the highest quality standards for content and production.

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Gary Greenberg

The Case for a Proto-Gospel Recovering the Common Written Source Behind Mark and John

PETER LANG

New York • Bern • Berlin Brussels • Vienna • Oxford • Warsaw

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Greenberg, Gary, author. Title: The case for a proto-gospel: recovering the common written source behind Mark and John / Gary Greenberg. Description: New York: Peter Lang, 2020. Series: Studies in biblical literature; vol. 172 | ISSN 1089-0645 Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019029929 | ISBN 978-1-4331-6605-1 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4331-6602-0 (ebook pdf) | ISBN 978-1-4331-6603-7 (epub) ISBN 978-1-4331-6604-4 (mobi) Subjects: LCSH: Bible. Gospels—Criticism, interpretation, etc. Bible. John—Criticism, interpretation, etc. Synoptic problem. Classification: LCC BS2555.52 .G74 | DDC 226/.066—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029929 DOI 10.3726/b15216

Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek. Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the “Deutsche Nationalbibliografie”; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de/.

The hardcover edition was published in 2020. This paperback edition was published in 2022. ISBN 978-1-4331-9777-2 (paperback)

© 2020, 2022 Gary Greenberg Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 80 Broad Street, 5th floor, New York, NY 10004 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited.

Contents

List of Tables Usage Notes Editor’s Preface Acknowledgments 1

2

The Problem of Mark Versus John The Synoptic Problem The Q Problem The Luke-John Problem Why Luke and Not Matthew? Johannine Source Issues Do Differences in Mark and John Preclude a Common Written Source? Identifying John’s Editorial Practices Methodological Approach The Scope of This Study A Trail of Breadcrumbs A Road Map Through John 6 and Mark Act I: Prelude (John 5–6:4; Mark-B 3:1–19; Mark-A 6:32–34)

xi xiii xv xvii 1 3 4 5 6 7 9 14 20 31 37 41 47

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3

4

5

Case for a Proto-Gospel Act 2: The Miracle of the Loaves (John 6:5–13, 15b–17; Mark-A 6:35–46; Mark-B 8:1–9) 55 Act 3: Crossing the Stormy Sea (John 6:18–24; Mark-A 6:47–51b; Mark-B 4:35–41) 62 Continuity Problems in Mark 69 Act 4: The Discourse on Bread (John 6:25–59, Mark-B 8:10–21, 8:34–9:1; Mark-A 6:51c–52) 72 Act 5: Who Is Jesus? (John 6:14–15a, 60–71; Mark-B 8:27–33; Mark-A 6: 14–16) 85 John’s Apostle Filter 93 Luke’s Variations from Mark 95 The Sequential Evidence 98 Summary 101 The Paralytic on the Mat 111 The Man on the Mat in Mark 2:1–12 113 The Man on the Mat in John 5 114 Comparing John and Mark re Healing the Paralytic 117 Reconciling the Differences Between John and Mark 119 The Mekhilta Sabbetta of Rabbi Ishmael 127 A Sabbath Argument in John 7 129 Separating John’s Sabbath Stories from His Paralytic on the Mat Story 134 Mark’s Sabbath Violation Stories (Mark 2:23–3:6) 135 Mark’s Sabbath Elements in John 145 Expanding the Prelude to John 6 147 Summary 148 True Kindred and the Devil 157 Mark’s “True Family” Sandwich (Mark 3:20–35) 158 True Family in John 8:31–59 162 The Transition from John 8 to John 9 168 Healing a Blind Man 169 A Proposed Link Between John 8:31–59 and John 9 173 Healing a Blind Man: Mark and John Compared 175 The Original Narrative Sequence of Events 178 Summary 179 You Can’t Go Home Again 187 The Rejection Story in Mark 6:1–6 190 The Rejection Story in Luke 4:16–30 196

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6

7

The Rejection Story in Matthew 13:54–58 201 John’s Variations on the Rejection Story 202 The Prophet Without Honor (John 4:44, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24) 204 They Don’t Believe (John 6:36, Mark 6:6) 208 Knowing the Family of Jesus (John 6:42, Mark 6:3, Luke 4:22) 208 The Man of Learning (John 7:15; Mark 6:2) 209 Luke 4:30 and John 10:39 (or John 7:30) 210 A Homiletic Structure in John and Luke 211 The Names of Jesus’ Parents 230 In What Town Was Jesus Rejected? 234 Determining the Sequential Location of the Story 237 Why Is This Story in the Gospels? 239 Summary 240 The Mission Begins 247 Malachi and John the Baptist 252 John’s Prologue and the Baptist Cycle 256 The Four Disciples Problem 261 The Two Signs Problem 262 The Coming of John the Baptist (CS1–CS5) 262 The Proclamation About the One to Come (CS6) 269 The Baptism of Jesus (CS7–CS9) 273 Jesus, the Son of Joseph (CS11) 277 The Temptation in the Wilderness 279 Beginning of the Galilean Ministry (CS14) 279 Call of the First Four Disciples (CS10, CS12, CS13, CS22–25) 281 Jesus’ First Public Acclaim (CS16–18) 298 Jesus’ Second Sign (CS19) 308 The Second Public Recognition of Jesus (CS20) 316 Jesus Proclaims the Gospel (CS21) 317 After the Second Missionary Tour 319 Healing a Leper (CS26–27) 320 Leftovers 322 Summary 329 Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem 343 The Triumphal Entry 346

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8

9

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Case for a Proto-Gospel Mark’s Jerusalem Visit and John’s Parallels 358 The Johannine Parallels to Mark’s Temple Encounters 360 Mark’s Temple Encounters with No Johannine Parallels 369 To the Jordan 372 Lifting Up the Son of Man 372 John and the Brothers of Jesus 378 Who Moved the Last Jerusalem Visit? 381 Summary 383 The Plot to Kill Jesus 393 The Analytic Structure 394 The Jewish Council Plots Jesus’ Death (CS1) 399 The Anointing at Bethany (CS2–12) 400 John’s First Insertions into the Narrative Structure 405 Judas Decides to Betray Jesus (CS13–14) 405 Preparation for the Last Supper with the Disciples (CS15) 407 The Eucharist Ceremony (CS23) 408 Jesus Predicts That a Disciple Will Betray Him (CS16–22) 417 Jesus Predicts Peter Will Deny Him Three Times Before the Cock Crows (CS24–26) 420 John’s Second Insertion into the Narrative Structure 423 Jesus Goes to the Mount of Olives with His Disciples (CS27) 423 The Cup the Father Gave Jesus (CS28–31) 424 Jesus Arrested (CS32–39) 430 Peter Denies Jesus Three Times (CS40–42, 45–49) 434 Nighttime Proceedings Before the High Priest (CS43) 438 Authorities Strike and Mock Jesus 438 Guards Strike Jesus (CS44) 439 Morning Proceeding Before High Priest (CS50) 440 Jesus Taken to Pilate (CS51) 440 Summary 441 The Jewish Trial of Jesus 451 The Jewish Proceedings in Mark and Luke Compared 452 The Interrogation in John 457 Additional Hidden Trial Scenes in John 461 Summary 472 The Lazarus Conundrum 477 The Raising of Lazarus in John 11:1–44 479

Contents | ix

11

12

13

14

Luke’s Lazarus Parable (Luke 16:19–31) 483 Mark and Lazarus 486 Did Mark Know the Parable of Lazarus? 490 The Anointing at Bethany 492 The Mary/Martha Problem 495 Summary 496 The Roman Proceedings 503 An Overview of the Roman Proceedings Before Pilate 504 Act I. The Interrogation of Jesus 510 Act II. The Barabbas Incident 528 Act III. The Mockery of Jesus 531 Act IV. The Argument Over Crucifixion 533 Act V. The Decision 538 Reconstructing the Roman Proceeding According to the Proposed Common Source 539 The Crucifixion 547 The Journey to Skull 551 The Crucifixion 553 A Gap in John 554 Jesus’ Last Moments 555 The Named Women 559 The Three Mockeries of Jesus 562 Supernatural Occurrences 565 Jesus and His Mother 566 The Time of the Crucifixion 568 The Centurion 568 Summary 569 The Day of Preparation 577 What Calendar Did the Evangelists Use? 578 Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread 580 Passover Chronology in Mark, Luke and John 581 What and When Was the Day of Preparation? 585 Dating the Last Supper 588 The Origin Locale of the Proposed Common Source 590 Summary 590 The Resurrection 593 The Burial 595 The Empty Tomb 600

x | The

15 16

Case for a Proto-Gospel The Road to Emmaus 606 The Road to Emmaus in John 609 Jesus’ Appearance to the Apostles in Luke (24:36–49) 615 Jesus’ First Appearance to the Apostles in John (20:19–23) 617 Jesus’ Second Appearance to the Apostles in John (20:24–29) 618 Jesus’ Third Appearance to the Apostles in John (21:1–23) 619 Reconstructing the Appearance of Jesus to the Apostles 620 The Rest of John 21 621 The Galilee Paradox 622 Summary 624 The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary 633 Overview of the Reconstructed Proto-gospel 634 Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel 679 Statistical Overview of the Proto-gospel 679 Sequential Agreements 681 Did John Know Mark? 684 The Problem of Luke and John Versus Mark 689 Did Luke Know John? 692 Did John Know Luke? 695 Summary 698 Index

701

Tables

Table 2.1: Raymond Brown’s alignments between John 6, Mark, 6 and Mark 8 Table 2.2: Scenes breakdown in John 6 and Mark Table 2.3: Numerical data for the miracle of the loaves Table 2.4: Scenes in John 6 and Mark following same narrative order Table 2.5: Proposed scene order in underlying source behind John 6 and Mark Table 5.1: Hometown verse parallels in John, Mark and Luke Table 5.2: Comparison of John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life) to Luke 4:16–27 (The Hometown Rejection Story) Table 5.3: Thematic parallels between Luke 4:16–27 (Hometown Rejection) and John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life) Table 6.1: Scenes breakdown in Mark 1, John 1–4, Luke 3:1–5:16 Table 6.2: The first five scenes in Mark, John, and Luke (CS1–CS5) Table 6.3: Scenes from Mark 1, John 1–4, and Luke 3:1–5:16 included in the proposed common source Table 7.1: Mark’s temple encounters and Johannine parallels Table 7.2: Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem: Parallels in John, Mark and Luke.

39 42 57 99 103 203 213 231 249 268 329 359 384

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Table 8.1: Scenes breakdown in Mark, John, and Luke: From the plot to kill Jesus to the handover to Pilate Table 8.2: The Eucharist scene in Mark, Luke, and Paul Table 11.1: Overview of the Roman proceeding in Mark, Luke, and John Table 11.2: The Roman proceedings in the proposed common source Table 12.1: The crucifixion story in Mark, Luke, and John Table 12.2: The triple agreements in the crucifixion story Table 12.3: The crucifixion story as reconstructed in the proposed common source Table 13.1: Schematic of conflicts between Roman and Jewish calendars in the gospels Table 15.1: The proto-gospel restored, with points of contact in Mark, John, and Luke

396 413 506 540 548 551 570 580 638

Usage Notes

Unless otherwise indicated, all biblical quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version. As a matter of history, we do not know who the actual authors of the gospels were, but, based on long-standing traditions, it is a matter of scholarly convention to refer to the authors by the names of Mark, Luke, Matthew, and John, and the gospels attributed to each are frequently identified by those names. I follow that practice in this volume and whether the name used refers to the author or the gospel attributed to that author should be determined by the context in which the name appears. That I continue to associate these four names with the gospel authors does not mean that I agree with these traditional identifications.

Editor’s Preface

More than ever the horizons in biblical literature are being expanded beyond that which is immediately imagined; important new methodological, theological, and hermeneutical directions are being explored, often resulting in significant contributions to the world of biblical scholarship. It is an exciting time for the academy as engagement in biblical studies continues to be heightened. This series seeks to make available to scholars and institutions, scholarship of a high order, and which will make a significant contribution to the ongoing biblical discourse. This series includes established and innovative directions, covering general and particular areas in biblical study. For every volume considered for this series, we explore the question as to whether the study will push the horizons of biblical scholarship. The answer must be yes for inclusion. In this volume, Gary Greenberg argues the case for a Proto-Gospel, where both the Gospels of John and Mark are independently reliant on a common written source. In this break from the established conventions, the author constructs his arguments on the basis of three factors, namely a sizeable number of stories in John that have a substantial number of parallels in Mark; a number of sequential agreements in the order of these parallel stories, and, perhaps importantly, the idea that John does not rely on either Mark or Luke as the principal source for these parallel stories. Using a statistical analysis and citing the large number of

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common pericopes, Greenberg demonstrates what he argues to be the high degree of probability for a literary relationship between John and Mark based on a written source. This study is certain to generate ongoing discourse, particularly given the evidence that the author adduces. Given the theological implications, this study will certainly invite further conversation. The horizon has been expanded. Hemchand Gossai Series Editor

Acknowledgments

Portions of this manuscript have previously appeared in my book Proving Jesus’ Authority in Mark and John: overlooked evidence of a synoptic relationship, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing in 2018. It is used herein with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing, for which I am grateful.

1

The Problem of Mark Versus John

New Testament scholars believe with near unanimity that the substantial differences in style, content, and verbal description between the gospel of John and the other three canonical gospels preclude any literary relationship between John and any of the others based on a written copy of at least one of them. This is not to say that John doesn’t know several stories that also appear in the other three gospels, but that such familiarity, they say, is based primarily on oral traditions circulating in the Christian communities, some of which may perhaps derive directly from one or more of the other three gospels. John’s lack of a written copy of at least one of the other three gospels, they suggest, accounts for much of the difference in content and verbal agreement. John’s style, however, is often attributed to his different theological perceptions about Jesus and the gospel message. Based on my new theory of Johannine composition, introduced below, I will propose in the present work that Mark, John and Luke all knew a now-lost written proto-gospel. (I am not in any way challenging the consensus view that Matthew and Luke both knew Mark.) Excluding speech monologues—parables, discourses, “I Am” sayings, prophecies, and similar teachings—this lost text included most of the stories about the adult Jesus that appear in all four canonical gospels and served as the source text for those stories. This doesn’t mean that the

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proto-gospel didn’t also have some of those specialized speeches but only that I will not be exploring that aspect of the gospels in this study. And, to be clear, many of the stories in the proto-gospel do include speeches by Jesus, but that they do so primarily in the context of interaction with other individuals, such as conflicts, debates or discussions. Because such a large percentage of stories in the four canonical gospels can be traced back to this earlier written source, I think it appropriate to refer to this proto-gospel as the “Alpha Gospel.” The theory behind my thesis is that the author of John had profound theological disagreements with how this proto-gospel presented the gospel message and depicted the character and nature of Jesus, the apostles, and other disciples, and this disagreement led the author of John to do a major rewrite of the earlier gospel such that the new version better reflected the author’s own theological perspective. (Mark and Luke also had some theological problems and made some changes, but far less so than John.) It is my contention that we can reverse-engineer the composition of John’s gospel and show what specific elements of other Jesus stories he found offensive and what methodology he used to make changes to the source material such that John’s version of many of Mark’s stories often look nothing like Mark’s versions of the same proto-gospel episode. I make my case by identifying specific theological themes in John, and by cross-referencing Johannine stories to Mark and Luke. Further below, I will outline the theological themes that mattered to John and the editorial practices that I suggest he followed. The chief and very powerful argument against my thesis is that John’s gospel looks very little like the other three gospels as to either verbal agreements or story content. Those familiar with how John differs from Mark (see below) know what a high evidentiary bar I must get past in order to make my case. To prove my thesis, I must convincingly demonstrate the following three propositions.



(1) John knows such a large number of stories also known to Mark that he must have been familiar with either Mark or Mark’s source. (2) The stories known to both Mark and John demonstrate such a substantial amount of sequential agreement that the alignment can only be explained if John knew a written version of either Mark or Mark’s source. (3) John couldn’t have obtained his parallel content from Mark or Luke. There is a minor side issue as to whether Luke knew John that I will also address. If it should be agreed that the first two points are proven but not the third, then Mark becomes the default written source for John (either directly from Mark or indirectly through Luke) and constitutes the proto-gospel behind the other three.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 3 The difficulty I must overcome is how to show that Mark and John know so many of the same stories when there is so little verbal agreement in the two gospels and that so few stories in John look very much like those in Mark. At the conclusion of my study I will argue that almost every non-speech episode in John has a literary parallel in Mark and that the two gospels agree on sequential order in approximately two-thirds of such stories. Additionally, in several stories outside of the sequential order (and an explanation for why those stories are out of order will be provided) we will see that several details within the stories also follow a common sequential order. In a moment, I’ll explain my methodology and approach but let me first discuss some matters concerning the literary relations that do or don’t exist among the four gospels.

The Synoptic Problem We call Matthew, Mark and Luke the synoptic gospels because if you read the three manuscripts in parallel to each other you find numerous stories in each that describe the same incident, use many of the same words, and appear in the same sequential order. Because of the substantial amount of agreement as to story content, word usage and sequential order it is almost universally accepted among scholars that some sort of literary relationship based on a written text must have existed. Defining this relationship is what we call “the synoptic problem.” Either the authors of all three gospels knew a common written source or two of the three knew a written version of at least one of the other two. Further analysis shows that in almost every major instance where one of the three gospels departs from the word usage or sequential order followed in the other two, either Mark and Matthew agree against Luke, or Mark and Luke agree against Matthew. This strongly indicates that Mark is the hub gospel used as a written source by the other two. There are, however, a few occasions, usually referred to as the “minor agreements,” in which Matthew and Luke agree against Mark, leaving the accepted theory of Markan priority as less than a perfect solution. Nevertheless, it is almost universally accepted among New Testament scholars that Mark was the first gospel to be written and that Matthew and Luke used it as a source. Scholars refer to the collection of parallel stories in all three synoptic gospels as “the Triple Tradition.” Raymond Brown noted that there are 661 verses in Mark, 1,068 in Matthew, and 1,149 in Luke.1 He estimated that 80% of Mark’s verses have parallels in Matthew and 65% have parallels in Luke.2 This means that half of Matthew and

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over one-third of Luke draw upon Mark as a source. Since Mark has no birth narrative, and if we don’t count the lengthy ones in Matthew and Luke, the percentage of Mark present in the other two gospels becomes significantly higher. While Matthew and Luke appear to incorporate a large amount of material from Mark, there is no question that they also occasionally make wholesale changes to what Mark wrote. Luke’s versions, for example, of the “Rejection at Nazareth,”3 “Recruitment of the first disciples,”4 or the “Anointing at Bethany”5 look nothing at all like Mark’s versions of the same stories and depart significantly from Mark’s order of events.6 Compare also Matthew’s versions of “the healing of a man with a withered hand,”7 the “Jesus and Beelzebul accusation,”8 and “the Empty Tomb”9 with Mark’s versions of these stories.10 In all likelihood, if these very different versions of Mark’s stories appeared in John (but not in Matthew or Luke), they would probably be considered good examples of why John didn’t know a written version of Mark. From the way Luke and Matthew handle Mark we can see over numerous incidents that neither had any problems with altering, correcting, amending, omitting or moving around Mark’s stories. Scholars attribute this either to Matthew and/or Luke having theological problems with what appeared in Mark or to one or the other trying to make a story read more sensibly or more clearly. So, such variations are not necessarily proof that one author did not use another author as a source. Similar actions by Mark and/or John with respect to their sources should be expected.

The Q Problem In addition to the “triple tradition” scholars have also noticed that Matthew and Luke share a lot of material that isn’t present in Mark. While this other material doesn’t always appear in the same sequential order, there is a substantial amount of word agreement. Although containing some anecdotal material, this MatthewLuke collection consists primarily of sayings by Jesus and its subject matter is largely (but not completely) outside the scope of this present study. Brown estimates that about 220–235 verses that fall into this category.11 John S. Kloppenborg, one of the leading Q authorities, estimates that this collection of verses encompasses 106 textual units (as opposed to verses) and that about onethird of these units follow the same sequential order.12 This material makes up about 20% of Matthew and Luke and raises a question of whether Luke and Matthew have a literary relationship separate and apart from any connection to Mark.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 5 With only slightly less unanimity than there is for Markan priority, scholars believe that Matthew and Luke, working independently from each other, made use of a now-lost written manuscript that scholars have nicknamed Q (from the German word quelle, meaning “source.”) Although no portion of this supposed source has ever been discovered, a large field of Q studies has sprung up in New Testament scholarship, with reconstructed critical versions of the Q source being published and substantial debates over what should or shouldn’t be included within. It is considered by many scholars to be the equivalent of an early gospel. In recent years, however, a strong and vocal dissent to the Q hypothesis has arisen from a small but growing community of scholars. Based on an earlier thesis known as the Farrar theory, Mark Goodacre and allies take the position that the agreements between Luke and Matthew arise from Luke’s use of Matthew’s gospel as a source.13 This would account not only for why Luke and Matthew share such common material but would also resolve the other problem of the “minor disagreements” of Matthew and Luke against Mark. If Luke used Matthew, then the minor disagreements with Mark would be the result of Luke occasionally using Matthew over Mark as a source. In the course of this present work, I will make occasional references to Q. I am using it only in the sense of material common to Matthew and Luke but not present in Mark. I take no position as to whether Q was an earlier lost document or whether Luke copied from Matthew. Nevertheless, we should recognize that a very large majority of New Testament scholars routinely accept that two of the gospel authors made substantial use of a now-lost written gospel that preceded at least three (counting John) if not all four of the canonical gospels.

The Luke-John Problem One known but surprisingly under-analyzed problem in source criticism concerns several parallels between Luke and John that not only agree with each other, but which occasionally agree with each other against Mark or contain information missing in Mark. To cite just a few examples out of many:

• Both show a crowd asking John the Baptist if he is the messiah, a detail missing in Mark.14 • Both show Jesus enabling Peter to catch a large load of fish, a miracle missing from Mark.15 • Both include only one miracle of the loaves, referring to the same episode, but Mark has two such episodes.16

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• Both have a story about sisters named Mary and Martha interacting with Jesus, but Mark has no such story.17 • Both contain an episode where a synagogue congregation knows Jesus’ father, Joseph, by name but mentions no other family members by name; in Mark’s parallel to Luke’s version, the congregation exhibits no knowledge of Jesus’ father and names only Jesus’ mother and brothers.18 • Both show that in the course of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem the Pharisees complained about the crowd’s behavior, a detail missing in Mark. • Both show Jesus lamenting the blindness of the Jewish authorities after the Triumphal Entry scene, a detail missing in Mark.19 • Both show Jesus predicting that Peter will deny Jesus three times before the cock crows.20 Mark says the cock will crow twice.21 • Both show Jews asking Jesus if he is the messiah and Jesus giving similar answers. In Luke, Jesus says, “If I tell you, you will not believe.”22 In John, Jesus says, “I have told you, and you do not believe.”23 Mark has no such reply. • Both show Pilate making three separate declarations declaring Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing, but Mark has no such declarations.24 • Both show that the first time Jews called out for crucifixion they used the word “crucify” twice but Mark only has the word once.

These agreements at least hint at some sort of connection between Luke and John but we are left with no satisfactory explanation for how they come about or why Luke would depart from Mark’s language and somehow agree with John. One scholar who attempted to address this issue was F. Lamar Cribbs, who wrote a lengthy article on the Luke-John parallels.25 His solution, however, has been found wanting. He proposed that Luke was influenced by early Johannine traditions, and possibly knew an earlier draft of John, and attempted in his own gospel to reconcile differences between John and Mark.26 It will be my argument in the course of this work that the author of Luke is unlikely to have known John, and Luke’s departures from Mark in favor of John were due to Luke’s use of the proposed proto-gospel and his attempts to reconcile differences between Mark and the earlier source.

Why Luke and Not Matthew? I have already indicated that, according to my thesis, Luke knew the proto-gospel but Matthew did not. The reason for that conclusion is that Luke and John both seem to know several of the same things that Mark does not know, and, on occasion, Luke and John agree against Mark on certain details. While it is true that

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 7 Matthew knows many things that are not present in Mark, I have not found any evidence that there is any significant matching of that information with John. Since Matthew and Luke both use Mark as a source, their agreements with Mark do not advance the case for a proto-gospel. We require some differences that connect in some manner with John. The issue in this study is primarily whether John knew Mark’s source, and agreements between Luke and John against Mark provide some clues. While it is conceivable that Matthew knew the proto-gospel, his lack of significant divergence from Mark in parallel to John leaves us with insufficient evidence to make out a case for Matthew’s knowledge of the Markan source. Nevertheless, because Matthew has so much material from Mark that, per my theory, Mark took from the proto-gospel, Matthew is at least indirectly, through Mark, a product of the proto-gospel. Should additional evidence come forward on behalf of Matthew’s knowledge, I would have no objection to adding him to the list of gospels directly influenced by the earlier source.

Johannine Source Issues John’s gospel features an individual known as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,”27 routinely referred to by scholars as “the Beloved Disciple,” and at the end of the gospel the author says, “This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.”28 John never mentions this individual by name and his identity is subject to substantial debate. He was apparently an important figure in the Johannine community who, according to John, died at some earlier point in time.29 So at least for this passage, the beloved disciple was not the author. Brown says that prior to the development of biblical criticism, it was commonly thought that the gospel was the work of “John, the son of Zebedee,” one of the key members of the twelve apostles, and the gospel was written down shortly after his death30 Few scholars presently accept that identification. Brown adds that, questions of author identity aside, “there are features in the gospel that offer difficulty for any theory of unified authorship.”31 These include differences of Greek style, breaks and inconsistencies in sequence, repetitions in discourses, and passages ‘that clearly do not belong to their context.”32 Another problem is that the gospel appears to be completed at the end of John 20, which says, “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have

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life in his name.”33 Yet it continues with new stories and teachings in John 21. It is commonly argued that John was composed in at least two stages, an initial gospel and at least one later edition by someone routinely referred to as “the Redactor.” Several scholars believe the Redactor added in John 1:1–18 and John 21 and made several editorial changes to the original version. Urban Von Wahlde has argued for at least three stages in the composition of John.34 Even among those who agree with the idea of multiple editions of the text, there are still disagreements as to which verses belong to which edition.35 Many scholars try to resolve some of the textual problems by moving passages and sections around to create a more fluid flow, although there is significant disagreement as to what should be moved and where it should be placed. Why John’s Redactor should have changed the location of several passages from where they were in the earlier edition is another issue that requires explanation. Several scholars have suggested it was the result of accidental displacement.36 While not all, or even most, scholars believe in such wholesale rearrangement, many of them would agree that, due to geographical and chronological issues, perhaps there should be a reversal in the order of John 5 and John 6.37 I address the issue of chronological displacement at various points in my study. As to John 5 and John 6, however, it is my argument later that they are in the proper and original sequential order as is. Several scholars believe the compositional issues are due to the author’s use of a variety of source texts.38 Brown says the most influential form of source theory goes back to Rudolf Bultmann, who, he says, proposed three basic sources.39 One was a “signs” source, a collection of miracles, a few of which John extracted for his gospel.40 I challenge that thesis in the course of this work, showing that the miracles in John are all explainable through the use of the proto-gospel and that despite differences in appearance, are, for the most part, duplicates of those in Mark. His second proposed source is referred to as the “Revelatory Discourse Source,” a collection of discourses attributed to Jesus, some of which were interspersed into John.41 In this study I don’t do a broad analysis of discourses or other speeches, although I do look at some associated issues here and there. With respect to John’s Discourse on Bread in John 6, though, I implicitly challenge the use of this “discourse source” at least with respect to this specific speech. Bultmann’s third proposed source, according to Brown, is a Passion and Resurrection text similar to the synoptic gospel version but having some important differences.42 In my study I show that Mark, John, and Luke all drew upon the same Passion and Resurrection source, the proto-gospel.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 9 All three of Bultmann’s propositions have been challenged in one way or another by various scholars. I will outline in the pages ahead my own theory of John’s compositional practices. First, however, let me briefly touch on the question of whether John’s differences from Mark preclude the idea of an earlier common source.

Do Differences in Mark and John Preclude a Common Written Source? The gospel of John looks very different from the synoptic gospels. To begin with, there is far less verbal agreement between John and Mark than there is for Luke and Matthew. John has none of the synoptic parables, none of the synoptic exorcisms, none of the synoptic healing missions, and fewer miracles than in the synoptic gospels. John’s miracles, for the most part, look very different from those in Mark. At the same time, John introduces his own set of non-parable hard-to-understand teachings, none of which appear in the other gospels, and he introduces several “I Am” sayings that also do not appear in any of the other three gospels. John’s gospel message is much more focused on the idea that the only way to eternal life is to believe in Jesus as the one sent by the Father to offer eternal life, a message that is less explicit and occasionally challenged in the synoptic gospels.43 John is often thought of as a more spiritual gospel than the others and one offering a higher degree of Christology than the others. John also depicts a much longer mission by Jesus than do the synoptic gospels. In John the story unfolds over three Passovers; the other gospels include only one Passover. While the synoptic gospels place all of Jesus’ action in Galilee, up until the final week, John presents almost the entire mission taking place in Jerusalem, with very little activity in Galilee. There are also significant chronological and sequential disagreements between John and the synoptic gospels. John, for example, places Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem much earlier in time than the synoptic gospels do, and his version of the last visit looks nothing like the synoptic versions. John also places the chasing of the money-changers at the beginning of the mission rather than the end of the mission as in the synoptic gospels. Particularly odd is that the three synoptic gospels all show Jesus bringing a child back to life (and Luke, alone, includes a second incident in which Jesus brings someone back to life) and that story is missing in John. At the same time John gives high importance to Jesus bringing the adult Lazarus back to life and that incident does not appear in the synoptic gospels.

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All this is not to say that there is no evidence of Johannine contact with a written synoptic gospel. Perhaps the most direct and troubling evidence for scholars rejecting such a connection is the Mark-John sequence of the “Miracle of the Loaves”44 and “Jesus walks on Water.”45 In Mark and John these two stories run one after the other, with very similar narrative bridges between the two events. (Luke omits the story of Jesus walking on water.) In the Miracle of the Loaves episode, both authors agree that the crowd consisted of five thousand people, that the ordinary cost of feeding them would have been two hundred denarii, that Jesus started out with five loaves of bread and two fish, and that there were twelve baskets of leftovers. That’s a lot of numeric and verbal agreement. Luke and Matthew both omit the ordinary cost of feeding the crowd, giving John a superior numerical agreement with Mark than do the two other synoptic gospels. In the Walking on Water miracle that follows almost immediately after, both authors agree that the disciples were initially frightened by the sight of Jesus on the water and he calmed them down by saying, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Both stories unfold in a similar manner and share a key phrase. The two sea stories include some key verbal agreement and common details. However, in mid-voyage across the sea, the two gospels diverge radically in what they depict next and the two gospels trail off in different directions. The close verbal and sequential agreements in these two stories give scholars at least some pause in dismissing any written connection between John and the synoptic gospels but the overwhelming consensus remains firm: John did not know a written version of the synoptic gospels. Then there are a couple of unusual verbal parallels between John and the synoptic gospels. In all four gospels, Jesus occasionally refers to himself as the “son of Man.” Throughout early Christianity, virtually the only description of Jesus as “son of man” comes from the four evangelists. If John has no written connection to the other gospels, where does his frequent use of “son of Man” come from? Even more odd is the use of the term “day of Preparation” in connection with the death of Jesus. While all four gospels agree that Jesus died on the “day of Preparation” and this day fell just before the Sabbath, there is some disagreement amongst the authors as to what the term means. John says it is the day on which the Passover lamb is slaughtered. Mark says it is the day of preparation for the Sabbath. Luke appears noncommittal. The problem, however, is that the term is supposed to be a Jewish term and Jews never used that expression. In reference to the start of a holiday they always

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 11 referred to “Evening of …” but never “Day of …” Again, this is a term used only in the four gospels. How did John pick up such an unusual and odd phrase that appears elsewhere only in the synoptic gospels? This is certainly a question worth exploring. There are also places where John exhibits verbal parallels to Mark in stories that look like the two gospels might have a point of contact but where the story details are often very different. In the story of John the Baptist, John cites the same Isaiah verse that Mark does.46 Later John’s version of the Baptist’s pronouncement about the one to come closely parallels Mark’s version and could be considered more faithful to Mark than the versions in Luke and Matthew.47 Although John’s version of the Baptist’s story departs in many ways from Mark, so do the versions present in Matthew and Luke. In another example, compare the “Anointing in Bethany” as presented by Mark and John.48 There is little doubt that these two versions are related to each other. Both talk about the oil being worth three hundred denarii, both show complaints about the money being used for oil instead of for the poor, and in both Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you.” But when you look at the details of the two stories, they are almost nothing alike. In Mark the oil is poured on the head; in John on the feet. In Mark there is no meal being served; in John there is. Other than Jesus, Mark doesn’t mention the names of anyone present except the owner of the house, “Simon the Leper;” John makes no mention of Simon but says Lazarus, Mary and Martha were present. Mark doesn’t say who complained; John says it was Judas but indicates that he was insincere and wanted to steal the money. Despite minimal verbal agreement, there is little doubt that both versions are based on the same story. In fact, John’s version is much closer to what Mark says than is Luke’s.49 Mark has a story about healing a paralytic sitting on a mat.50 In the course of the process, Jesus says, “stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” John has a story about Jesus healing a paralytic sitting on a mat and telling him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”51 The words uttered by Jesus in both stories are virtually identical and one would initially see the two stories as based on a common source. But John’s story details look nothing like Mark’s. The latter places the incident in Jesus’ home in Capernaum and John’s takes place by a pool in Jerusalem on a Sabbath. None of the actions taken by the people present in Mark’s story appear in John’s story. Scholars debate whether the two versions are based on the same common story or whether they are derived from independent unrelated stories. The consensus seems to be that the stories in Mark and John have no relationship to each other.

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Mark has a story known as the “Rejection at Nazareth,” although he never mentions the city by name.52 It is a short story (six verses) with several notable features. Jesus is in a synagogue, the congregation knows members of Jesus’ family by name, the congregation rejects Jesus, and Jesus says, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house [emphasis added].” John has a story about Jesus in a synagogue, where the congregation knows members of Jesus’ family by name and rejects Jesus.53 John’s version of the story is missing the quote about prophets without honor, but the quote appears elsewhere in John, slightly altered and in a substantially different context. “[F]‌or Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country).”54 Although John has moved the quote elsewhere and altered it to eliminate the reference to Jesus’ family being among those who reject Jesus—to be fair, Matthew and Luke also drop the reference to Jesus’ family rejecting him55—the parallels between the two synagogue stories seem to suggest there should be a relationship. Yet, the stories in Mark and John look nothing alike. The settings and issues in conflict are very different. In Mark, the family members mentioned by name are the mother “Mary” and her several sons, “James and Joses and Judas and Simon.” Mark makes no reference to even the existence of a father. In John, only the father “Joseph” is mentioned by name. In an interesting side issue, Luke agrees with John against Mark as to which family members were named. Despite using Mark as a source, Luke names only the father “Joseph.”56 A connection between Mark and John as to the Rejection at Nazareth flies under the academic radar. In Mark, Jesus criticizes Peter at one point, calling him a Satan.57 In John, at a similar point in the narrative under similar circumstances, Jesus says, “Yet one of you is a devil” but he doesn’t say who that is.58 John adds a gloss saying that Jesus referred to Judas.59 It’s hard not to see that John’s version is a cleansing of what appears in Mark’s version. Even without verbal agreements, we see stories in John that clearly have a parallel with Mark. Consider, for example, the chasing of the money-changers from the Temple.60 Mark places it in the last week of Jesus’ life; John places it two years earlier. In John, Jesus’ specific actions against the money-changers differs from those depicted in Mark, and Jesus’ words of rebuke to the money-changers are completely different in the two stories. There is no meaningful verbal agreement in the two accounts. Despite the lack of significant verbal agreement, and in the case of the money-changers a severe chronological and sequential disagreement, John’s story is easily recognizable as being based on the same incident Mark referred to.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 13 Mark has a story in which Jesus heals a blind man by rubbing his (Jesus’) saliva in the blind man’s eyes.61 Matthew and Luke both omit this story but John has an extensive story (all of John 9) about Jesus healing a blind man, and in this account Jesus mixes his saliva with dirt to make mud and heals the blind man by placing the saliva-infused mud on the man’s eyes. This odd use of saliva to heal a blind man certainly seems like it should be based on a common story but other than the use of saliva in healing a blind man the two stories look nothing alike in their present formats and scholars debate whether they are based on the same story or derive from very different incidents. The consensus currently favors two separate unrelated derivations. But the use of saliva by Jesus in a healing process is certainly a very odd fact that seems to go against the usual depiction of Jesus’ powers and especially against the depiction of Jesus in John, who can raise someone to life with just a word or who can be in one city and cure someone’s severe illness in another city. Mark and John each have one story about Jesus healing a deformed man on the Sabbath, but the details are very different and scholars generally reject a connection. Mark has Jesus make three predictions about rising after he is killed. John has Jesus make three declarations that he will be raised up, but the wording is very different. Are they parallel declarations just using different words? Little by little we begin to see several places where there seems to be a point of contact between Mark and John on a story but where, on the other hand, they disagree on narrative content. And in the course of this study we will look at a great many other such instances in greater detail. While one can explain a handful of such incidents with occasional verbal parallels based on oral traditions, what happens when points of contact begin to mushroom? Is there a crossing point where one says there are too many such connections to be dismissed as coincidences? And what do we say if these many points of contact start to align in sequential agreement? Does this imply an underlying written source? Is there a pattern involved that explains why the story details disagree? Is there some reason why the details might disagree even if they were based on a common source? So far, the traditional approach is to treat each occasion where there is a point of contact as an isolated event divorced from a larger collection of such incidents. The source-critical approach is heavily invested in verbal agreements as the chief tool for resolving the question of source relationships. But what happens when two authors share a source but one disagrees profusely with how the source interprets events and begins to rewrite stories? Can one prove that this is the case? That is the larger project taken up in the present work.

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Identifying John’s Editorial Practices In making my case for the existence of a proto-gospel I will argue that John followed certain practices in composing his gospel and these practices made it extremely difficult to recognize how Mark and John frequently interacted with the same story or set of stories. However, once it is seen how these practices operate, one can more easily identify the steps that John took in his composition. The various practices fall into three broad categories:

• Theological biases requiring changes to a source; • Editorial techniques for making changes; • One major change to the underlying plot (for a theological purpose) that causes several stories to be moved around and altered.

Theological Biases John has certain identifiable theological biases about the nature of the gospel message, the nature of Jesus, and the behavior of his disciples. I propose that whenever John encountered a source story that either disagreed with his position or left a potential for undermining his theological agenda, he took editorial steps to change the nature of the underlying story. Given the nature of the problem and the steps taken, changes could make John’s version of events look very different from that in the source versions. Here are what I believe to be the primary theological concerns that motivated John to make changes. (a) John believed that the only way to obtain eternal life is to accept that Jesus was sent by the Father to make eternal life available. According to John, Jesus said,



• “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life [emphasis added].”62 • “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.”63 • “This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”64

If a source story suggested that there was some other way to obtain eternal life, such as following the law,65 giving to the poor,66 or loving your neighbor67 then John would want to either make substantial changes to the story or omit some or, occasionally, all the details.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 15 (b) John claimed that all judgment has been given by the Father to Jesus. According to John, Jesus said,



• “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son, so that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him [emphasis added].”68 • “Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me.”69 • “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”70

John’s view of Jesus’ authority places him outside and above the law. Any story that shows Jesus defending his actions under the law or which indicates that Jesus does not have full authority to make all judgments would have to be modified. In Mark, for example, Jesus makes a legal argument in support of his healing actions on the Sabbath.71 In John, when accused of violating the Sabbath by healing, Jesus justifies his actions by making a theological argument that his authority lies beyond of the law. “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”72 This answer shows that Jesus is not bound by the law. (c) One should have faith in Jesus because of his words and not because of his signs. According to John, Jesus said,



• “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” • “The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony. Whoever has accepted his testimony has certified this, that God is true.”73 • “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life.”74

An important facet of John’s teaching is that faith in Jesus should come from the words he speaks and not from the performance of his signs. In the first of the quotes just cited, John was responding to a royal official’s request to heal his son. John tested the man to see if he required proof of Jesus’ power or if he had faith. The man passed the test and Jesus healed the child. While John’s Jesus does heal from time to time, John shows no healing missions. In the synoptic gospels healing missions are an important aspect of Jesus’ work and healings serve as proof that he has been authorized by God to act. In Mark, for example, Jesus proves he has the authority to forgive sin by healing.75

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If John encountered such a story, he would have two objections. First, the story could be interpreted to limit Jesus’ authority over matters other than forgiving sin. Second, Jesus should not try to convince skeptics of his authority by healing. This doesn’t mean that Jesus’ miracles don’t or shouldn’t evoke wonder. But Jesus still wants people to have faith in him based on his words and not his works. (d) The Disciples and certain others close to Jesus should not be depicted in a negative manner. This principle extends also to Jesus’ family members and to the families of disciples. Here, we don’t have specific quotes from John. The evidence consists of comparisons with Mark. Mark frequently presents the disciples in a negative light, focusing on their frequent inability to understand Jesus’ message. After the second of Mark’s two miracles of the loaves, the disciples indicate they are hungry. Jesus said to them, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened?”76 Later, Peter rebukes Jesus for talking about dying and rising up. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”77 In the bread incident, Mark’s Jesus is chastising the disciples for not understanding about the miracle of the loaves. John omits this rebuke to the disciples but, interestingly, he tells us about a different group of witnesses to the miracle and Jesus rebukes them for not understanding the meaning of the miracle. “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”78 The words are different but the function is the same. Elsewhere, in a parallel to the rebuke of Peter, John presents a different picture of what took place. In John, Peter correctly acknowledges the role of Jesus as the one bringing eternal life. “Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ ”79 Jesus responds in a complimentary manner, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.”80 John then adds a gloss, saying Jesus meant Judas was the devil. Note John’s trick here. The devil quote was used to compliment Peter for getting the divine role right where Mark has the devil accusation as an insult for getting the divine role wrong. I should add that Luke, too, as we will see later, rejects Mark’s negative depictions of the disciples, but he does so in ways very different from those used by John.

John’s Editing Techniques John, as I will argue in the course of this work, used a few specific editing techniques in composing his gospel and altering stories that he found p ­ roblematic. One

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 17 ­ ractice was to take multiple stories that shared a similar theme or some other p details and integrating them into a single narrative such that the constituent stories no longer look like the original versions. John 5, for example, deals with the theme of Jesus’ authority, and in Chapter 3 I lay out several indications that John has taken several stories known to Mark and which dealt problematically with the question of Jesus’ authority, and combined the multiple stories into a new single narrative that eliminates all the problematic issues. The narrative looks nothing like Mark’s several stories, but, as I show, there are numerous allusions to Mark’s stories that clearly suggest (to me, anyway) that John knew all three Markan stories and has rewritten them for theological purposes. Another technique used by John is to split off a problematic piece of a story and place it in a different context and occasionally altering the purpose of the verse, while rewriting the existing story to cover up the removal. There are numerous examples of this throughout John. Above, for example, I indicated that John did not want to depict Jesus defending himself by claiming that his actions were authorized under the Jewish law and that when confronted on the issue he used a theological argument indicating that his authority was above the law. That episode took place in John 5. Later, in John 7, on another occasion in another time frame in another context, Jesus brings up the opposition to his earlier healing on the Sabbath and criticizes the Jews for not understanding their own law by laying out a legal argument that shows his actions were consistent with the law. John, however, has changed the context of the legal argument. It has been separated from the argument over Jesus’ authority to heal on the Sabbath and transformed from a legal defense of his actions to an attack on his critics for not knowing the law. While the action would have been legal under the argument made by Jesus, he doesn’t justify his actions by resorting to the legal argument. He relied on the earlier theological argument about his relationship to the Father. Still another technique used by John is to take one story and move it into another story where it serves a different function. This is not quite the same as splitting a piece of the story off. There are numerous examples of John doing both things, but the practice is not always easily detectable. In the story of Jesus being rejected by a synagogue congregation, for example, Mark and Luke are a little vague as to why Jesus was rejected but, implicitly, reading the two very different versions of the story in Mark and Luke together, the congregation reacted to a failure by Jesus to heal somebody, where the healing was intended to prove that Jesus was authorized to deliver the gospel message. The failure to heal led the congregation to reject Jesus as the messenger.

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John, on the other hand, also has a story about a congregation rejecting Jesus. Like Mark’s version, it is the story in which the congregation also knows the name of Jesus’ family members. But in John’s story the rejection of Jesus is caused by what looks like his teaching a very different version of the Eucharist teaching from the one in the synoptic gospels. Differences aside, John appears to have moved his version of the Eucharist teaching from the Last Supper setting and inserted it into the story about the congregation rejecting Jesus. It is John’s Eucharist story (very different from that in Mark, Luke and Matthew) that causes the congregation to reject Jesus as God’s messenger.81 John has not the slightest hint that Jesus intended to heal someone as proof of his authority or that he failed to do so. At the same time, John inserts a very different story about how Jesus is to be remembered at the very place where the Eucharist story should have appeared.82 Another of John’s practices is to take an incident that seems to suggest one set of facts and gloss over the facts by adding a comment that casts the event in a different light. For example, in John’s version of the chasing of the money-changers, Jesus makes the controversial claim that if the Temple were torn down it would be rebuilt. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”83 John adds, “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”84 This, however, is an aside to the reader. It is not a statement Jesus makes to his critics. For the reader, though, it radically alters the context of Jesus’ remark. At the time John wrote his gospel, the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans. John’s gloss absolves Jesus of any need to rebuild the physical Temple. John, as we will see, frequently uses glosses to change the context of events that could be considered inconsistent with his agenda. Throughout John’s gospel we will see numerous instances where John applies these techniques. But they are often not immediately obvious and sometimes we have to look at a lot of other narrative material to place an event in its narrative context.

A Major Plot Change John’s gospel has one significant plot change from the synoptic gospels, having to do with why the Jewish authorities wanted to put Jesus to death. In the synoptic gospels, the authorities oppose Jesus because his popularity (a messianic-style hero) made him a political rival who would displace them as leaders of Israel. In John, we have a very different explanation.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 19 According to John, after Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead Jesus became so popular that the Jewish authorities feared that Rome would destroy the Temple and the Jewish nation.85 Caiaphas, the chief priest, argued that it was better for one man to die than to see the nation and temple destroyed.86 Ironically, as John intended, the authorities see the death of Jesus bringing salvation to the nation.87 Although John has a reputation among many scholars as being the most antiJewish of the four gospel authors, his plot change, priestly concern for the nation and the Temple rather than their own political power, exhibits the Jews in a much more positive light than the synoptic gospels do. While this change of explanation is relatively obvious to those who study the texts, scholars have treated the issue in isolation from the rest of the gospel. It is my argument that in order to implement this change of plot, John had to root through the story of Jesus and make several alterations and changes to the sequence and content of stories in order to make this plot change credible. His goal was to eliminate any indication that the priests sought to put Jesus to death out of jealousy over political rivalry. When this motive is understood, several problematic issues in John can be resolved. The most substantial of these changes was John’s alteration to both the chronology and narrative content of the story of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. In the synoptic gospels, the last visit to Jerusalem lasts about three days, takes place during the week before Passover, and encompasses the various events that lead the Jewish authorities to believe that Jesus is a political rival who should be executed. The two key events arousing homicidal rage among the authorities are the chasing of the money-changers88 and the parable of the Wicked Tenants.89 John, on the other hand, moved the start of the last visit to Jerusalem six months earlier to the start of the Festival of Booths,90 extended the stay for about two and a half months, and ended it about three and a half months before Passover.91 Jesus appears to have had free reign to walk the city for almost the entire period and no incidents arise that lead the priests to see Jesus as a political rival to be put to death. (There is one failed effort to arrest him for an inquiry before the council, but the concern seems to be whether he was a prophet, not a political rival.92) What is also problematic is that almost none of the stories that Mark places during his account of the last visit to Jerusalem appear in John’s account of the last visit, and almost none of the stories that appear in John’s account of the last visit appear in the synoptic gospel accounts of the last visit. The most glaring example of this is the chasing of the money-changers.

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In Mark, the chasing of the money-changers was the trigger event that led the Jewish authorities to seek the death of Jesus. In John, the story is placed two years earlier than Mark’s version and there is no death threat or even significant hostility. Despite the role it plays in the synoptic gospels, John never references the event again, despite two subsequent visits to Jerusalem. I will treat this plot change in greater detail in Chapter 7 and in several other chapters. I will argue that John has moved several stories around in order to implement this change in plot and that many of the stories moved around are currently unrecognized rewritten versions of stories present in Mark. In my final summary on the issue of sequential agreement we will see that almost all of John’s divergence from Mark’s sequential order can be traced to those stories involved in John’s reworking of the plotline.

Methodological Approach In the present study it is my goal to establish a very large collection of literary points of contact between John and (primarily) Mark or John and (secondarily) Luke that can only be explained by the existence of an early written gospel known to all three. Since Luke uses Mark as a source, agreements between the two are rarely helpful. Disagreements, however, especially where Luke agrees with John against Mark, can present clues hinting at an earlier common text. The simplest form of a literary point of contact is when two gospel authors know and agree upon the same fact. John and Mark, for example, both agree that Jesus was anointed in Bethany, that the oil used in that incident was worth three hundred denarii, and that Jesus said, “You always have the poor with you,… but you do not always have me.”93 (Mark has some additional words in the middle of the quotation.) Even though the two authors disagree on several other details, we have three points of contact (place, value, quote) that strongly suggest that Mark and John both knew similar versions of a common story about Jesus being anointed in Bethany. So, we have three details indicating three exact points of contact and enough detail to indicate a point of contact between the story in Mark and the story in John. This leads to a slightly more complex form of a point of contact. Having established that there is a point of contact between Mark and John on the story level, we can identify further points of contact in places where the two don’t agree on the facts. Both agree that oil was placed on the body of Jesus but disagree as to where on the body the oil was placed. Mark says it was on the head; John says

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 21 on the feet. Both agree that complaints were made about wasting the money on oil when it could have been spent on the poor but disagree as to who made the complaint. Mark doesn’t identify who criticized the anointment, but says it was “some;” John says it was a single individual, Judas. Both agree that the oil purchased had something to do with Jesus’ burial. Mark says the actual anointing was to prepare for the burial; John says some of the oil was saved to be used later for his burial. From these details, we can’t be sure of the exact nature of the underlying story facts, but we can agree on several additional points of contact: Jesus’ body was anointed with oil; the cost of the oil was a source of criticism; and the oil had some connection to the burial of Jesus. This gives us three more points of contact, even though there is disagreement as to the content of the details. Nevertheless, even within the context of disagreement on some details, the case that Mark and John know similar versions of the same story becomes even stronger. A single incident such as this is not sufficient proof of a written source. The anointing story is something that takes place towards the last week in Jesus’s life. The story details may have been well known as part of the Passion story surrounding the death of Jesus. But there are several such examples. Here’s one from the beginning of the mission that shows points of contact even where there is disagreement over the content of details. Mark and John both say something about whether John the Baptist had been arrested at the time Jesus began his mission. In both gospels the Baptist’s custody status is specifically associated with the notice that Jesus began his mission. Mark says the Baptist was already arrested at the time;94 John says the Baptist was not arrested at the time.95 Luke, intriguingly, remains vague on the issue even though he used Mark as a source.96 Now, obviously, the fact that at some point in the narrative Jesus began his mission has no bearing on a link between one gospel and another. Jesus must begin the mission at some point in time, no matter who is telling the story. But, when two allegedly unrelated gospels, Mark and John, both specifically tie the event to another very specific but not necessarily related narrative element, such as the custody status of John the Baptist, then we have something that looks like a point of contact even though Mark and John disagree on the custody status. Both thought it necessary for some reason to link the one event to the other, even if they disagree on what occurred in the second event. Luke’s vagueness adds to the mystery. John’s version of the Baptist notice even seems to suggest that he was aware of the issue and attempted to refute it.

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Scholars are quite aware of this disagreement and generally believe that John was aware of a tradition that the Baptist had been arrested at the time of the start of the mission and chose to specifically deny that claim. As one incident by itself, that, may of course, be a perfectly reasonable explanation. Amid many other such coincidences, that explanation becomes more tenuous. It is my own view that John changed the arrest status of John because he placed the start of the mission about two years earlier than Mark does and that John had been arrested much closer in time to the arrest of Jesus, as Mark has it. The Baptist episode gives us two points of contact that are connected in a narrative sequence, the start of Jesus’ mission and a reference to the custody status of John the Baptist at the beginning of the mission. Whether Mark or John has the correct status is arguable but in filling out a narrative time line, these two points of contact need to be included. So far, I have given examples of simple points of contact, even though there is some disagreement over the nature of a specific detail. John and Mark have several such examples. One approach I follow is to collect as many of these more obvious agreements as possible and see if there is some sort of meaningful literary patterns that have been overlooked. The more difficult problem is finding very complex points of contact in stories that don’t look alike in terms of either narrative details or verbal agreement, and the larger portion of this study will be identifying currently unrecognized parallels between Johannine and synoptic gospel stories and/or story details. One tool I will use is “descriptor” analysis, tags that can be attached to a story above and beyond just the verbal details of the story itself. Such descriptors include plot characteristics, character types, theological themes, symbols, chronological markers, sequential relationships with other stories, literary seams indicating a break in the narrative, or vagueness indicating that something is being covered up or disguised. Another tool I will use is theological differentiation. As indicated above, I believe John had some theological biases and used certain editorial techniques to make changes to stories. I will look at stories in Mark or Luke and see what sort of issues John would have objected to, and what sort of changes he would want to make. Less frequently, we might look at a story in John and see what sort of theological objections Mark or Luke might have had and what sort of changes they would make if they knew a version of John’s story. It is my view that if we recognize John’s theological biases and editorial techniques then we can look at a story in Mark and frequently reverse-engineer John’s editorial framework and reconstruct his source story.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 23 Another tool to be used is to place a story in a sequential location within a longer narrative arc. Consider, for the sake of argument, that Mark has a sequence of five stories and that John appears to know four of the five stories in the same sequential order, but in the middle of the sequence the fifth story looks nothing like Mark’s fifth story. This, subject to evidentiary evaluation, could suggest that John knew the fifth story in Mark’s sequence but substituted a different story in its place. Let me now look at a very complex example of how I apply some of the methods described above. Here’s a puzzling passage in John that suggested to me he made some sort of significant editorial adjustment. At a point almost immediately after Jesus met up with a group of people who became his first disciples, we are told, “After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.”97 And what happened in Capernaum? Nothing. Immediately after telling us this, John whisks us away to the Temple in Jerusalem, on a Passover, and tells us about Jesus chasing the money-changers. Why did John tell us about this pointless trip to Capernaum? Was something left out, like what happened in Capernaum? Turning to Mark, immediately after Jesus meets up with a group of people who become his first disciples, Mark says, “They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.”98 So at virtually the identical point in both narratives, right after meeting up with the first group of people to become Jesus’ disciples, Jesus goes to Capernaum. The next thing that happens in Mark is that Jesus goes to a synagogue in Capernaum and in John Jesus goes to the Temple in Jerusalem. The two gospels, at first glance, appear to be diverging. Mark follows up by telling us that while Jesus was in the synagogue, a man with an “unclean spirit” came into the synagogue and Jesus exorcised the demon.99 On the surface, Mark’s exorcism looks like it has no connection to John’s chasing of the money-changers. We can be reasonably certain that John’s money-changers story arises from a version of Mark’s well-known chasing of the money-changers. The two money-changer stories would certainly represent obvious points of contact. On the other hand, John doesn’t do exorcisms and his money-changers story appears in a very different chronological and sequential location from Mark’s. John places it two years earlier, at the early stages of the mission. Mark places it in the last week of Jesus’ life. Is there something else going on here? Let’s take a closer look. I’ll begin by describing the story as Mark has it and then describe various ways that we can tag this story. Then we’ll look at what sort of things John would

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find objectionable and see what influences that might have on his gospel narrative. I’ll ultimately suggest that John knew a version of Mark’s exorcism story, found it offensive to his theological agenda, and deliberately moved the moneychangers episode to the specific narrative location where the exorcism appeared as a theologically satisfying substitute for the original story. I’ll treat this comparison in more detail in Chapter 6, but the abbreviated analysis here will make clear how I will proceed in this and other instances.

Mark’s Story of the Man with an Unclean Spirit (1:21–28) According to Mark, immediately after Jesus recruited his first disciples, he went to the city of Capernaum. On the Sabbath he went to the synagogue and taught, and the crowd was quite impressed with his teaching. While there, a man with “an unclean spirit” cried out “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Jesus didn’t respond to the question but, instead, rebuked the spirit. “Be silent, and come out of him!” The “unclean spirit” convulsed the host and with a loud cry departed from the body. The crowd was astounded by what they saw. “At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.” On the surface, this is a straightforward exorcism story. Jesus confronted a demon, exorcised it, and impressed the crowd. John doesn’t do exorcisms, and this exorcism story doesn’t appear in John. Now let’s take a deeper dive into Mark’s story, looking for assorted descriptors associated with the story. Some are within the episode and some are outside of it. First, let me list descriptors within the episode.



• To begin with, we have, two literary “markers” in the story, phrases that separate the story from what precedes and follows it. At the beginning we are told that the exorcism happened immediately after Jesus arrived at Capernaum. At the end, we are told that as a result of this specific act, Jesus’ fame immediately began to spread throughout the Galilee. • The story takes place in a Jewish place of worship, here, the synagogue in Capernaum. • The demon in this story is an “unclean spirit” that inhabits a human body. “Unclean” is the term used in the story. Although the nature of the infliction is not clearly spelled out, and there is some scholarly speculation, the likelihood is that the demon caused the host body to act in offensive ways. Imagine such things as cursing, insulting, snarling, perhaps acting violently or engaging in some other such offensive behaviors. The spirit is a corrupting influence on the physical body.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 25

• The spirit challenges Jesus’ authority to deal with it. “What have you to do with us?” • Jesus chased the corrupting influence out of the host body. • The crowds are amazed.

In addition to information inside the story, the surrounding context also matters. The following list of descriptors come from outside of the story and place the story in context.

• Mark places the story immediately after Jesus has met up with his first few disciples. • It is Jesus’ first major public act. • It is Jesus’ first miracle. • It is the first act to provide Jesus with widespread fame in the Galilee. • Immediately after the notice of spreading fame, Jesus performs, his second miracle, a second exorcism in Capernaum, chasing a fever spirit from Peter’s mother-in-law.100

John’s Chasing of the Money-changers (2:13–25) If John knew Mark’s story, he would have had several objections. First, he doesn’t depict exorcisms, so John wouldn’t want the first and second miracles to be exorcisms. We should expect, therefore, that John’s first two miracles will not be exorcisms. but we also want to see if there are any indications that John’s first two miracles might have literary relationship to Mark’s first two miracles. Second, John would not want to see Jesus’ initial fame in Galilee be the result of an exorcism. So, we would want to see if we can find some episode in John that brings Jesus his initial fame in Galilee and see if there is any kind of literary connection to Mark’s story about initial fame in Galilee. Mark introduces his story of the exorcism by telling us that Jesus went to Capernaum. In Mark this is the first time Jesus goes to Capernaum. John’s Capernaum visit is also first Jesus visit to Capernaum. As mentioned above, both place this first visit to Capernaum immediately after a story about Jesus meeting up with his first four disciples. There are differences between Mark and John about the details of the meetings with Jesus’ first group of disciples and we will look at them more closely in Chapter 6. For now, we just need to know that John places these meetings immediately before Jesus goes to Capernaum. In between the disciple meet-ups and the journey to Capernaum, John inserts a story that has no apparent parallel in the synoptic gospels, the Wedding at Cana.101 For our purposes, the most salient detail is that Jesus performed his first

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miracle there, turning water into wine, and almost nobody at the wedding had any idea that Jesus did so.102 John conspicuously refers to this non-publicized miracle, as John’s “first sign.”103 This first miracle, virtually unknown among the Galilee populous at large, takes place immediately before the arrival in Capernaum and Mark places the very popular first miracle immediately after the arrival at Capernaum. Both John and Mark, therefore, have a sequence in which, for all practical purposes, following the meet-ups with the first four disciples, Jesus conducts his first miracle. In Mark the first miracle is an exorcism that brings Jesus wide-spread fame in Galilee. In John, the first miracle is something almost no one knows about. Both Mark and John sequentially connect the first miracle to Jesus’ arrival at Capernaum for the first time but do so in reverse order. In Mark, immediately upon arriving in Capernaum, Jesus goes to the synagogue, a house of worship. In John, immediately after arriving in Capernaum, Jesus goes to the Temple in Jerusalem, a house of worship. We have what is beginning to look like a set of stories in Mark and John that unwind in a close sequential order. Both tell a set of stories about Jesus meeting his first four disciples, both depict a first miracle immediately after the meetings, both show Jesus going to Capernaum, and both show Jesus entering a house of worship immediately after arriving in Capernaum, Mark in a Capernaum synagogue and John in the Jerusalem Temple. The chief sequential problem is that John shows a little-known first miracle just immediately before entering Capernaum and Mark shows a very popular first miracle immediately upon entering Capernaum. Turning now from the “first miracle” tag to the “first fame in Galilee” tag, we find the following. After arriving in Capernaum, Mark shows Jesus doing something (the exorcism, but we are ignoring the miraculous nature of the act for the moment) that immediately brings him wide-spread fame in Galilee for the first time. That is the closing literary marker for Mark’s story. Immediately following the notice of fame, Mark says that while still in Capernaum Jesus cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever by exorcising a demon.104 In John, immediately after arriving in Capernaum, Jesus goes to Jerusalem. That is where John places the story of the money-changers. At what appears to be the very same sequential narrative location in Mark for the exorcism story, we find John’s version of the chasing of the money-changers, which, coincidentally, omits Mark’s first miracle of the exorcism of the “unclean spirit.” I’ll skip over the money-changers story for a moment to discuss the aftermath. John remains in Jerusalem and Judea awhile before returning to Galilee. But the

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 27 incident happened on a Passover and there were witnesses from Galilee who saw the confrontation. And when Jesus eventually returns to Galilee, we learn, “When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival.”105 In other words, although John delays the notice until later, the chasing of the moneychangers is the incident in John that first brought Jesus widespread fame in Galilee. Further cementing a parallel narrative in Mark and John, immediately after the notice that Jesus gained wide-spread fame in Galilee, John shows Jesus curing a fever of someone who is ill in Capernaum.106 In Mark, Jesus cured a demoninstalled fever in Peter’s mother-in-law in Capernaum. In John, Jesus cured the fever of a royal official’s son in Capernaum, although Jesus was in Cana at the time he cured the child. There is no hint that this long-distance cure was any sort of exorcism. John also conspicuously says that this was the second sign that Jesus performed.107 In John, therefore, the chasing of the money-changers appears to be inserted into the middle of what appear to be a sequence of parallel events present in Mark and serves the same function as Mark’s exorcism of the unclean spirt, an event that brings Jesus fame in Galilee. John appears to have taken Mark’s “first miracle” and “resulting fame” tags and assigned the two descriptors to separate but sequentially close events that serve similar functions and connected both to Jesus’ arrival in Capernaum. Let’s now look a little more closely at John’s account of the chasing of the money-changers. After telling us that Jesus appeared at the Temple in Jerusalem on Passover, we learn, Jesus “found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.”108 Jesus wasn’t particularly happy about this and he made a whip, chased people out of the Temple, and over-turned the money-changers’ tables. He then went to the dove-sellers and said, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” In other words, Jesus found the commercialization of the Temple facilities to be a moral corruption within the Temple and he chased the corrupting influences out of the house of worship. The Jewish authorities then challenged Jesus’ authority to do what he was doing and asked for a sign as proof of his authority. Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”109 John adds a gloss, explaining to the reader saying that when Jesus referred to raising up the Temple in three days, the temple he referred to was his body.110 Immediately following the incident, John introduces a very puzzling statement. “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in

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his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.”111 The problem is that Jesus didn’t do any signs in Jerusalem at this point. John says the first sign was turning wine into water while Jesus was in Cana and the second sign Jesus did happened after he left Jerusalem. This looks like a literary seam suggesting that some sort of sign or signs (exorcisms?) have been omitted. (I’ll deal with this problem more fully in Chapter 6.) John’s depiction of the chasing of the money-changers has some symbolic parallels to Mark’s exorcism of the unclean spirit. John appears to have replaced the corrupting demon inside a house of worship with a corrupting priesthood inside a house of worship. John even implies that the Temple could be a symbol of Jesus’ body, so that the corruption is of God’s body, paralleling the corrupted host body.112 In both Mark and John, Jesus chases the corrupting influences out of the house of worship and in both stories the corrupting influences challenge Jesus to explain himself. Sequentially, in Mark, the corrupters challenge Jesus before the expulsion; in John the corrupters challenge Jesus after the expulsion. This is an editorial byproduct of replacing demons with foreknowledge of who Jesus is with Jewish priests who do not know who Jesus is (on a theological level.) There is also one very important difference between John’s version of the money-changers story and Mark’s version of the same story. In Mark, this incident is the trigger that leads the priests to want Jesus put to death because they feared his popularity made him a political (earthly messianic-type) rival. In John, there is no such threat. As I proposed above, John has made a plot change to the story of Jesus. He rejected the idea that the priests wanted Jesus dead because they saw him as a political rival. The example above, dealt with more extensively in Chapter 6, strongly suggests that Mark and John both knew a sequence of narrative events (although there are differences in depicting the events that will be discussed later) and that John knew a version of Mark’s exorcism story and replaced it directly with the symbolically similar money-changers story and, less directly, with the Wedding at Cana. John appears to be challenging the tradition known in some circles (especially in synoptic gospel circuits) that the first two miracles to bring Jesus to public attention in Galilee were two exorcisms and offering a new tradition, specifically describing two non-exorcism miracles as the first two signs performed by Jesus. Let me emphasize here that I am not claiming that John’s money-changer story was derived from a version of Mark’s exorcism story. I am suggesting,

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 29 ­ owever, that the evidence shows that John knew a version of Mark’s story as well h as some other stories, and, seeing some opportunity for a symbolic story-parallel, adapted the money-changers story as a substitute for the exorcism. In the above lengthy example, I have attempted to show that there are several ways that one can show that an author knew a story or set of stories in another source even though he didn’t include those stories in a recognizable form in his own manuscript. We looked at literary seams surrounding a story, sequential narratives before and after the story, clues about missing material (the Jerusalem signs, the pointless trip to Capernaum), parallel themes and settings, and motivations to make changes. I believe the case I lay out (with more detail in Chapter 6) provides strong evidence that John knew Mark’s two exorcism stories and replaced them with alternative stories in order to promote his alternative theological agenda. Now I am aware that there are some other theories about why John placed the Templecleansing where he did, specifically with respect to prophecies in Malachi 3.1 about the sudden arrival of “the lord” at the Temple, and I agree that this was also a factor in motivating John’s placement of the story. But nothing about that thesis excludes the idea that John also used the story as a replacement for the exorcism story in Mark. In fact, the Malachi prophecy may have given John the excuse for making the change. Although John has substituted a different story for Mark’s exorcism story, it performs as a narrative parallel to Mark’s story. So, despite the very different nature of the stories in Mark and John, I will refer to them as parallel stories, with sequential alignments. Consequently, not only is the story itself a point of contact between Mark’s exorcism and John, individual scenes within the story create points of contact, including the trip to Capernaum, entering a house of worship, expelling corrupt forces from the house of worship, being challenged by the corrupting forces, and gaining widespread fame in Galilee. In the course of this work, despite the difference in Mark and John as to how the details are presented, I will refer to each of these thematic details as “parallel scenes.” We will encounter several such instances in the analysis of John. Once I demonstrate that a very different story in John intentionally serves the same purpose as the one in Mark, I will treat the two stories as parallels, both for evidence of an earlier source and for the purpose of sequential alignment. In the case of the Temple cleansing, and in other instances, John’s story serves a double function. On the one hand, evidence shows that John knew Mark’s story about the exorcism of an unclean spirit and knew the story from either Mark or Mark’s source. On the other hand, the evidence also shows that John knows a version

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of the money-changers story similar to but not necessarily identical to Mark’s version. In this latter case, John could have known a version of such a key story from any number of other sources, oral or written. But evidence of a substitution within a narrative framework is evidence of knowledge of what was in that narrative sequence. Throughout the study, I will break many stories into small details and will refer to each detail as a “scene.” These scenes may be as small as a single detail in a verse or as large as a story unit, depending on context and observable traits. When a scene looks like a point of contact between John and Mark or John and Luke, I will refer to the point of contact as a “parallel scene.” Where the evidence shows a story, such as the money-changers episode in John, has been moved into a new location as a substitute for an existing story, I will treat the story that has been moved as a “parallel story” to the one that it is replacing, even though the two stories disagree with each other on the content. John’s money-changer story is a parallel story to Mark’s exorcism story, but it is also a parallel to Mark’s version of the money-changers story. Throughout the next several chapters, I will break the gospels down into several long narrative segments containing many stories. This enables us to see individual stories in a larger context and show us narrative sequences. Traditionally, many modern bibles break gospel stories down into a collection of small literary units generally called pericopes, giving each a title. In the course of my study, for simplicity of analysis, I ignore those literary divisions and establish my own literary dividing lines based on narrative context. After the fundamental analysis is complete, however, I will gather together all the scenes that I believe belong to the proto-gospel, align them with gospel verses according to my proposed order of scenes, and subdivide the scenes on the basis of the pericope subdivisions as set forth in the Thomas Nelson NRSV edition of the bible, relying primarily on those in Mark.113 This will provide an independent guideline for the assignment of scenes to stories. My concluding statistical analysis of parallel stories and story sequences and agreements will be based on this final pericope alignment of individual scenes. From time to time there will be a sequential conflict between scenes or stories in Mark and John. Subject to an evidentiary analysis, if there is no basis for choosing one or the other sequence, I will default to Mark’s order of events. This doesn’t necessarily mean Mark is correct and John is wrong, but rather, given that Mark is chronologically closest to the source and has fewer chronological alterations, it is safer to assume that in such instances Mark is more likely to represent the original narrative order of events.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 31 From time to time, with respect to a factual detail, or a sequential issue, John will sometimes agree with Mark against Luke and sometimes with Luke against Mark. Subject to an evidentiary analysis, if there is no basis for choosing one or the other version of the detail, I will default to John’s agreement with another gospel as most likely to represent what appeared in the proto-gospel. If, through the techniques illustrated above, I can show John knows a very large number of stories also known to Mark, but probably not obtained from Mark, and that John’s alterations can be explained by theological biases, and that a very large percentage of these parallel stories, despite not looking alike, unfold in sequential order, then a serious case can be made that John and Mark knew a common written proto-gospel containing a vast majority of all of the non-speech stories that appear in the four canonical gospels. Ultimately, I will propose that Mark and John have direct points of contact in close to 250 scenes and these scenes can be divided into 55 pericopes (based on my later reassignment of scenes to the Thomas Nelson pericope divisions). The evidence will show that the two authors have at least one parallel scene in each pericope. Approximately two-thirds of these pericopes appear in the same sequential order in both gospels. Almost all of the stories that don’t appear in sequential order can be associated with those stories that John moved around in order to develop his alternative plot as to why the priests wanted to put Jesus to death. Luke adds over 50 more scenes that have points of contact with John, including four additional pericopes, with three following the empty tomb scene. All in all, with only a few exceptions, the 59 pericopes (counting Luke’s extras) incorporate almost every non-speech episode in John and the 55 pericopes overlapping Mark, account for about 75% of Mark’s non-speech episodes (if we exclude Mark’s unaccounted for exorcisms and duplicative material.)

The Scope of This Study In the present work it is my goal to establish a case for the existence of a protogospel known to Mark, John and Luke but it is not my intention to establish every precise detail. There will be substantial room for other scholars to disagree here and there with a decision about what I have included and what I have left out or what conclusion I have drawn from the evidence. I do not offer this study as a critical edition but as starting point for further analysis. Additionally, because John so frequently disagrees verbally with Mark, I do not propose, except in handful of cases, that we can recover the original text of the

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proto-gospel. We can identify subject matter, issues raised, and topics discussed, but in terms of the words used by the original author, we are presently stymied. Attempting to recover the original text is one area that might be explored in subsequent studies by other scholars. This study is limited primarily to the non-speech episodes in the gospels. This does not mean that some of the speech material (parables, discourses, “I Am” sayings, etc.) didn’t appear in the proto-gospel. It is just that the lack of agreement between Mark and John as to what speech material appears in their respective gospels makes it difficult to establish how much goes back to the proto-gospel. Lastly, this study is not an attempt to engage with every major scholar who wrote any significant analysis of any part of any the gospels that is the subject of this study. This is a very long introductory work as is and such critical engagement will have to wait until relevant criticisms are offered.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

(Brown 1997), 111. (Brown 1997), 111. Luke 4:16–30. Luke 5:1–11. Luke 7:36–50. Mark 1:16–20, 6:1–6, 14:3–9. Matthew 12:9–14. Matthew 12:22–32. Matthew 28:1–10. Mark 3:1–6, 3:20–30. (Brown 1997), 117. (Kloppenborg 1987), 72–73. (Goodacre  2002) Luke: 3:15; John 1:19–20. Luke 5:1–11; John 21:1–8. Luke 9:10–17; John 6:1–14. Luke 0:38–42; John 12:1–8. Mark 6:3; Luke 4:22; John 6:42. Luke 19:41; John 12:40. Luke 22:44; John 13:38. Mark  14:30. Luke  22:67. John  10:25.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 33 2 4. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

4 5. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

Luke 23:4, 14, 22; John 18:38, 19:4, 6. (Cribbs  1971) (Cribbs 1971), 450. John  21:20. John  21:24 John  21.23. (Brown R. E. 2003), 40. (Brown R. E. 2003), 40. (Brown R. E. 2003), 40–41. John  20:31. (Wahlde  2010). (Brown R. E. 2003),58–62. (Brown R. E. 2003), 43. (Brown R. E. 2003), 42. (Brown R. E. 2003), 46. (Brown R. E. 2003), 47. (Brown R. E. 2003), 47. (Brown R. E. 2003), 48. (Brown R. E. 2003), 49. See, for example, Mark 10:17–22, 12:28–34. Mark 6:30–43; John 6:1–14. Mark has two versions of the miracle of the loaves. John appears to know the same numbers Mark uses in his first version of the story but there seems to be little verbal agreement in the other details. Mark 6:45–52; John 6:15–21. Mark 1:3; John 1:23. Mark 1:7–8; John 1:26–27; 33; Matthew 3:11–12; Luke 3:16–17. Mark 14:3–9; John 12:1–8. Luke 5:36–50. Mark 2:1–12. John 2:1–14. Mark  6:1–6. John 6:42, 59. John  4:44. Matthew 13:51; Luke 4:24. Luke  4:22. Mark  8:33. John  6:70. John  6:71. John 2:13–17; Mk 11:15–19. Mark 8:22–26. John 5:39–40.

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63. John 3:16. 64. John 6:40. 65. Mark 10:19. 66. Mark 10:21. 67. Mark 12:31. 68. John 5:22. 69. John 8:15. 70. John 9:39. 71. Mark 2:4. 72. John 5:17. 73. John 3:31–33. 74. John 5:24. 75. Mark 2:10. 76. Mark 8:17. 77. Mark 8:33. 78. John 6:26. 79. John 6:68. 80. John 6:70. 81. John 6:52. 82. John 13:31–35. 83. John 2:19. 84. John 2:21. 85. John 11:48. 86. John 11:50. 87. John 11:50–51. 88. Mark 11:15–18. 89. Mark 12:12. 90. John 7:2. 91. John 10:22. 92. John 7:52. 93. Mark 14:3–8; John 12:1–8. 94. Mark 1:14. 95. John: 3:22–24. 96. Luke 3:19. 97. John 2:12. 98. Mark 1:21. 99. Mark 1:22–28. 100. Mark is unclear about this being an exorcism, but Luke 4:32 says Jesus rebuked the fever, indicating that it was an exorcism. 101. John 2:1–11. 102. John  2:9.

The Problem of Mark Versus John | 35 103. John  2:11. 104. Mark 1:29–31. 105. John  4:45. 106. John 4:46–54. 107. John  4:54. 108. John 2:13–14. 109. John  2:19. 110. John  2:21. 111. John  2:23. 112. John  2:21. 113. (The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version 1989).

Bibliography Brown, R. (1997). An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday. Brown, R. E. (2003). An Introduction to the Gospel of John (F. J. Maloney, Ed.). New York: ARBL/ Doubleday. Cribbs, F. L. (1971, December). St. Luke and the Johannine Tradition. Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 90, No. 4, 422–450. Goodacre, M. (2002). The Case Against Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Kloppenborg, J. S. (1987). The Formation of Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Wahlde, U. C. (2010). The Gospel and Letters of John (Vol. 2). Grand Rapids: Wm. B Erdman Publishing Co.

2

A Trail of Breadcrumbs

Among those scholars who believe in some sort of literary relationship between John and the synoptic gospels John 6 plays a central role. Within its short span, it contains an unusually high concentration of scenes that seem to parallel events in either Mark 6 or Mark 8. Front and center stands the John 6:5–24 miracle sequence in which Jesus multiplies five loaves of bread to feed five thousand people and then walks on water almost immediately afterwards, a sequence duplicated in Mark 6:31–54 with many similar details in both sets of stories. While the synoptic gospels display a wide range of miraculous actions by Jesus, John has only seven recognized pre-Passion miracle scenes, and the two with the closest parallels to Mark are these two scenes from John 6.1 In addition to these two miracles, a number of scholars have also proposed other parallels between parts of John 6 and Mark 8:11–33, including a Jewish request for a sign, a discussion about bread, Peter’s declaration about Jesus, and the Passion theme of denial.2 Many scholars also recognize a parallel between John 6:42 and Mark 6:3, in which each gospel depicts a synagogue congregation discussing their knowledge of Jesus’ family and the names of his close relatives.3 While John 6 seems to contain parallels to parts of Mark 6 and Mark 8, these two chapters of Mark also seem to parallel each other. Both Mark 6 and 8 contain stories in which Jesus feeds several thousand people with just a few loaves of

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bread;4 the general public identifies Jesus with either John the Baptist, Elijah, or an ancient prophet;5 and the disciples fail to understand the meaning of the multiplication of the loaves because their “hearts were hardened.”6 In addition, Mark 6:51 appears to describe a widely-ignored parallel to the miraculous calming of the sea storm in Mark 4:35–41. It reads, “Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded.”7 Since the disciples in this second incident “were straining at the oars against an adverse wind”8 it seems reasonable to conclude that Jesus once again calmed a stormy sea. As evidence that this doublet goes unnoticed consider that both Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps & Charts and Tyndale’s Handbook of Bible Charts & Maps, each representing a mainstream traditional Christian religious perspective, have lists of all of Jesus’ miracles in the gospels, and both omit this second version of the calming of the storm.9 Although in each case Mark’s duplicate sets of stories have variations in the descriptive details, it is hard not to see clear thematic parallels. The evidence below will suggest that Mark had at least two different versions of a continuous narrative encompassing several stories that seem to run parallel to the various episodes in John 6. The evidence will also suggest that Mark, editorially concerned with the appearance of duplication, rearranged and redacted much of the material so that his gospel presented a more fluid story that didn’t raise substantial questions about repetitive stories. Because some of the similar stories present significant differences in the details, the two multiplications of the loaves being a good example, Mark appears to have treated the similar stories as independent events rather than duplicates. Pursuant to his editorial alterations, Mark separated parts of the original sequential chain of events from other parts. But evidence left in Mark will allow us to reconnect the pieces and put the events back into their correct order. The parallels between John 6 and parts of Mark as well as the similarities between Mark 6 and Mark 8 are the subject of much discussion and debate over what conclusions can be drawn from this data. A number of scholars refer to Mark 6–8 as “the bread section.” John Meier describes it as a double-cycle of incidents forming a “primitive pattern or grid of stories about Jesus’ mission in Galilee,” many of which, he says, contain the Greek word for bread, artos.10 The first half, he says, runs from Mark 6:30–44 (multiplication of the loaves) and ends with Mark 7:32–37 (the use of saliva to heal a deaf mute); the second half runs from Mark 8:1–10 (multiplication of the loaves) to Mark 8:22–26 (the use of saliva to heal a blind man).11 Meier adds that John incorporates variations on several elements within Mark’s bread section.12

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 39 The most significant portion of the bread section consists of Mark’s two versions of the multiplication of loaves. One depicts the feeding of five thousand people with five loaves of bread and the other describes the feeding of four thousand people with seven loaves of bread. This leads to much debate and disagreement about what conclusions we can draw about Mark’s composition history. Many scholars argue that Mark created the second story out of whole cloth in order to have a separate incident aimed at the gentiles. Other scholars are convinced that Mark knew two different versions of the story. Raymond Brown, one of the leading Johannine scholars, has made some particularly important observations about Mark’s two multiplications of the loaves stories. For one, he says, John’s version of the story shares similarities with elements from both of Mark’s stories.13 (See the discussion below.) He also points out that if you jump from the end of Mark’s first miracle sequence (multiplication of the loaves and walking on water) at Mark 6:52 to the end of Mark’s second multiplication of loaves at Mark 8:10, you have what appears to be a sequential disruption indicating that Mark 6:52 should resume at Mark 8:11, implying, I suggest, that Mark was working from a source that he re-edited. Table 2.1, Raymond Brown’s Alignments Between John 6, Mark, 6 and Mark 8, shows Brown’s verse arrangements.14 (The scene descriptions, verse divisions and alignments are Brown’s.) This sequence, says Brown, gets insufficient attention in the discussions about a John-Synoptic relationship.15 His arrangement shows that the several episodes that make up John 6 have a parallel set of stories in Mark that unfolds in the same exact chronological order. Essential to his arrangement is that Mark 8:14–21 corresponds to the John 6:35–59 Discourse on Bread. Helpful as this observation by Brown may be to my underlying thesis, I will be arguing below that Mark 8:10–13 and 8:14–21 were originally in reverse order and that Mark switched the Table 2.1:  Raymond Brown’s alignments between John 6, Mark, 6 and Mark 8. Adapted from Brown 1996, 268–269 Event Feeding of the 5000 Walking on water Request for a sign Discourse on bread Confession of Peter Passion theme: Denial

John

Mark

6:1–15 6:16–24 6:25–34 6:35–59 6:60–69 6:70–71

6:31–44 6:45–52 8:11–13 8:14–21 8:27–30 8:31–33

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sequence. This would break Brown’s link between John’s Discourse on Bread and Mark 8:14–21. Instead, I will align Mark 8:14–21 with John 6:25–34, in which both describe some special form of bread. My reconstruction, I believe, leads to a better and more secure narrative and chronological fit between Mark and John 6 than does Brown’s arrangement. However, I will also show below a clear indication that Mark has in fact, as Brown suspects, re-edited a literary source that showed approximately the same narrative sequence that Brown outlines in Table 2.1. The one missing piece in Brown’s Mark 8 sequence is 8:22–26, which tells of Jesus healing a blind man through the use of saliva. However, John 9 has a separate story about Jesus healing a blind man with saliva and there is some debate among scholars as to whether the stories of the blind man in Mark and John have some common connection.16 Interestingly, both Luke and Matthew omit this story from their respective gospel accounts, despite using Mark as a primary source. I will explore the connection between these two gospel accounts in substantial detail in Chapter 4. In this chapter I will argue that the coincidences between John 6 and Mark and the sequential order of events are far more extensive than previously recognized. I see three major reasons why several additional connections between John 6 and Mark have gone unrecognized. First, Mark has a number of incidents that display Peter and/or the disciples in a negative fashion, either failing to understand things or misunderstanding things. John appears to have been disturbed by such indications. We will see below that John has taken some of these stories and transferred the negative behavior from the apostles to persons outside of the inner circle and has enhanced Peter’s image from some of the negative portrayals present in Mark. This has effectively hidden some of the connections between similar stories. When we remove this Johannine apostle filter we will see that John relies on some of the same basic stories as Mark. Second, Mark’s apparent use of a double set of similar stories has led him to rearrange sequences and redact content in order to eliminate direct parallels that would make the audience think the stories are duplicates rather than independent events. Several clues in Mark’s gospel, however, will allow us to reassemble the material in their original order and when we are done we will see that Mark and John knew a common narrative order for the parallel events in their respective gospels. Third, John’s use of Johannine imagery in his Discourse on the Bread of Life has led many scholars to overlook the meaning behind the imagery. They tend to focus on what appear to be Eucharistic parallels. I think that attention is

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 41 misdirected. If we look behind the imagery in John’s discourse, we will see that he and Mark have the same message in parallel episodes. When I finish my analysis we will see that Mark and John 6 share a lengthy, mostly unbroken chain of stories that unfold in each gospel in almost identical sequential order. Further, an examination of the ways in which Mark and John differ from each other make it highly unlikely that either one used the other as a source. Therefore, there must have been an independent underlying written source known to both of them, at least for this portion of both gospels. Before proceeding further, I just want to note one other item of importance. I mentioned above a parallel between John 6:42 and Mark 6:3. This connection will be the subject of a complex and difficult discussion in Chapter 5 and will further demonstrate the connection between Mark and John to a common independent written source. In John 6 it appears in the middle of the Discourse on the Bread of Life. To avoid distractions from the main discussion in this chapter I will not discuss that relationship here.

A Road Map Through John 6 and Mark From the discussion above it is evident that we will have to wander down several poorly marked trails in our broad examination of the several literary themes presented by John 6 and related sections of Mark. To simplify the trek, Table 2.2, Scenes Breakdown in John 6 and Mark, provides an organized overview of the material that we will be discussing. Let me explain what it shows. The table is arranged, with one exception, around the order of verses in John 6. The one departure consists of John 6:14–15a, which I have relocated between John 6:59 and 6:60, for reasons that will become apparent later. The entirety of John 6 is then divided into five sequential acts, each with several scenes. For context, I have referenced a key scene from John 5 at the beginning of Act 1, for a total of 33 scenes in all. The five Acts are as follows: Act 1. Act 2. Act 3. Act 4. Act 5.

Prelude The Miracle of the Loaves Crossing the Stormy Sea The Discourse on Bread Who is Jesus?

For simplicity of discussion I will refer to scenes by Act and Scene number for identification. Scene 3b will signify Act 3: Scene b. Similarly, Scene 5a signi-

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Table 2.2:  Scenes breakdown in John 6 and Mark. Source: Author Scene# Scene description ACT 1: Prelude 1a Authorities threatened to kill Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath. 1b Jesus departed (fled?) across the Sea of Galilee. 1c A large crowd greeted him. 1d Jesus had a reputation for healing. 1e Jesus went up on a mountain with his disciples.

John 6

Mark-A

5:1–47

Mark-B 3:1–6

6:1

6:32

3:7

6:2

6:33

3:7

6:2 6:3

Transition: The 6:4 Passover was near. ACT 2: The Miracle of the Loaves 2a Jesus wanted the 6:5–6 disciples to feed a large crowd of people. 2b The cost was estimated 6:7 at over 200 denarii. 2c There were only five 6:9 loaves of bread. 2d There were only two 6:9 fish.

3:8 6:34 Jesus teaches to the “sheep without a shepherd”

3:13–19

6:37

8:3

1f

6:37 6:38 6:38

2e

Jesus fed 5,000 people. 6:10

6:44

2f 2g

Jesus blessed the food. The available food fed the entire crowd. The leftovers filled twelve baskets.

6:11 6:12

6:41 6:42

6:13

6:43

2h

8:5 seven loaves 8:7 “A few small fish.” 8:9 4,000 people 8:6 8:8 8:8 Seven baskets.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 43 Table 2.2:  Continued Scene# Scene description 2i 2j

John 6

Jesus went up on a 6:15b mountain by himself. The disciples got in a 6:16–17 boat without Jesus and sailed off to sea.

ACT 3: Crossing the Stormy Sea 3a The disciples 6:18 encountered a stormy sea. 3b Jesus walked across the 6:19 water and caught up to the boat. 3c The disciples were 6:19 frightened.

3d

Jesus said, “It is I. Do not be afraid.”

3e

A second miracle occurred at sea.

6:20

6:21 The boat magically arrived on shore at the intended destination. ACT 4: The Discourse on Bread 4a Witnesses to the 6:25 miracle of the loaves were astonished by the second miracle at sea. 4b Witnesses to the 6:26 miracle of the loaves were hungry.

Mark-A

Mark-B

6:46 6:45

8:10 Jesus gets in the boat with the disciples.

6:48

4:37

6:48

6:49

6:50

6:51a Jesus calmed the stormy sea

4:38 Frightened that they would perish in the storm. 4:39 Jesus said to the sea, “Peace. Be still.” 4:39 Jesus calmed the stormy sea

6:51b

8:14

Continued 

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Table 2.2:  Continued Scene# Scene description 4c

4d

4e

4f

4g

John 6

Jesus chastised the witnesses to the miracle of the loaves for not understanding what it meant.

6:26 “you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Jesus told the witnesses 6:27 not to seek after “Do not work ordinary bread. for the food that perishes.”

The witnesses didn’t understand the teaching. A crowd asked Jesus for a sign but no sign was provided. Jesus taught the crowd how they can obtain eternal life’

ACT 5: Who is Jesus? 5a Erroneous perception of Jesus as a prophet.

Mark-A

Mark-B

6:52 “for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”

8:17–21 “Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened”

6:28

8:15 “Watch out— beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” 8:16

6:30–34

8:11–13

6:35–59 “I am the bread of life” “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever” “eat the flesh and drink the blood”

8:34–9.1 “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

6:14 The prophet who has come into the world.

6:14–15 John the Baptist; Elijah; Like one of the prophets of old.

8:27–28 John the Baptist; Elijah; One of the prophets;

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 45 Table 2.2:  Continued Scene# Scene description 5b

5c

5d

5e

Erroneous perception of Jesus as an earthly king.

John 6

6:15a “they were about to . . . make him king” Jesus spoke about rising 6:60–65 up. “What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?” Disciples of Jesus 6:66–69 rejected this teaching. Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. Jesus accused a disciple 6:70–71 of being a devil. “One of you is a devil”–Referring to Judas

Mark-A

Mark-B 8:29–30 “You are the messiah.” 8:31–32a “and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

8:32b Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

8:33 “Get behind me Satan”–referring to Peter

fies Act 5: Scene a. Each scene usually involves a single event that can easily be separated from the surrounding actions, although in some instances two contiguous scenes represent both halves of a larger story unit. With the exception of the Passover announcement (Act 1: Scene 4) I will argue that every one of these John 6 scenes has a parallel in Mark and that they follow in almost identical narrative order. What differences we have in the narrative sequence are trivial and will be seen as a deliberate rearrangement for editorial purposes. The two columns titled Mark-A Verses and Mark-B Verses consist of scenes that either exhibit similarities within Mark and/or suggest parallels to John 6. What distinguishes the two sets of verses from each other is that the Mark-A verses all appear in Mark 6 and the Mark-B verses all appear outside of Mark 6. The chief reason for this division is that Mark has several apparent doublets, two versions

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of the same story, at several locations, with one set in Mark-A and the matching set in Mark-B. While scholars recognize some of these doublets and many argue for the existence of two Markan sources, I will argue that the number of Markan doublets exceeds what is currently recognized, adding weight to the argument that Mark had two separate written sources. I should make clear that the use of the terms Mark-A and Mark-B in this discussion is my own invention, devised solely to simplify the discussion and avoid any confusion arising from Mark’s apparent duplications. I should also make clear that while parts of Mark-A and Mark-B overlap the so-called “bread section” they are not identical to it. They exclude some of the bread section material and include other verses from outside of the bread section. The concentration of one set of verses in Mark 6 and the other set outside of Mark 6 could suggest that Mark-A relies on one source and Mark-B on a second source, but I am not making that argument or drawing that conclusion. I will show that Mark did a lot of redacting and rearranging in his text in order to obscure the appearance of duplicate accounts. Therefore, I cannot say which set of stories came from which written source or that all of Mark-A came from one source and all of Mark-B came from another. I merely intend to show that two sets of stories existed. Mark may have integrated parts of each set without regard for which of the two sources a scene came from. Although the acts and scenes follow the Johannine order, this does not mean that John has a better sequence of events than Mark. The evidence will show that both authors have made some minor but insignificant changes to the order of a couple of scenes. However, because the Johannine sequence presents an unbroken chain of events and Mark has some disrupted sequences and duplicate scenes, using the Johannine order instead of Mark’s provides an easier way to keep track of all the correspondences between the two gospels. Column One contains the scene numbers. Column Two contains the scene descriptions. Columns Three through Five contain the verse numbers for where the scenes appear. In some instances, Columns Three through Five also contain some textual material. These entries are intended solely as guides to some of what will be discussed and do not constitute a detailed reference to the subject matter of the scene. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that Act 1/Scene 1a references the entirety of John 5, which the evangelist devotes solely to Jesus’ hostile confrontation with the Jews in Jerusalem over a Sabbath healing. My concern here is not with the content of John 5 but with the broad theme. I want to show what happened in both John and Mark immediately after Jesus is threatened with death for healing

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 47 on the Sabbath. In Chapter 3 I will take a more detailed look at John 5 and its interaction with Mark.

Act I: Prelude (John 5–6:4; Mark-B 3:1–19; Mark-A 6:32–34) I have divided the Prelude into six scenes, as follows. In the analysis below the evidence will show that the first five scenes in John 5–6:3 have a direct parallel to a five-scene sequence in Mark-B 3:1–19. I will also offer evidence that John has removed some scenes from Mark’s sequence of events so that he may better promote his narrative agenda and that Mark-B 3:1–19 includes what appears to be the missing elements. The sixth scene, a Passover announcement, has no parallel in Mark.

1a. 1b. 1c. 1d. 1e. 1f.

Authorities threaten to kill Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus departs (flees?) to the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd greets him. Jesus has a reputation for healing. Jesus and the disciples go up on a mountain. An announcement that Passover was near.

The chief difficulty with this arrangement is that Act I in John leads directly into the story of the multiplication of the loaves but the Mark-B sequence doesn’t. Mark places several events between the end of the Mark-B Prelude and the multiplication of the loaves. This difference, as we shall see below, is more apparent than real. The evidence will show that John also has a narrative gap between Scenes 1e and 1f and this gap is sufficient to incorporate other scenes that may have been omitted or moved by John but that are present in Mark. There is also some evidence that Mark-A 6:32–34 may be a heavily redacted doublet of Mark-B 3:7–19. I will address these issues below.

Scene 1a: The Sabbath Death Threat Scene 1a consists of a threat against Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Mark and John each have very different versions of the Sabbath healing scene and I shall analyze (and reconcile) them in great detail in Chapter 3. In both versions, however, there is a hostile reaction to Jesus healing on the Sabbath. Here, I am not

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concerned with the details of the Sabbath violation but with the hostile threat for healing on the Sabbath. My purpose here is to show what happens in John and Mark immediately after Jesus heals on the Sabbath. There is some argument in Johannine circles that John 5 and John 6 do not represent an original and/or logical chronological relationship. Implicit in my argument is that in the proposed common source known to Mark and John a Sabbath hostility scene appeared immediately before the opening content of John 6:1–3 and what I propose as a Markan parallel at Mark-B 3:7–19. In John 5, Jesus goes to Jerusalem during an unidentified holiday and heals a paralytic on the Sabbath. This leads to arguments and death threats. While the unidentified festival is still in progress, Jesus responds to the accusations made against him. John 5 ends while Jesus still speaks. Suddenly, in John 6:1, we are abruptly transferred to Galilee, without any detail as to what happened when Jesus finished his remarks at the end of John 5. In Mark-B 3:1–6, Jesus gets involved in a similar dispute over healing a man with a withered hand. This incident occurs in Galilee. Mark doesn’t directly tell us where in Galilee the incident occurred but if we trace the narrative back to Mark 2:1, it appears that the incident took place in Capernaum.

Scenes 1b–1e in John 6:1–3 John’s version of these four scenes is very brief, about three sentences in total. He begins Scene 1b with “After this . . .” Presumably “this” refers to the Sabbath conflict in Jerusalem, where we left Jesus hanging in mid-speech. During Scene 1b, Jesus journeys to the “other side of the Sea of Galilee,” but the gospel doesn’t say where he landed. Once he arrived on shore, “A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick.”17 The large crowd that followed Jesus corresponds to Scene 1c and the reputation for healing corresponds to scene 1d. Scene 1e depicts Jesus going up on a mountain and sitting down with his disciples.18 We are told nothing about what Jesus and his disciples did after they seated themselves. John’s four scenes present some problems. To begin with, the crowds claim to have seen the signs (plural) that Jesus had done for the sick. This suggests that Jesus went around Galilee and healed many people. But John has no such prior incident in his gospel. True, John’s Jesus does heal a few people in the course of the gospel but to this point there have only been two identified healings by Jesus, neither very public. And only one of them took place in Galilee. The first healing occurred while he was in Cana and a royal official’s son was sick with fever in Capernaum.19 Jesus cured the child without ever leaving Cana.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 49 It was only circumstantial evidence that led the official to believe that Jesus had been responsible for the cure. It is described as only the second sign that Jesus performed.20 (The first was turning water into wine.21) This is not what one would consider a widely witnessed sign. The second incident took place in Jerusalem, in John 5, when Jesus healed the paralytic on the Sabbath. All Jesus did was tell the man to pick up his mat and walk on. However, as the story unfolds it appears that no one actually witnessed the event other than Jesus and the invalid. Jesus’ connection only came out later, when people asked the man why he was carrying a mat on the Sabbath. I suppose one could technically argue that this is enough to indicate that the people were at least familiar with, if not direct witnesses to, more than one healing by Jesus. But the phrasing suggests that something happened either prior to or during the Prelude that resulted in a wide-spread reputation for healing and that the details have been deleted for some reason. Second, if the crowds appeared because of Jesus’ reputation for healing we should expect there to be requests for Jesus to heal people. John has no such request in either of these two scenes. A third difficulty arises from the opening words, “After this,” giving the impression that the journey to the Sea of Galilee happened right after the departure from Jerusalem. This would make sense since Jesus would have been in a hurry to leave in the face of death threats from the authorities. So, why do we need to know that sometime after leaving the festival in Jerusalem and sometime before the later Passover festival Jesus sat on a mountain with his disciples by the Sea of Galilee? It has no connection to either what precedes or what follows the mountain sojourn and tells us nothing that moves the story in any direction. Given these problems it would seem to have been made more sense for John to have simply jumped from the unidentified festival at the end of John 5 to John 6:4 and tell us that Passover was near and Jesus was by the Sea of Galilee. But he didn’t and this suggests to me that something is missing from this narrative arc, that some details have been omitted. I will show that the missing details can be found in Mark’s version of these same stories. If I am correct it suggests that John worked from a written source. Otherwise, why would he include such a pointless story about Jesus sitting on the mountain?

Scenes 1b–1e in Mark-B 3:7–19 Mark-B’s Scene 1b begins immediately after the gospel tells us that after the Sabbath healing “the Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”22 It opens with “Jesus departed with

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his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him.”23 The verse combines Scenes 1b and 1c. I italicized the second part of the verse to separate 1b from 1c. The crowds came from many regions because they were “hearing all that he was doing.”24 As the story includes numerous exorcisms, the context suggests that the reputation was for healing many people.25 The reputation for healing constitutes Scene 1d. As in John, we are not told where on the Sea of Galilee shore Jesus went, but he is no longer in Capernaum (or wherever the Sabbath conflict occurred). Mark’s Scene 1e tells us that Jesus went up on a mountain and called his disciples to join him.26 While on the mountain, Jesus appointed the twelve apostles and the scene ends with a list of those whom he appointed. A comparison between John 6:1–3 and Mark 3:7–19 shows the following parallels.

• Immediately after being threatened with death for violating the Sabbath, Jesus and his disciples took a trip (fled?) to the Sea of Galilee. • They arrived at an undisclosed location. • Jesus was recognized by a large crowd familiar with his reputation for healing. • Jesus and the disciples go up on a mountain.

John and Mark have the same identical sequence of events, but Mark’s gospel has additional details, and they seem to be the sort of details that John would choose to omit if he knew of them. Luke, on the other hand, has omitted the journey to Sea of Galilee and switched the order of the mountain and healing scenes.27 This means that John more closely follows Mark’s sequential order than does Luke. First, there is the matter of a reputation for many healings. In Mark, Jesus had previously gone on a healing mission to the masses, a mission that involved exorcisms.28 Additionally, in Mark’s previous scene Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath in front of many witnesses. So, it makes sense in Mark that Jesus had a reputation for many healings that would draw crowds. Since John omitted exorcisms from his gospel, he would have omitted the story of a healing mission that featured exorcisms if such appeared in his source material. John’s use of “signs” would suggest that the word was in his underlying source and that he dropped the exorcisms from the story but retained the reputation for healing that Jesus had for doing the exorcisms. Consistent with that view, the author of John acknowledges that he has omitted many “signs” that Jesus performed.29 Mark’s narrative also meets our expectation that the crowd would want Jesus to heal people. That, presumably, is why they all followed after him. They expected to see healings, either of themselves or family members or friends. And

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 51 Mark’s Jesus doesn’t disappoint. As the crowds press up on him, he conducts numerous exorcisms.30 This would explain why John didn’t address the issue of the crowd expecting to see healings. Mass healings involve exorcisms and John doesn’t depict exorcisms. So, if we account for John’s bias against portraying exorcisms, we can understand why his account of the crowd’s behavior is briefer than Mark’s. Lastly, we come to John’s pointless trip up the mountain to sit down with the disciples in Scene 1e. Mark’s Scene 1e appears to fill in the details. After Jesus’ engagement with the crowd, he went up on the mountain and called up twelve of his disciples to be with him and to become his apostles. Mark then names all twelve apostles. Although John’s gospel acknowledges the existence of the twelve apostles,31 he tends to significantly downplay their role, talking mostly about an undefined number of disciples in general rather than apostles in particular. In fact, John is the only gospel that has no scene in which Jesus selects and appoints the twelve apostles and it is the only gospel that doesn’t even name all twelve apostles in the course of the entire narrative. The strong detailed five-scene alignment between John 5–6:3 and Mark 6:1– 19 suggests that John knew a version of Mark’s story about the appointment of the twelve apostles and deliberately excluded it from his own account. That is why his scene lacks any point. He has eliminated the substance. In Chapter 6 I will offer some evidence that John had some animus towards the brothers John and James, two of the most important disciples in Mark’s gospel. John never mentions either of them by their given names and this possible animus may account for why he has omitted the list of disciple names. In my later reconstruction of the proposed common source I will include both scenes omitted by John, the mass healing through exorcisms and the call of the twelve apostles.

Scene 1f in John 6:4: The Passover Notice Perhaps the biggest inconsistency between John and Mark concerning the Prelude is that in John the Prelude leads directly into the story about the multiplication of loaves and in Mark there is a substantial narrative gap between the first five scenes in Mark-B and the beginning of the story of the multiplication of the loaves. However, a closer look at John’s Scene 1f shows that a similar gap may be present in John. John’s Scene 1f consists simply of an announcement that the Passover was near. Mark has no such notice. John 5, on the other hand says Jesus was in

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J­erusalem during an unidentified festival. The last holiday prior to Passover is Dedication (i.e., Hanukkah). This occurs approximately three months before Passover. Between the end of John 5, therefore, and the announcement of the coming Passover in John 6:4 we have at least a three-month time frame with almost no substantive detail. The only events that occur in this interval are the trip to Galilee and a climb up the mountain, which takes up only a few days at most. This leaves open the possibility that John knew additional scenes from the Markan sequence between the end of Scene 1e and the start of Scene 2a and either deleted or moved them. Mark ends Scene 1e at Mark 3:19. I will argue in Chapter 4 that John moved parallels to scenes in Mark 3:20–35 out of order and into a later position at John 8:31–59. In Chapter 5 I will also argue that John has also moved and distributed pieces of Mark 6:1–6, which fall into the Markan sequence leading up to Scene 2a, into multiple other locations within his gospel narrative. Turning back to the substance of Scene 1f, John used the Passover announcement as a way to move from the Prelude to the multiplication of the loaves miracle. John has clearly framed the subsequent narrative against the Passover story background. The multiplication of the loaves in John not only recalls Moses bringing forth the manna from heaven that miraculously fed the Israelites during the wandering in the wilderness, but the Moses story serves as a springboard for John’s later discourse on the Bread of Life. There the crowd directly references Moses and the manna. Additionally, the walking across the windswept sea would recall the perilous crossing of the Red Sea where winds divided the waters. John, as he does elsewhere, tends to use holiday festivals as a thematic background to his major teachings. The issue here is whether John added the notice or Mark removed it. Mark has a tendency to avoid holiday references and John has a tendency to introduce them. Omitting the Passover reference leads to the impression of a much shorter mission. Inserting the Passover note leads to a one-year extension of the mission. Mark opts for portraying a short mission and John opts for showing a long mission. So, each had motives to make the change. In the absence of more evidence, we lack a persuasive resolution.

Scenes 1b and 1d in Mark-A 6:32–34 Mark has two versions of the multiplication of the loaves, so it is not out of the question that he may have had two versions of events leading up to each account. In considering the possibility that Mark had a doublet of the Prelude, we should

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 53 look to see what Mark says happened just before his first story about the multiplication of the loaves. The answer is at Mark-A 6:32–34. Once again, Jesus and his disciples board a boat and sail to an undisclosed location, described only as a deserted place.32 When crowds saw them leave they hurried to get to his location before he arrived.33 When Jesus arrived on shore, a great crowd greeted him.34 Jesus felt compassion for them because they seemed “like sheep without a shepherd” and he began to teach.35 As evening comes we move into the multiplication of the loaves story. There is at least some scholarly recognition that Mark-A 6:32–34 parallels John 6:1–3. Aland, in his Synopsis of the Four Gospels, aligns the two sections across from each other, showing some agreement in detail.36 Not everyone accepts this arrangement. Dewey and Miller, for example, omit the parallel in their own synoptic study.37 The more common approach is to simply meld Mark-A 6:32–34 into Mark-A 6:35–44 and to attach John 6:1–4 to John 6:5–14, and refer to both integrated sets as the “feeding of the five thousand.” Any connection to Mark-B 3:7–19, however, is ignored. I should point out that Mark-A lacks the precise parallel that exists between Mark-B and John. On the surface it appears to include only Scene 1b (the sea journey) and 1c (the crowd that greeted Jesus). It omits scenes 1a (the Sabbath conflict), 1d (the reputation for healing) and 1e (going up on a mountain with the disciples). But there appear to be some overlooked parallels to those scenes. First, Mark-A like John 6:1 depicts Jesus actually sailing across the sea while Mark-B only says Jesus went to the sea without indicating whether they sailed onto the sea. Although Mark-A doesn’t specifically mention that the welcoming crowd knew Jesus’ reputation for healing, that reputation had already been established earlier in the Mark-B version of Scene 1b. Additionally, the Mark-A Scene 1b takes place immediately after the disciples return from a healing mission.38 So the context suggests that the crowd followed after Jesus because of his reputation for healing. Interestingly, both Luke 9:11 and Matthew 14:14, despite Mark’s lack of specificity, indicate in their versions of Mark-A 6:32–34 that Jesus healed the sick. So the idea that Jesus healed prior to the multiplication of the loaves seems to have been a strong tradition if it followed its way into Matthew independently of Mark. Second, Mark-A does add one additional interesting feature to the mix. Jesus looks at the crowd that followed him and describes them as “sheep without a shepherd.”39 So he began to teach them “many things.”40 Since we can assume that when Jesus went up on the mountain with the disciples he taught them some lessons, this teaching of other followers does appear to be a very good substitute

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for Scene 1e. In fact, Mark only uses the term “sheep” twice in his gospel; in this scene and in a later scene where he applies it to the twelve apostles.41 These coincidences suggest that Mark 6:32–34 and Mark 3:7–19 are doublets for scenes 1b–1e. If that were the case, then Mark would have had substantial motivation to redact at least one of the sets and move the other to a different location. As Mark has need for only one Sabbath death threat story and only one trip up the mountain to appoint the twelve apostles, he would not want to repeat such similar stories again as part of a second version of the Prelude. To eliminate the appearance of duplication, Mark may have substituted the teaching of these “sheep” for the teaching of the apostles/sheep on the mountain. Mark-A and John share the following sequential and contiguous features.



• • • •

A trip across the sea of Galilee; Arrival at an unidentified location; Crowds recognizing who Jesus was and following after him; A reputation for healing: explicitly stated in John; implicit in Mark-B based on the immediately preceding healing scene and the act of healing in the course of the scene; and implicit in Mark-A based on the earlier Mark-B reputation, the immediately preceding healing mission by the apostles, and that Luke and Matthew show Jesus healing in their versions of the same scene. • A possible teaching scene: explicitly to the crowd in Mark-A and implicitly to the disciples on the mountain in John and Mark-B; • Multiplication of the loaves.

Regardless of the status of Mark-A 6:32–34 as a doublet, the Preludes in Mark-B 3:9–17 and John 6:1–3 both allow for a chronological jump between Scenes 1e and 2a, with other events in between. My own predilection is to see Mark-A 6:32–34 as a doublet. In such a case, we have to assume that Mark has redacted some material from the Mark-A prelude in order to avoid the appearance of duplicate stories.

Act 1 Summary With the caveat that the content of Mark’s Sabbath violation story differs from the content of John’s Sabbath violation story, Mark-B 3:1–19 appears to be a precise five-scene parallel to John 5–6:3. John’s versions of Scenes 1b–1e hint at missing content. Mark-B has additional material not present in John 6:1–3 and it appears to be the sort of material that John would have redacted from his source. Reading Mark-B 3:7–19 and John 6:1–3 together suggests a very convincing fit.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 55 Although Mark has additional stories between the end of Scene 1e and the beginning of Scene 2b, the analysis above showed that John also has a chronological break between those same scenes into which other scenes could have been originally present in a source and omitted or moved by John. At the same time, Mark-A 6:32–33, may be a redacted version of the Mark-B Prelude, with much duplicative material omitted. And the Mark-A Prelude does lead into the multiplication of the loaves story in a manner similar to the way John unfolds. This suggests that the Mark-B Prelude together with the Mark-A multiplication of the loaves story, which parallels the story order of John 6, represents an original order of stories known to both Mark and John. The original sequence of events in the proposed common source would have had the following order.

• • • • • • • • •

Death threat for Sabbath healing violation; Going (fleeing?) to an unidentified location on the Sea of Galilee; Jesus greeted by a large crowd. The large crowd knew of Jesus’ reputation for healing. Multiple healings through exorcism; Going up on a mountain with the disciples; Appointing the twelve apostles; [Possible insertion of other stories]; The multiplication of the loaves.

John omitted the exorcisms, healing missions and the call of the apostles. Mark, possibly working from at least two sources, may have rearranged and redacted passages to avoid the appearance of obvious duplications. The teaching episode in Mark-A may be a substitution for the call of the apostles in Mark-B.

Act 2: The Miracle of the Loaves (John 6:5–13, 15b–17; Mark-A 6:35–46; Mark-B 8:1–9) I have divided Act 2 into ten scenes. Five of them deal with numerical details in the story of the miracle of the loaves. I treat each of the details as points of contact because Mark-A and John agree on each of the five but Mark-B disagrees on all five. The ten scenes are as follows.

2a. Jesus wants the disciples to feed a large crowd. 2b. The cost is estimated at over 200 denarii. 2c. There are only five loaves of bread available.

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2d. 2e. 2f. 2g. 2h. 2i. 2j.

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There are only two fish available. The crowd is estimated at 5,000 people. Jesus blessed the food. The small amount of food fed the entire crowd. There were leftovers that filled twelve baskets. After the meal Jesus went up on a mountain by himself. The disciples got in a boat without Jesus and headed out to sea.

In the above sequence, Scenes 2a–2h deal directly with the miracle of the loaves and the last two scenes, 2i–2j, act as a transition to Act 3, the miracles at Sea. There is one trivial disagreement on the sequence of scenes in 2a–2h. Mark-A places the size of the crowd at the end of the feeding story and John puts it in the middle. Luke’s version of the story (9:10–17) follows John’s sequential order of events and, therefore, I will accept the John-Luke arrangement as the correct sequential order for the underlying story. Scenes 2i and 2j are closely linked and function as a transition from the miracle of the loaves to the miracle of walking on the water. Mark and John unfold these two scenes in reverse order from each other. Luke omits both of them as well as the walking on water scene, so he can’t help us resolve the disagreement. Although Table 2.2 follows John’s order of events as to the narrative sequence, that is only for convenience in looking at the stories. Based on the analysis below, it appears to me that John has manipulated the text in order to create a different setting for Acts 3 and 4. Therefore, for these two scenes I accept Mark’s order of events and in the concluding reconstruction of the proposed common source I will follow Mark’s order as to these two scenes. Nevertheless, the two scenes are each half of the same brief narrative arc so, even though I think John manipulated the evidence, the sequential disagreement is of no significance. Both Mark and John are working from what appears to be the same underlying narrative.

Scenes 2a–2h: The Multiplication of the Loaves In the following analysis I will treat the eight scenes making up the miracle of the loaves as a single unit. Mark has two different versions of the same story, Mark-A 6:34–44 and Mark-B 8:1–9. John has only one multiplication of the loaves episode, John 6:5–14. While Matthew casually follows Mark in reporting two different multiplications of the loaves,42 Luke agrees with John in presenting a single incident, and the one he preserves corresponds to both Mark-A and John.43 While Mark, Luke and John all follow the same broad storyline they exhibit several variations in detail.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 57 Mark-A 6:35–44 and John 6:5–14 share several numerical details that suggest that the two authors know some common information about this event. Luke uses only the version that has the same set of numbers as Mark-A and John. These include, the number of people (5000), the number of loaves (5), the number of fish (2), the number of baskets (12), and the financial value of the food needed to feed the crowd (200 denarii). Luke omits the financial value. It is certainly possible that these agreements could arise from an isolated but well-known story that had wide circulation. In and of themselves, they don’t necessarily require that Mark-A and John share a common written source. That claim requires a longer and more substantial set of agreements that can’t be simply explained away by coincidence. Mark-B 8:1–9, however, disagrees with Mark-A and John 6:5–13 on every one of these numerical details. Table 2.3, Numerical data for the miracle of the loaves, shows the numbers present in each of the three stories. While the numerical agreements between John and Mark-A and the numerical differences between Mark-A and Mark-B are striking, several scholars have suggested that some of John’s non-numerical details find closer agreement with Mark-B than with Mark-A. For example, in Mark-A, Jesus tells the disciples to get food for the crowd;44 John 6 and Mark-B have no such directive. In Mark-A, Jesus takes up five loaves and two fish and blesses them together;45 In Mark-B and John 6, Jesus initially takes only the loaves and gives thanks; the fish are dealt with separately.46 In Mark-B and John 6 a question is raised as to where to get the bread from but in Mark-A the disciples appear to believe that they could go out and buy some bread.47 Mark-A mentions sitting down on “the green grass;”48 neither Mark-B nor John 6 mention the color of the turf. As you might suspect, these sorts of inconsistencies raise a host of questions. Did John know both versions of Mark’s multiplication of the loaves and borrow from both and, if so, did he get them from Mark or from some other sources? Did Mark know two different versions of the story or did he invent the second story Table 2.3:  Numerical data for the miracle of the loaves Item

John

Mark-A

Mark-B

People Loaves Fish Baskets Value

5000 5 2 12 200 denarii

5000 5 2 12 200 Denarii

4000 7 A few 7 omitted

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for theological purposes?49 If he knew two different versions, did he think they were independent events or variations on the same story? How many versions of this story were floating around? Despite the differences in each of the three versions, they all share a basic template.

• The site location is unknown. • There is a discussion about how to feed the crowd. • There is a revelation as to the presence of only a small number of loaves and fish. • A crowd of several thousand people is told to sit. • The food is blessed. • The small amount of food fed everybody. • There were leftovers. • The leftovers were gathered up in several baskets. • Shortly after the feeding, Jesus and the disciples cross the sea to a new location.

It is within the narrative overlay onto the template that small details vary from one story to the next. For example, each of the three versions raises the issue of obtaining the bread. In Mark-A, Jesus directs the disciples to feed the crowd and the disciples asked if they were supposed to go out somewhere and buy the bread.50 In Mark-B, Jesus says he wants to feed the crowd, and the disciples respond, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?”51 In John, Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?”52 John then adds a gloss saying that Jesus was just testing Philip because he [Jesus] already knew what he was going to do.53 Such variations may reflect some underlying concerns about what the disciples may have understood about Jesus’ powers, but they don’t significantly alter the nature of the story. A somewhat more problematic issue concerns the numerical differences between Mark-A and Mark-B. While they both follow the template structure, the two stories have different sets of numbers, suggesting inconsistent underlying sources. Did Mark make up the Mark-B version out of whole cloth or did he have a source for the different story numbers? In either case, why did he have two versions of the story with such significant variations. It is often thought that the specific numbers used in the two versions of Mark may have different symbolic references. For example: twelve baskets could be a reference to the twelve tribes of Israel; seven loaves could be a reference to the seven branches of the menorah created at the direction of Moses;54 five loaves could reference the Five Books of Moses. Much scholarly speculation goes into figuring out what the numeric symbols may mean but no general consensus has emerged.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 59 It is commonly argued that the Mark-A version presents a miracle for the Jews and the Mark-B version for the gentiles. Some scholars see the difference in numbers between the two versions as somehow symbolically reflecting those differences. Perhaps the chief reason for associating Mark’s second bread story with the gentiles rests on the location of the preceding incident in Mark, the healing of a deaf man in the Decapolis. The case for a separate gentile story strikes me as weak. The name “Decapolis” is Greek and refers to a league of cities in Galilee that may have had a large percentage of gentile residents. It is generally assumed that this second multiplication of the loaves took place in the Decapolis and that is the basis of the gentile connection to Mark-B. But Mark-B doesn’t say where the second multiplication of the loaves took place. It opens with: “In those days when there was again a great crowd without any­ thing to eat.”55 This introduction chronologically isolates the following narrative from what precedes it. It is vague as to when the story took place other than after the first multiplication of the loaves. There is no specific narrative link between it and the story that precedes it. Furthermore, Luke is the most aggressively pro-gentile of all four evangelists. Yet he omits this supposedly gentile version of the bread miracle. If he didn’t see such a connection, perhaps it never existed. So, I tend to reject any explanations that see Mark-B as a gentile-oriented narrative. It is my position here that Mark-A and Mark-B belong to two separate versions of the story cycle reflected in John 6. That John’s version appears to overlay parts of both Mark stories may reflect that John’s details from both Mark-A and Mark-B results from all those mutual details being present in the proposed common source version of the story, with Mark redacting different portions out of each of his versions of the incident. Nevertheless, Mark’s second set of numbers also indicate multiple versions of the story may have been floating around. The differences between Mark’s two stories may have led him to believe they were separate incidents and that he had to make some changes to avoid the appearance of duplication.

Scenes 2i and 2j: Transition to Jesus Walking on Water Scenes 2i and 2j are closely linked and form a bridge to Act 3, “Crossing the Stormy Sea.” Versions of both scenes appear in John 6:15b–17 and Mark-A 6:45– 46, but Mark-A presents the two scenes in reverse order from John. The essential features of both scenes are that Jesus goes up on a mountain and the disciples set

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out to sea without him. Despite the brevity there is some variation between the two versions, caused in large part by what I believe were textual alterations by John. I’ll explain below. In Mark-A 6:45–46, immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, Jesus tells the disciples to sail out to sea and directs them to Bethsaida.56 Jesus then dismisses the crowd and goes up on a mountain to pray.57 This serves as a prelude to Jesus walking on the water and catching up with the disciples who had set sail earlier. In John 6:14–17, immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, the crowd that witnessed the miracle declares Jesus to be a prophet and tries to force him to be their king.58 To avoid the crowd Jesus goes up on a mountain.59 That evening, while Jesus is on the mountain, the disciples on their own initiative set sail across the sea without Jesus and head out to Capernaum.60 During the darkness Jesus sets out on foot across the sea. In Mark-A and John 6 these two scenes serve as a bridge between Jesus multiplying the loaves and walking on water. The fact that the scenes appear in reverse order in the two gospels is of trivial concern. At the core, Jesus goes on a mountain and the disciples sail off without him. Given their essential similarity they both appear to be part of a larger connected narrative that links the two surrounding miracles. Yet there are some strange departures for such a brief segment of the story. The most significant difference concerns the reason why Jesus went up on the mountain. Mark says he went to pray; John says Jesus tried to escape the crowd’s efforts to make him king. What makes this variation interesting is that while Mark depicts Jesus praying on several occasions,61 John’s Jesus doesn’t generally engage in that practice. John does reference prayer in the gospel and in John 17, shortly before Jesus’ arrest, John does show Jesus engaged in prayer on behalf of the disciples. But this is much more than a simple prayer scene. The lengthy prayer involves a major theological exploration of Jesus’ role. Elsewhere in John, Jesus doesn’t seem to pray in the casual manner that Mark depicts in this scene and elsewhere. This raises the question of whether John changed the underlying scene from one in which Jesus prays or Mark changed it to one where the crowd does not try to make Jesus king. A case can be made either way, but I think John made the change. Mark’s gospel promotes the theme that no human knew who Jesus really was until after his death. Mark carefully avoids having Jesus tell the public who he is and the public never truly identifies who Jesus is. The closest the public

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 61 at large comes to identifying Jesus, outside of the “Who is Jesus?” unit in Act 5, discussed below, is to call him the Son of David.62 This implies a belief that Jesus should be a king, but the speaker doesn’t explicitly say he is a king. Mark never depicts the crowd trying to force Jesus to be a king, and this may reflect an attempt by Mark to show that Pilate had no grounds for crucifying Jesus for claiming to be a king. So, it could be argued that Mark might have removed the reference to the crowd trying to make Jesus king and he substituted prayer as the reason why he went up on the mountain. On the other hand, I see a couple of problems with John’s account that suggest that the case for John making the change is stronger. First, in Mark, Jesus directs the disciples to leave by boat without him; in John, the disciples leave by boat on their own, without first interacting with Jesus. And, according to John, they took the only boat that was available, leaving Jesus on shore.63 Why would the disciples arbitrarily on their own head out to sea, on the only available boat, without Jesus on board or without first checking with him about leaving? Shouldn’t we expect them to wait for him to come down from the mountain? Mark provides an explanation for their departure; John doesn’t. Second, why would Jesus go up on the mountain in the first place? The explanation given is that he is trying to avoid the crowd’s effort to make him king. But on several occasions, crowds are unable to contain Jesus as they try to grab him. He just melts through them.64 Additionally, as depicted in the “walking on water” scene (see below), John portrays Jesus as having the power to teleport himself and his disciples anywhere he wants.65 He could have simply teleported himself (and the disciples) from wherever they were to wherever he wanted to go (as he does just a few verses later). Third, and very persuasive to me, is that John, as I explain below, has drafted this scene and the following “walking on water” scene in a manner designed to create mystery as to how Jesus arrived on the other shore. Several of John’s miraculous displays are done in a manner where he is not directly observed as the proximate cause of a miracle but rather as present when the miracle occurs, leaving observers (including his disciples) to assume (or not recognize) that Jesus was the responsible agent. This is consistent with John’s choice not to depict exorcisms, a direct public display of Jesus’s powers. Another reason that I think John has altered the text is that thematically it deals with how Jesus is perceived by others. They want to make him king. The identification of Jesus as a king, as we will see below, seems to belong with the events of Act 5, where the identification of Jesus as a king plays an important role in Mark’s narrative. John, as we will see, has made significant alterations to Act

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5. For these reasons, I have relocated John 6:14–15a from its present location to Act 5, where I think it belongs. This leaves John going up the mountain but with no explanation of why. In Mark, the explanation is that he went there to pray. As I pointed out above, John tends to downplay the idea that Jesus prays. John may have moved the crowd scene from Act 5 to this location precisely to have an explanation for Jesus going up on a mountain without having to show him as praying. Mark-B, in its present form, has radically altered the follow-up to the bread miracle and departs from both Mark-A and John. It shows no trip up the mountain and has Jesus and the disciples leaving together by boat. It also appears to eliminate all of Act 3. These variations, as I will show later, are the result of a number of editorial revisions Mark has made to his source material, including a reordering of some of the scenes. I’ll discuss those changes further below.

Act 2 Summary The main event in Act 2 is the multiplication of loaves in Scene 2a–2h. Mark has two different versions of the story and John has one. John agrees with the numerical details in the Mark-A version but leans closer to Mark-B’s non-numerical details. This may indicate that John’s overlapping details in both Mark-A and Mark-B were all present in the proposed common source version of the story. Mark’s different set of numbers also suggests multiple versions of the story were in circulation. Despite the differences in all three versions they share a common template that shows a basic underlying story. Scenes 2i and 2j form a bridge between the miracle of the loaves and the walking on water miracle in Act 3. These two scenes consist of Jesus going up on a mountain and the disciples sailing off to sea without Jesus on board. But Mark and John present the two scenes in reverse order from each other. For reasons given above I believe Mark has the better order. Mark also says Jesus went up on the mountain in order to pray. John avoids scenes in which Jesus engages in casual prayer. I suggested that John has transferred material from Act 5 to Scene 2b in order to provide an alternative explanation for Mark’s version of why Jesus went up on the mountain.

Act 3: Crossing the Stormy Sea (John 6:18–24; Mark-A 6:47–51b; Mark-B 4:35–41) I have divided Act 3 into five scenes. Act 3 describes the crossing of the Sea of Galilee after Jesus multiplied the loaves. I had a difficult time deciding where

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 63 to separate Act 3 from Act 4. In Mark, pursuant to my analysis below, the first five scenes in Act 4 take place during the sea crossing but in John the parallel scenes take place on land. Since both gospels place a teaching about bread in those five scenes and John incorporates that setup into his subsequent Discourse on Bread, I have opted to place them within Act 4. The five scenes appear in the following order.

3a. 3b. 3c. 3d. 3e.

The disciples encounter a stormy sea. Jesus walks across the water and catches up to the boat. The disciples were frightened by the sight of Jesus. Jesus said, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” A second miracle occurs after Jesus walks on water.

Scenes 3a–3d depict Jesus walking on water and how the disciples react to that sight. Both John and Mark-A have fairly similar versions with only minor differences. Scene 3e describes a second miracle at sea but here John and Mark-A have no features in common. In Mark-A Jesus gets on the boat and calms the stormy sea. In John, Jesus doesn’t get on the boat but teleports himself, the boat and the disciples to the intended shore destination. Scene 3e ends with the completion of the second miracle at sea. I place the reaction to the miracle at the start of Act 4. In Mark the disciples react to the miracle while on the boat. In John the reaction takes place among non-disciples while on land. Just as the miracle of the loaves should invoke in the reader’s mind the Exodus account of the ever-present manna from heaven, the crossing of the stormy sea should bring to mind the Exodus account of the crossing of the Red Sea. In Exodus, when the Israelites stood before the sea, the Pharaoh’s army practically breathing down their necks, Moses lifted his hand and God sent a wind to divide the sea and enable the Israelites to cross over to the other side.66 After Israel crossed, the Egyptians entered the same divide. Moses raised his arm again and God closed the sea over the Egyptian army.67 The sea then returned to its normal state.68 Act 3 presents a variation on this Exodus scenario: Jesus miraculously walks across (rather than through a division in) a stormy sea followed by the miraculous calming of the storm. The gospel accounts have simply upgraded Jesus’ Moses imagery by eliminating the need to first divide the sea before crossing. Mark-B, in its current arrangement, appears to have no Act 3. It doesn’t show Jesus walking on water nor does it present a second miracle at sea. Following the Mark-B miracle of the loaves, Jesus simply gets in the boat with the disciples and crosses the sea. No miracles take place. So Mark-B appears to have reduced Act 3

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to nothing more than an ordinary sea voyage with nothing of note happening. In that regard, Mark-A and John agree with each other against Mark-B as to what happened after the miracle of the loaves. On the other hand, while Mark has no obvious second version of the walking on water scene, he does have a more extensive second account of Jesus calming a stormy sea. But he places it well before either of his bread miracles. I will argue below that Mark moved the story from its original location in order to avoid the appearance of duplicate versions of the same story sequence.

Scenes 3a–3d: Jesus Walks on Water (John 6:18–20; Mark-A 6:47–50) Although there are some differences between John and Mark in the story of Jesus walking on water, the two share several common features.

• • • • • •

It was dark when the disciples set out to sea. There was a strong wind blowing. The disciples saw Jesus walking on the water. The disciples were terrified when they saw Jesus. Jesus told them not to be frightened. Jesus came towards the boat.

The above set of events constitutes the basic core of the story. Implicit in both stories is that Jesus moved at a very rapid pace that enabled him to catch up with the disciples on sea despite their lengthy head start, and that the winds didn’t slow him down. The sequence ends when Jesus approaches the boat, at which point the two narratives diverge in a significant manner. Mark-A adds the following additional elements not present in John.

• • • •

Jesus watched the disciples straining against the wind. He went towards them early in the morning. He intended to pass them by. When the disciples saw Jesus on the water, they thought he was a ghost.

Perhaps the only unusual feature added to this part of the story is the allegation that Jesus intended to pass them by but that he changed his mind when he saw how frightened the disciples were. John also includes some details missing from Mark. He says that the disciples were about three to four miles out at sea when they first saw Jesus. And he also adds a somewhat odd claim. “It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.”69 The language suggests that the disci-

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 65 ples were expecting him to meet them while they were on the sea. Yet they were terrified when they saw him. Furthermore, there is no prior indication in John that Jesus told the disciples that they should expect him to join them on the boat after they set sail. In Mark, Jesus intended to pass them by rather than meet up with them, and that was after Jesus told them to sail off without him. While it could be argued that the disciples, still unaware of Jesus’ powers, assumed he would follow after them on a different and faster boat, John specifically points out that the boat used by the disciples was the only one available.70 John seems a little confused about why and how the disciples would have expected Jesus to catch up to them while they were still at sea. At the end of Scene 3c in Mark-A, Jesus tells the frightened disciples, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”71 Jesus then heads towards the boat. In John, Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.”72 The two statements are virtually identical. In both gospels the disciples then try to take Jesus into the boat. It is at this point that the two gospels diverge. Although there are some differences between John and Mark-A as to the story details in Scene 3a–3d, they seem rather trivial, little more than editorial differences in how to tell the same story. Both versions place the walking on water almost immediately after the miracle of the loaves and share a common transition between the two miracles. This suggests both authors had knowledge of a common narrative account.

Scene 3e: A Second Miracle at Sea (John 6:21–24; Mark-A 6:51a) Immediately after the end of Scene 3d, Mark-A 6:51–52 says Jesus “got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened [emphasis added].”73 In my analysis below I will argue that this passage combines Scenes 3e, 4a, and 4c. The non-italicized portion corresponds to Scene 3e and the italicized portion belongs to Scenes 4a and 4c. For our purposes, Scene 3e ends with Jesus getting into the boat and stopping the wind. I will discuss the italicized portion when we turn to Act 4. In John’s account of this scene, as the disciples try to take Jesus aboard the boat, they and the boat are suddenly teleported to the shore of Capernaum.74 Jesus, however, never gets into the boat. The next morning those who were on the shore where Jesus had multiplied the loaves saw that Jesus was gone and they were

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puzzled. There had only been one boat on shore the night before and they saw the disciples leave on it without Jesus.75 Where did he go? As they puzzled this out some boats came by and they hopped on board to get to Capernaum and look for Jesus.76 This ends Scene 3e in John. John has constructed Act 3 so that Jesus’ arrival on the other side of the sea would appear as a miracle. In John’s Scene 3a the disciples left in the only boat around. In Scene 3e Jesus never gets in the boat with the disciples and sends the boat with the disciples to shore without him. The witnesses who saw the disciples leave without Jesus take boats that arrive later and don’t see Jesus as they go to Capernaum. Jesus appears in Capernaum without benefit of any boat. How did he get there? Something miraculous must have occurred. So, we shouldn’t be surprised at the beginning of Scene 4a when the witnesses to the bread miracle who followed after Jesus were astounded to see him there. “Rabbi, when did you come here?”77 While John has a significantly different second miracle at sea from Mark, in both case, as we shall see in the discussion of scene 4a, the second miracle at sea in Mark and John serves as a pretext for witnesses to the multiplication of the loaves to be astonished because they didn’t understand the miracle of the loaves. For reasons discussed below, I think John deliberately altered the miracle scene in order to obscure the image of the disciples as uncomprehending of what Jesus had to say.

Scene 3e: Calming the Storm in Mark-B 4:35–41 Mark-B 4:35–41 presents that gospel’s earlier version of Jesus calming the stormy sea. It is this episode that everyone refers to when they talk about Jesus calming the stormy sea. Mark 6:51 is ignored. The story follows after a long sequence of parables and begins with the phrase, “On that day, when evening came”.78 Tracing the narrative back to when “that day” was appears to place it on the day when Jesus had been accused of having a demon and had a conflict with his family, who thought him mad. That would suggest that Jesus was in Capernaum, where he and his family lived. However, if Mark has moved this story from another location “that day” would be isolated from its original reference point. The Mark-B story elements are as follows.79

• “leaving the crowd behind, [the disciples] took [Jesus] with them in the boat, just as he was [emphasis added].”80 • Other boats “were with [Jesus] [emphasis added].”81

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• • • • • • •

A great windstorm arises. Jesus is asleep on the boat. The disciples awake him, asking, “do you not care that we are perishing?”82 Jesus tells the stormy sea “Peace! Be still!”83 The sea calms down. Jesus questions their faith. The disciples are in awe, questioning who this is who can control the wind and sea.

This story makes no reference to Jesus walking on the water before calming the storm, but it does contain some vague language that hints at some missing event prior to Jesus getting on the boat. The opening line of the episode has Jesus say, “Let us go across to the other side.”84 By itself, the statement tells us nothing. It can refer to any of several sea voyages made by Jesus. But paired with the next sentence, we may have an issue about composition. It reads, “And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him.”85 The phrasing is quite odd. After telling us that the crowd was left behind, it says they took Jesus on the boat with them, and that they took him “as he was.” The sentence doesn’t say that Jesus was on the boat when it pulled out from shore. He may have left in the boat with them, but if that is the case, why does Mark add that in the act of leaving the crowd behind, they took him on to the boat. Shouldn’t the presence of Jesus on the boat have been implicit? If Jesus were on the boat when it left shore, wouldn’t Mark have more likely written “They left the crowd behind”? Now I understand that writers can have a wide range of leeway in composing sentences and finding a simpler way to editorial express the same thought in and of itself isn’t a basis for criticism. But the idea of saying that the disciples “took him with them in the boat” strikes me as problematic and the ambiguity suggests to me that Mark is trying to fudge over the fact that Jesus got on the boat after it left shore and not when it left shore. In other words, he is hiding the fact that Jesus walked on water to get to the boat. Compounding this ambiguous use of language is that they took him on the boat “just as he was.” What does that mean? How else would they have taken him on board? The phrasing suggests that something happened to Jesus’s appearance between the time he was on shore and when he came upon the boat. Was this the ghostly appearance they thought they saw when Jesus walked on water in the course of crossing the stormy sea? Further evidence of a cover-up comes in the next sentence. “Other boats were with [Jesus]”86 when they took him on board. How could other boats be with him

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when he came aboard the disciples’ boat unless they were already at sea when the disciples took him in? If Jesus was on shore when he got on the boat, then there were no other boats with him at the time. Boats were either at sea with him or at shore, in which case you can’t say they were with him. Mark’s bizarre phrasings and ambiguous descriptions suggest that he has redacted the underlying story in some manner to hide information. He appears to have edited out the actual walking on water scene from the narrative and merged the reaction to walking on water with the reaction to calming the storm. In Mark-A, the disciples were frightened by Jesus on the water because they thought he was a ghost. This must have been some sort of scary wind-swept image. In Mark-B they are frightened by the storm itself. Mark-B also contains a possible point of contact with John’s version of events. Mark-B says that other boats were with Jesus when they sailed out. John says initially that the only boat around when the disciples left was the single boat that they left in. Afterwards, however, several other boats arrived and followed after Jesus. John has manipulated the underlying story to create the mysterious arrival on shore without a boat and the sudden arrival of boats following after Jesus seems to tie in with Mark-B’s claim that there were other boats with Jesus out on the stormy sea. Since John and Mark-A both agree that after the miracle of the loaves Jesus walked across a stormy sea and then conducted a second miracle on the water and Mark-B omits that sequence after his second multiplication of the loaves, I strongly suspect that Mark altered the second sequence of events in order to avoid the appearance of duplication. He dropped the second version of the walking on water, a story that was no longer theologically necessary, and moved the second calming of the storm to an earlier portion of the gospel. Because he dropped the second walking on water scene he changed what it was that frightened the disciples, substituting the stormy sea for the ghost-like image. At the same time, he radically shortened the Mark-A calming of the storm story to little more than an afterthought that bore no resemblance to the longer Mark-B account.

Act 3 Summary Act 3 has five scenes. In 3a–3d Jesus walks on water across a stormy sea. Mark-A and John are reasonably closes as to the details. In Scene 3e, Mark-A and John describe different miracles at sea. In Mark-A Jesus gets on the boat and calms the storm. In John, Jesus never gets on the boat and avoids the issue of calming the storm by teleporting the boat and crew to the desired shore location at

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 69 Capernaum. Reactions to this second miracle in both gospels will be discussed when we look at Scene 4a. Mark-B has no Act 3. After the second miracle of the loaves, there is no duplicate walking on water and no duplicate second miracle while crossing the sea. In Mark-B, Jesus gets on the boat with the disciples and sails across the water with no incident of note at sea. Mark-B, however, has a longer and more detailed account of calming a stormy sea but places it well before both bread miracles. Reading between the lines of that oddly-worded earlier account of the stormy sea, suggests that Mark may have redacted out the story of Jesus walking on the water in order to avoid having two such stories in his gospel. It is my suggestion that Mark-A and Mark-B preserve doublets with regard to the stormy sea and that Mark has made several alterations to the original sequence of events, dropping a second version of the walking on water scene, relocating the Mark-B version of the calming of the sea to an earlier location in the gospel, and radically shortening the Mark-A version of the calming of the sea so that it looked nothing like his lengthier Mark-B version. Whether or Not Mark-B is a doublet, John and Mark-A agree that after the miracle of the loaves Jesus walked on water across a stormy sea and then performed a second miracle while still at sea.

Continuity Problems in Mark In Mark-A 6:16–17 (Scene 2j), after the multiplication of the loaves and before the walking on water, Mark says that the disciples set sail for Bethsaida.87 But, when they finish crossing the sea they somehow landed in Gennesaret, a different village along the Sea of Galilee.88 Why didn’t they land in Bethsaida? Mark gives no explanation and continues as if nothing is wrong with this picture. Some commentators, to salvage this lapse in continuity, have asserted that the disciples were blown off course.89 Mark doesn’t say this happened, or even hint at it, and the preceding walking on water scene suggests otherwise. While it is true that the scene shows the disciples struggling against an adverse wind, Mark also says that Jesus intended to pass them by and only stopped because they had become frightened by his appearance.90 If Jesus had intended to pass them by at that point, there is no reason to think he thought they were off course for their intended rendezvous at Bethsaida. At that point Jesus got into the boat and the wind stopped. So there is no longer even a wind to blow them off course.

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A better approach would be to look for some point in Mark when Jesus and the disciples landed by boat at Bethsaida and see what the narrative context reveals about the circumstances. The disciples do arrive in Bethsaida after a boat trip at Mark 8:22 but as presently positioned it is not the boat trip following the Mark-B multiplication of the loaves. It is a second boat trip that takes place almost immediately after the first boat ride. There is only one brief episode between the two sea cruises. Let’s take a closer look at these two voyages. Mark’s second multiplication of the loaves ends at Mark-B 8:9. In the next verse Mark says that Jesus and the disciples headed out to Dalmanutha by boat.91 No sea voyage is described and no landing is mentioned. Instead we are immediately whisked away to an unnamed land location where Jesus argues with some Pharisees, who demand a sign in order to test his authority.92 Jesus declines to give a sign.93 After refusing the invitation to perform, he and the disciples get in a boat and again sail off.94 This second sea voyage begins at Mark-B 8:14 and at the end the disciples arrive at Bethsaida.95 But for the intervening scene about the argument with the Pharisees over a sign, Mark 8’s narrative flow would show a departure from the site of the bread miracle, details of the Mark 8:14–21 sea voyage, and a landing in Bethsaida at Mark 8:22. Let’s look at what happened on this Mark-B trip to Bethsaida and compare it with what Mark-A 6:51–52 says happened after Jesus walked on the water and got in the boat. In Mark-A, the sea voyage after the bread miracle consists of several elements. First Jesus walks on water while the disciples struggle against an adverse wind. Then he gets into the boat with the disciples. Next he calms the winds. At this point, Mark says, “And they [the disciples] were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”96 The boat then lands at Gennesaret instead of Bethsaida. In Mark-B, immediately after the argument with the Pharisees, Jesus and the disciples get back in the boat, at which time the matter of the multiplication of the loaves comes up.97 In this scene, Jesus initially warns the disciples to “beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”98 The disciples have no clue as to what Jesus is talking about and wonder if he is talking about their not having any bread to eat.99 Jesus responds, “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened [emphasis added]?”100 Exasperated at their obtuseness, Jesus reminds the disciples about the two previous bread miracles and all the bread that was leftover.101 Finally, he says, “Do you not yet understand?”102

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 71 The sea voyages in Mark-A and Mark-B share three key features. They both use the odd phrase about the hearts of the disciples being hardened; they both say that the disciples failed to understand the meaning of the loaves; and the both appear in very close proximate relationship to the miracle of the loaves. The Mark-B version, even as it stands now, appears to have taken place on the same day that the disciples set sail from the site where the loaves were multiplied. A chief difference between the two is that in Mark-A Jesus doesn’t directly chastise the disciples. The critique appears as a gloss by Mark. Since Mark had two versions of the story, it makes sense that he would eliminate direct criticism in the earlier version. Otherwise, how dim would the disciples look if after being directly criticized by Jesus for not understanding about the loaves they had to be directly chastised a second time for the same reason? The very short narrative distance between the Mark-B 8:14–21 boat ride and the second multiplication of the loaves (Mark-B 8:1–9) coupled with Mark-B’s two other direct correlations with Mark-A’s boat ride immediately after the first multiplication of the loaves strongly suggest that they both must be based on the same underlying story. When we observe that the Mark-A boat ride headed out to Bethsaida and the second Mark-B boat ride landed in Bethsaida I have little doubt that the two boat rides are one and the same. This has some implications. The Mark-B 8:14–21 boat ride must have followed immediately after the Mark-B 8:1–9 multiplication of the loaves. This means that the Mark-B 8:10–13 voyage to Dalmanutha followed by the request for a sign belongs in a different location. I suspect that the narrative location was not very far away. Following the Mark-B 8:14–21 landing in Bethsaida, we have the Mark 8:22– 26 story of Jesus in Bethsaida curing a blind man with saliva. John 6 has no corresponding incident but that gospel does have a similar incident in John 9, which we will examine later. I suspect that Mark simply switched around the two Mark 8 sea voyages. The voyage to Bethsaida and the healing in Bethsaida happened first and the trip to Dalmanutha happened after the healing in Bethsaida. This may have been due to Mark wanting to move the Bethsaida story to a slightly later location as its current position plays an important theological role in Mark’s gospel. We’ll examine that in Chapter 7. This would result in the following underlying sequence for Mark’s source narrative: Mark 8:1–9 (second multiplication of loaves), 14–21(voyage to Bethsaida), 22–26 (healing the blind man) and 10–13 (request for a sign). I would also argue that Mark-B 4:35–41 (calming of the storm) belongs between Mark 8:9 and Mark 8:14. That Mark-B’s Bethsaida voyage begins with Jesus already in the boat

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(assuming that 8:10–13 comes after 8:22) suggests that Mark 8:14–21 or a similar story would have been the natural continuation from Mark-A 6:51–52, after Jesus calmed the storm and got in the boat. Interestingly, both John and Luke omit all of Mark’s stories between Mark 6:52 and the re-ordered Mark 8:14–21 (including the second multiplication of the loaves). Luke, however, has also made some other changes to Mark’s narrative and we will look at those details later.

Act 4: The Discourse on Bread (John 6:25–59, Mark-B 8:10–21, 8:34–9:1; Mark-A 6:51c–52) I have divided Act 4 into seven scenes. In Scenes 4a–4e I refer to “witnesses” to the miracle of the loaves. In Mark, the witnesses to the miracle are the twelve apostles and the scenes take place on the voyage across the sea to Bethsaida. Some of the scenes come from Mark-A and some come from the parallel version in Mark-B. In John, the witnesses are not the apostles but members of the crowd that ate the bread from the miracle of the loaves and who had already crossed over the sea to look for Jesus. John also says those scenes took place in Capernaum, a city close to Bethsaida. The scenes appear in the following order.

4a. Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves are astonished by the second miracle at sea. 4b. Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves are hungry. 4c. Jesus chastise witnesses to the miracle of the loaves for not understanding what it meant. 4d. Jesus tells the witnesses not to seek after ordinary bread. 4e. The witnesses don’t understand the teaching. 4f. A crowd asks Jesus for a sign, but no sign is provided. 4g. Jesus teaches the crowd how they can obtain eternal life.

The reason why John has a different set of witnesses, as I shall argue later in this chapter, is that Mark shows the apostles in a negative light, uncomprehending of Jesus’ nature or teachings and John has a theological objection to such portrayals. Therefore, John takes editorial steps to avoid such depictions and has established what I later refer to as an “apostle filter” to screen out negative images of the twelve disciples. In this case, I will suggest, he has substituted non-apostles for the Twelve and, therefore, moved the scenes from the boat ride with the apostles to the land setting where the non-apostle witnesses were located. We’ll see additional examples of this process in Act 5 and elsewhere in later chapters.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 73 Although I will show that there is a Markan parallel for each of the scenes in John’s Act 4, there are a couple of sequential disagreements between Mark and John as to the order of the scenes. First, Mark-B and John disagree on the placement of Scene 4c (chastisement of the witnesses for not understanding the meaning of the miracle of the loaves). John places it before telling the witnesses about a special bread and Mark-B places it after telling the witnesses about special bread. While Mark-A has a version of the chastisement, it is missing the surrounding scenes, so it can’t help us determine which gospel has the correct order. In this particular instance, I will follow John’s narrative order. Second, as previously discussed, Mark-B’s Scene 4f (the request for a sign at Mark 8:11–12) is out of sequential order and belongs after Mark 8:14–26. In Mark, Scene 4f takes place on land at a different location in connection with a dispute between Jesus and the Pharisees. John presents the scene as if it is a straight forward continuation of the preceding scenes. In the analysis below I will suggest that John has an undisclosed change of location between Scenes 4e and 4f, moving from the Capernaum streets to a Capernaum synagogue. Third, Mark and John disagree on the placement of Scene 4g. This scene is the highlight of John 6. It is widely referred to as the Discourse on Bread and explains in a very difficult teaching how to obtain eternal life. In it, Jesus claims to be the Bread of Life and that one has to eat the Bread of Life (i.e., eat Jesus) to obtain eternal life. This is a difficult scene to deal with, for several reasons. For one, it involves a lengthy “I Am” saying intertwined with other story elements. Because Mark doesn’t include any of John’s “I Am” sayings we can’t have a precise parallel between the two gospels. Therefore, we have to try to look behind the Discourse to get at its fundamental meaning and see how it plays out in Mark. Second, the teaching is very difficult and leads to a number of scholarly disputes, especially with regard to its Eucharistic implications.103 These Eucharistic passages are very different from the Eucharist ceremony depicted in Mark at the Last Supper. Consistent with that view is the absence of a Eucharist scene in John’s account of the Last Supper. I’ll look at the Eucharistic scene further below and in more detail in Chapter 8. A third difficulty is that many scholars believe the Discourse was created in two stages. Fourth, the Discourse, as I will show later, has intimate connections with a separate story in Mark 6:1–6 that involves the rejection of Jesus in a synagogue where his family members are known by name. I will have an extensive analysis of that relationship in Chapter 5.

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Once we get at the underlying meaning of John’s discourse, we can align it with a similar teaching in Mark 8:34–9:1. In Mark, this passage follows immediately after Act 5. In John, the parallel appears immediately before Act 5. So, while Mark and John disagree as to the sequential order of this scene, they both link it to Act 5. This suggests a close narrative connection between Scene 4g and Act 5. Arguments can be made for either gospel order, but I will follow Mark’s arrangement in the final reconstruction of the proposed common source.

Scenes 4a–4e: Jesus and the Witnesses to the Miracle of the Loaves: (John 6:25–28; Mark-A 6:51–52; Mark-B 8:14–21) As noted above, the witnesses in Mark’s version of these scenes are the apostles and the stories take place on the boat sailing to Bethsaida. In John they are a different set of witnesses to the miracle and they are placed on shore. Mark-A 6:51–52 and Mark-B 8:14–21 unfold events in different ways. Both appear to be redacted versions of a portion of the sea-crossing. John, despite the different emphasis on the witnesses, manages to bridge the gaps between both segments of Mark. Mark-A 6:51–52 reads, “Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.” Initially, we need to ask what it was that astounded the disciples, the stopping of the wind or the walking on water. Mark is a little vague on this point. Mark-A has already given us the disciples’ reaction to Jesus walking on water. They were frightened; they thought they saw a ghost.104 Mark doesn’t tell us they were astounded until after he says the winds ceased. The logic of the narrative structure seems to clearly suggest that it was the ceasing wind that they reacted to. That they didn’t understand because their “hearts were hardened” means that they failed to recognize that Jesus calmed the storm because he worked through God, just as Moses did when he calmed the storm, and they should have realized this because they saw the miracle of the loaves. The narrative structure for Mark-A is as follows. Scene 3b: Second miracle at sea (calming the storm); Scene 4a: Astonishment at the second miracle at sea; Scene 4c: Failure to comprehend the meaning of the loaves.

In Mark-A there is no direct condemnation of the apostles for failing to understand the miracle. Mark sets the observation in an author’s gloss on the scene. Mark saves the actual condemnation for the later Mark-B version. Mark-A is also

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 75 missing Scenes 4b, 4d, and 4e. Mark has probably redacted out these missing scenes as they all relate to the teachings of Jesus regarding bread issues and Mark would not want to have it repeated to the disciples twice. Otherwise they would look especially uncomprehending if they didn’t understand the miracle on the second occasion if Jesus explained it to them on the first occasion. Mark-B’s voyage to Bethsaida is structured differently and has more details. It begins with a notice that the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread and they had only one loaf on the boat, obviously not enough to feed the whole assemblage, a situation akin to the miracle of the loaves. At this point, Jesus issues a warning. “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”105 The disciples didn’t understand what Jesus meant and assumed Jesus said that “because we have no bread.”106 This leads to a lengthy rebuke and teaching about the meaning of the miracle of the loaves. Mark-B has the following narrative structure. Scene 4b: The disciples are hungry and need more bread. Scene 4d: Jesus warns against the yeast of the Pharisees. Scene 4e: The disciples don’t understand the teaching. Scene 4c: Jesus chastises the disciples for not understanding the miracle of the loaves.

Mark-B has no miracles at sea during this voyage so the astonishment in Scene 4a is missing. Mark-B also places the chastisement of the disciples after the bread warning and lack of understanding. John places the chastisement before both incidents. Mark-A has the notice of astonishment but is missing the bread warning and reaction. Mark-B has the bread warning and reaction but is missing the astonishment. Mark-A has a redacted version of Mark-B’s chastisement for not understanding the miracle of the loaves. John appears to bridge the gap between the two versions. After walking on water John narrates a second miracle. Jesus mysteriously appears on the shores of Capernaum without benefit of a boat after teleporting the disciples and the boat from the middle of the sea to the shore. On shore, witnesses to the miracle of the loaves are astonished by the results of the second miracle. “When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ ”107 Since the miracle is different, the nature of the astonishment is different. Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.”108 Here we see the rebuke

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to the witnesses for not understanding the miracle of the loaves coupled with an indication that they only came after him to cadge another meal. As in Mark-B, the disciples/witnesses wanted more bread and didn’t comprehend the miracle of the loaves. John’s Jesus continues with a further teaching. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”109 Here, too, we have a warning about avoiding a certain kind of bread and looking for a different kind of bread, although the verbal descriptions are different. I’ll take a further look at the two bread warnings a little further on. Jesus hasn’t yet explained what this other bread is and the witnesses, as in Mark-B’s reaction to the bread warning, don’t appear to understand what the teaching means. They reply, “What must we do to perform the works of God?”110 John’s narrative contains variations on the scenes missing in Mark-A and Mark-B. While the narrative detail differs from Mark, the thematic elements are similar. John, however, is setting the scene for his gospel message about belief in Jesus being the only path to eternal life, culminating in the Discourse on Bread and the reactions to that teaching. Mark, too, has a teaching about how to obtain eternal life but it is not as tightly integrated to the earlier scenes as it is in John. Mark’s narrative is more episodic.

The Sequential Problem with Scene 4c John and Mark-B agree on the sequential order of Scenes 4b (hungry witnesses), 4d (the Bread warning) and 4e (the witnesses do not understand the bread symbolism). They disagree on the location of Scene 4c (the chastisement of the witnesses for not understanding the meaning of the miracle of the loaves). John places 4c before the bread warning and Mark-B places it after the failure to understand the bread warning. Mark-A includes a variation on Scene 4c but is missing Scenes 4b, 4d, and 4e, so we have no way to compare Mark-A to John for clues as to the placement of Scene 4c. Therefore, we can’t say who has the correct location for Scene 4c. John’s versions of Scenes 4b–e are tightly integrated and there doesn’t seem to be any simple or obvious way to move Scene 4c in line with Mark-B’s placement. It would require a good deal of reconstruction of John’s narrative and such reconstruction would be speculative at best. On the other hand, Mark-B’s version of Scene 4c can be easily moved into line with John’s 4c, although that doesn’t necessarily prove that John has the cor-

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 77 rect order. However, Mark has clearly been working hard to integrate two different versions of the narrative sequence and has at a minimum redacted Mark-A’s version of the final stage of the sea crossing. Mark has also already moved the entire Mark-B 8:14–21 segment out of its original order. So, Mark has done a lot of editorial manipulation with regard to both versions of the last part of the sea voyage. For these reasons I think Mark may be a little less trustworthy than John with regard to this particular segment of the narrative. Therefore, in reconstructing the proposed common source I will follow John’s placement of Scene 4c.

The Scene 4d Bread Warning In John 6:27, after rebuking the witnesses for not understanding the meaning of the loaves, Jesus admonished them. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.”111 The crowd wanted to know what they should do to “perform the works of God”112 Jesus responded that they should “believe in him whom he has sent.”113 This ends the scene. Although Jesus refers to “food” rather than “bread,” it becomes obvious in the next two verses that he is talking about bread. The conversation almost immediately switches to a discussion of manna114 and “bread from heaven.”115In addition to telling the witnesses that this special bread exists he also says that he brings the bread and that in order to obtain it one must believe in the one sent by God, i.e., believe in Jesus. Although Jesus has spoken of some special bread that “endures for eternal life” he has not yet said what this bread is and what relevance it has to the crowd. Given the connection to the multiplication of the loaves, the crowd might identify this bread with what they ate previously. There is no direct claim yet that this special bread confers eternal life on the eater. That will come out later when the Discourse on Bread teaches what this special bread is. The corresponding passage in Mark is “Watch out—beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”116 Yeast here is the equivalent of bread. What kind of yeast/bread do the Pharisees and Herod eat? Putting symbolism aside for now, what they have is ordinary bread, bread that perishes. Jesus essentially warns the hungry disciples about seeking out the ordinary bread eaten by the Pharisees and Herod. This, of course, is functionally equivalent to John’s “food [i.e., bread] that perishes” although Mark doesn’t use those direct words. But what does the warning mean? Jesus implicitly tells his hungry disciples that there is some other special kind of yeast/bread that they should seek. What

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sort of bread is that? Mark never directly says and he doesn’t connect this special bread to his later teaching about eternal life the way that John does. The most likely answer is that “yeast” serves as a metaphor for “teaching.” That is certainly how Matthew understood this passage in Mark when he says, “Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”117 That Jesus spoke on a symbolic level is manifest by the inability of the disciples to understand what he means by this warning. Jesus reminds them of the multiplication of the loaves that they witnessed. The bread that fed the five thousand was miraculous bread that didn’t perish, that kept reappearing whenever they were hungry. Mark’s Jesus essentially warns the disciples to beware of the “teachings” of the Pharisees and Herod, who oppose Jesus, and implicitly tells them to pay attention to what he teaches them about “the good news.” The subtle lesson is that faith leads to miracles. Spiritual hunger is fed by spiritual “bread” and leads to the “good news.” While Mark doesn’t use the term “bread that perishes” and John doesn’t use the term “yeast of the Pharisees,” both are talking about the same thing. The two stories share the same features. Bread that doesn’t perish is a teaching, a form of spiritual bread that can bring about some sort of benefit.

Scene 4f: The Request for a Sign (John 6:28–34, Mark 8:10–13) After the warning about bread that perishes, both John and Mark move on to a request for a sign. (In Mark, as it presently stands, the request for a sign (8:10–13) occurs before the yeast warning (8:14–21), but as I have argued above, that sequence is out of order and should be reversed, with 8:10–13 being moved after 8:26, the healing of the blind man in Bethsaida. Mark places the request in a separate scene at a different location. John implies that it is a continuation of the dialogue that started when Jesus arrived on shore. However, there appears to be a slight problem with John’s continuity. In John, the crowd asks how they can get this special bread. Jesus responds, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”118 Skeptical of Jesus’ claim that he is the one God sent, the crowd asks for a sign, so that they may believe in him.119 They want to know what kind of work he will do for them and cite the example of their ancestors eating manna in the wilderness, adding “as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”120

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 79 Jesus declined to give a sign and told the crowd that Moses didn’t give them the bread from heaven but that God gives “true” bread from heaven, which gives life to the world.121 Jesus has still not expressly stated that the bread confers eternal life. He has also subtly shifted the nature of the debate. The crowd talked about receiving bread from heaven and in pointing out that it was God, not Moses, who did this, he shifted from “bread” to “true bread,” a different subject from what the audience asked about. Although John’s Jesus doesn’t directly reject the request for a sign—he changed the subject of the conversation—in essence, he denied the request. There are two continuity problems here. First, we were told that these people were witnesses to the multiplication of the loaves and followed after Jesus. They already witnessed the sign from heaven that Jesus could give. Jesus has already directly admonished them for “looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Not only that, but the sign the witnesses described as an example of what they want to see is the very sign that Jesus had just performed, the miraculous production of bread. Therefore, the crowd requesting the sign must have been a different group of people from the ones in the earlier scene who followed Jesus. The second continuity problem is that this scene leads into the long Discourse on Bread and we are told at the conclusion that this speech took place in the synagogue at Capernaum.122 But John has no earlier scene showing a shift to the synagogue. The disclosure of the location is a surprise to the gospel’s audience. He has previously given the impression that everything so far had happened on shore where the boats arrived. This suggests that John has edited out the scene shift from 4e to 4f in order to create the impression of an ongoing discussion about “true bread” with the witnesses to the bread miracle. A lesser problem is that the scriptural citation used in the story is erroneously interpreted. We are given to believe that the “he” in that verse is Moses, and the crowd is asking for a sign like the one Moses gave. Jesus then criticizes that claim, arguing that it was God who gave the manna, not Jesus, and he uses that as a springboard for the “I Am” portion of the Discourse on bread. However, the passage cited is presumably from Exodus 16:15 and it doesn’t say that Moses or some ambiguous “he” gave the Israelites manna from heaven and the crowd never directly says that Moses was the one who provided bread from heaven. The Exodus verse says, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat [emphasis added.]” No ambiguity here. God gave them the manna. While Jesus does say that it was God and not Moses who gave the bread from heaven, he does so as if it is a new teaching. But the underlying scriptural verse is perfectly clear and it is only the restated erroneous version that introduces an

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ambiguity that needs clarification. This suggests that John was casting about for a way to transition from the request for a sign to the Discourse on Bread. Mark also follows up with a request for a sign but he moves the scene to a new geographic location and the request appears to come from a group of Pharisees unfamiliar with the multiplication of the loaves. At least there is no indication that they know about the miracle. Mark says Jesus and the disciples arrived by boat, presumably to the shore of Dalmanutha per Mark 8:10. (Recall here that I proposed earlier that Mark-B 8:10 should follow after Mark 8:26.) After Jesus arrives, an argument breaks out between him and the Pharisees. Mark doesn’t say what the Pharisees argued about but they asked him “for a sign from heaven, to test him.”123 Jesus declined to provide such a sign. “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.”124 Jesus and the disciples immediately get in the boat and sail off. Mark’s version presents some evidence of redaction. He doesn’t tell us what Jesus and the Pharisees argued about or why they requested a sign. The most logical explanation is that Jesus must have claimed some special authority or power from God and the Pharisees wanted to see proof of that claim by asking for a sign. Since such a spectacle violates Mark’s thematic approach to his gospel he probably edited out the underlying details of this story. Because Mark omits the details of the conversation, we can’t determine how closely John’s discussion of the bread from heaven coincides with the proposed common source.

Scene 4g: How to Obtain Eternal Life (John 6:35–59; Mark 8:34–9.1) Scene 4g is built around John’s Discourse on Bread (John 6:35–59), which teaches that Jesus is the Bread of Life and that you have to eat this bread (Jesus) to gain eternal life. Because it is structured as an “I Am” saying, Mark has no direct parallel. Behind the Discourse, however, there is a fundamental teaching about how to obtain eternal life and here I think we have a direct parallel in Mark-B 8:34–9:1. While this scene in John appears just before Act 5, in Mark it follows just after Act 5. In both Mark and John this scene encompasses an independent narrative unit that could easily be severed from the surrounding text and moved to other locations in the narrative. This raises a question as to who has the right order. In either case, this discussion of eternal life in Mark and John appears to be closely linked to the subject matter of Act 5, which deals with the identity of Jesus.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 81 John’s Discourse on the Bread of Life (John 6:35–59). Although John initiated discussion of some sort of special bread that “endures for eternal life” in the earlier scenes he doesn’t directly tell us there what this bread is and what it does. He reserves that disclosure for his major discourse on the Bread of Life. It is a lengthy “I Am” saying that is intertwined with audience reaction and could probably be broken down into several subsections. For our purposes I’m dividing it into two broad section based on thematic content. The full discourse begins at John 6:35. “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It ends at John 6:59 with the observation that he made this speech in the synagogue at Capernaum. John doesn’t say when Jesus entered the synagogue. But, as I pointed out above, prior to the request for a sign John appears to have an undocumented shift of scene from the shore to the synagogue. In the first part, John 6:35–42, Jesus says that he is the Bread of Life, come down from heaven, to bring eternal life to all who believe in him. He claims that the Father has sent him here so “that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.”125 In this part of the discourse, Jesus teaches that all that is necessary for eternal life is to believe in Jesus as the one sent by God. At this point, John inserts a crowd reaction that expresses problems with understanding this teaching. They responded, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”126 This verse is a widely recognized parallel to Mark 6:3, which is part of a different story that is usually referred to as the Rejection at Nazareth. I devote Chapter 5 to how Mark and John interact with regard to that episode. Because of the complexities I won’t comment any further on it here. In the second part of the Discourse, John 6:43–58, Jesus, having previously explained that belief in him as the one sent by God will enable the believer to receive eternal life, now seems to raise the bar higher. First he teaches about the difference between the manna in the wilderness and the “true bread” from heaven. Those who ate the manna in the wilderness died but those who eat the Bread of Life from heaven will live forever.127 Then he throws in a kicker to explain what he means by eating the bread from heaven. “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”128 This causes much consternation among the congregation. “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”129 In response, Jesus teaches, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”130 On the surface,

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it certainly sounds like Jesus says that you must eat his flesh and drink his blood to gain immortality. The discourse ends with the admonition “But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”131 In John, either we are given to believe in some sort of maenadic ritual in which a frenzied horde rips Jesus’ body apart, cannibalistically devouring his flesh and blood, his body continuing to provide for all, just as the loaves did, or the references to his anatomy are symbolic. Rejecting the cannibalistic theory, the most reasonable explanation would see the “I Am” teaching as symbolic. The eating and drinking of Jesus’ body means nothing more than taking in his teaching, i.e., his spiritual body rather than his physical body. This is essentially what is implied by Mark’s warning against the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod. The special bread that people should eat is the teaching brought by Jesus. Stripping out the metaphors, we can sum up the Discourse on Bread as follows: Jesus comes from God bringing the good news that one can gain eternal life. In order to gain immortality, you have to believe that God (the Father) sent him to bring the message. If you believe in him as the messenger, then you have to follow his teachings. If you do, you will be raised up on the last day and receive eternal life. If you shrink from his teachings because they are too difficult, you will die. A major source of discussion with regard to this section is whether or not the sections about eating Jesus have a Eucharistic meaning. In John’s version of the Last Supper there is no Eucharistic scene, leading many scholars to see the Discourse on Bread as John’s version of the Eucharist. Initially, however, we first need to note that there are several differences between Mark’s version of the Eucharist and John’s teaching in this gospel section. In Mark, Jesus hands over actual bread and says that it his body.132 The bread is the symbol of Jesus’ body. In John, Jesus’ body is the symbol of the bread. These two arrangements are not identical. In Mark, Jesus hands wine to the disciples and tells them to drink the wine that is the “blood of the covenant.”133 In John, Jesus tells them to drink his blood, not wine. In John, there is no handing out of bread and wine. John’s Eucharistic elements are nothing at all like Mark’s, although they both talk about eating bread and drinking blood. In Chapter 8 I will take a closer look at the Eucharistic issue. At that time, I will argue that John has moved the Eucharistic scene from the Last Supper to this location but that his version of the Eucharist differs significantly from Mark’s because it is a pre-Pauline version of the ritual that originates in the proposed common source and that Mark’s version represents a later development based on Pauline influences.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 83 Mark 8:34–9.1 on eternal life. So what does Mark have to say about these teachings? Mark 8:34–9.1 does provide some good news about eternal life. It is the first time in his gospel that he addresses this theme of Jesus as the pathway. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”134 In essence, Mark teaches that the way to obtain eternal life is to defend the teachings (gospel) of Jesus. But this is not an easy task. Apparently these teachings generate a lot of heat and people turn away from him. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”135 So Jesus has been teaching something very difficult that causes a lot of embarrassment to his followers and leads people to turn away from him. Mark’s message is essentially identical to John’s after we strip out the symbolic “I Am” language.

• • • • • •

Jesus brings good news about eternal life. You have to believe in Jesus as the one who can bring eternal life. You believe in Jesus by accepting his teachings. His teachings can lead to hostility and ridicule. However difficult these teachings may be, they have to be accepted. Not everybody can accept these teaching and they won’t be saved.

While Mark keeps the message about eternal life separate from the warning about the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod, they are loosely linked by the use of “bread/ yeast” as a metaphor for teaching. This is the teaching that Mark wants his followers to accept, which is inconsistent with the teachings of the Pharisees and Herod. It is not difficult to see John making the connection between the two and changing the special bread implicit in Mark’s yeast warning and turning it into the “bread of life” teaching. “Bread of Life” equals the “good news about eternal life” and John equates the “good news” with Jesus himself. Eating “the good news about eternal life” equals accepting Jesus as the path to eternal life. While Mark simply refers to the hostility generated by the message, John actually illustrates it by having Jesus interact with those who reject him as the messenger. Not only does John insert negative reactions to the teaching into his discourse, after the discourse, when he expands on the teachings, many followers abandon him.136

Act 4 Summary Scenes 4a–4e, which follow immediately after the second miracle at sea, revolve around the interactions between Jesus and witnesses to the miracle of the loaves

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who ate the bread. In Mark, the witnesses are the disciples and the interactions take place on the boat sailing to Bethsaida. In John, the witnesses are non-disciples who ate the bread, and the incidents take place immediately after on land. Although the second miracle at sea differs in Mark and John, the witnesses act with astonishment after the fact. In Mark 6:51, Jesus calms the storm, and the apostle-witnesses are astonished at what Jesus just did. They take him on the boat and the rest of the scenes unfold at sea as recounted in Mark 8:14–21, which is the natural continuation of Mark’s account of the journey to Bethsaida. John changes the nature of the second miracle at sea in order to divert attention away from negative images of the disciples. He arranged for Jesus to miraculously appear in Capernaum without benefit of a boat and the non-disciple witnesses to the miracle of the loaves were astonished to find him there. The remaining portion of John’s 4a–4e complex unfolds on land, among this nonapostle set of witnesses. While the parallels aren’t initially obvious, once you substitute the witnesses on shore for the disciples at sea, the connections between Mark and John become much more obvious. Mark-B and John disagree on the placement of Scene 4c. For reasons explained above I am following John’s sequential scheme with regard to that scene. Mark and John also disagree on the placement of Scene 4g, the teaching on how to obtain eternal life. John places it immediately before Act 5, the “Who is Jesus?” unit. Mark places it immediately after Act 5. There is no clear indication as to who has the right order but as a general rule, absent other evidence, I will accept Mark’s order of events as opposed to John’s. I remain open to the alternative scenario. In either case, both authors clearly connect scene 4g to Act 5, suggesting that there is a literary connection between those two narratives and that Mark and John both knew the original order. Closely connected to the matter of the composition of John’s Scene 4g, we saw that it included what may be a passage from a different Mark story, in which a synagogue congregation knew Jesus’ family members by name. I indicated that the issue was complex and that I would examine it more fully in Chapter 5. In Mark, after moving Mark 8:14–21 and 8:22–26 ahead of Mark 10–13, Scene 4f (request for a sign) takes place in a different location before a crowd that did not witness the miracle of the loaves. In analyzing John, we saw that he concealed the fact that the crowd in Scene 4f was a different group of people than the witnesses in Scene 4e, and that Scene 4f took place in a different location from Scene 4e, with the location moving from the shore area to the synagogue. This suggests that John has merged two scenes together that originally stood separate and unrelated.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 85 A key observation in the analysis of Act 4 is that Mark’s warning about the yeast of the Pharisees and John’s warning about bread that perishes were essentially the same and both made the symbolic argument that there was a special kind of bread. This special bread was a symbolic description of the teachings of Jesus about eternal life and eating the bread was the equivalent of taking in Jesus’ teaching about how to obtain eternal life. Closely related to the bread symbolism is what appears to be John’s version of the Eucharist ceremony. I pointed out that John’s version, which is missing from his account of the Last Supper, is very different from Mark’s and that I would devote special attention to the Eucharist issue later on in Chapter 8. All in all, for Act 4, Mark has a parallel to each of the seven scenes in John and, although there is some disagreement over the order of the scenes in Mark and John, the disagreements are relatively trivial, falling within the same very short narrative span in both gospels.

Act 5: Who Is Jesus? (John 6:14–15a, 60–71; Mark-B 8:27–33; Mark-A 6:14–16) Act 5 deals with a progression of perceptions about the nature of Jesus. I have divided Act 5 into five scenes, as follows.

5a. 5b. 5c. 5d. 5e.

The public perceives of Jesus as an ancient prophet. Some see Jesus as an earthly king. Jesus talks about “rising” up. Jesus’ teaching is rejected by some of his followers. Jesus identifies one of his disciples as a devil.

First comes the public view, which sees Jesus as some sort of prophet. John and Mark disagree as to which prophet the public thinks Jesus might be. In Mark, the public thinks of Jesus as either John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the old time prophets; in John they think of him as one like Moses. This understanding in both gospels, we are given to believe, is erroneous. Next, those around Jesus identify him as an earthly human king but this understanding is also erroneous. Mark-B and John express this misunderstanding in different ways and disagree as to who makes this identification. In Mark it is Peter; in John it is members of the crowd who, like Peter, ate of the miraculous loaves of bread.

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In Mark, Peter’s identification is initially ambiguous. He identifies Jesus as “the Messiah” but the term has multiple meanings. Literally, it means “the anointed one” and was routinely applied to any of Israel’s earlier kings and probably to all of the chef priests. “Messiah” can also refer to some agent of God sent to liberate Israel and rule over the Kingdom of God. But the nature of that special king is not clear. For many, the messiah was an ordinary human, perhaps from the line of David, who would lead Israel. For others he may have been a supernatural figure such as “one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven” prophesied in the Book of Daniel.137 Peter’s answer could apply to any of those messiahs. Later, though, we learn that Peter has an inadequate understanding of who Jesus is. Peter focuses “not on divine things but on human things.”138 So his use of “messiah” appears to have contemplated some human form of earthly king. John eliminates the ambiguity and places the identification with those members of the public who saw Jesus as a prophet like Moses. They want to seize Jesus and force him to be an earthly king but Jesus pulls away from them.139 In the third stage Jesus describes himself as rising up in some mysterious way and his followers reject that teaching, but Mark-B and John disagree as to what this “rising” may be. In Mark-B, Jesus says he will be put to death by his opponents and rise up in three days. Peter is offended by this and rebukes Jesus for this teaching. Jesus responds, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”140 John has a radically different version of this portion of the story. After receiving flak from some of his followers over his difficult teaching, Jesus says, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”141 Here Jesus talks about rising up to heaven but doesn’t place it in the context of resurrection after death. He does, however, add that it is the spirit giving life, not flesh.142 So he seems to be relating this ascending/rising to heaven to resurrection in general rather than his own resurrection. (I will argue in Chapter 7 that the proposed common source had a different phrase here, one parallel to Mark’s prophesy that Jesus will die and rise, but that for editorial reasons John moved the original passage to an earlier place in his gospel and substituted the present language.) In John, Peter does not react negatively to Jesus’ teaching but many of Jesus’ followers abandon him.143 As his followers depart, Jesus turns to “the twelve” and asks if they wish to leave him, too. Peter responds, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”144

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 87 Jesus congratulated them on their understanding but accused one of them of being a devil.145 But Jesus, himself, doesn’t say which of the disciples he is referring to. John adds a gloss saying that Jesus was talking about Judas.146 A major story line that divides Mark and John concerns the role of Peter. In Mark’s version, Peter makes an erroneous identification of Jesus as an earthly king, Peter rebukes Jesus for talking about death and resurrection, and Jesus accuses Peter of being involved with Satan. John’s narrative weaves a cloak that shields Peter from these negative accusations. In his version, it is not Peter but others in the crowd who mistakenly identify Jesus as an earthly king. At the same time, John alters Peter’s answer so that he correctly identifies Jesus. John’s Peter never rebukes Jesus over the need to die but praises Jesus for his gift of eternal life. Additionally, in John, it is not Peter who rebukes Jesus but other disciples, from outside of the Twelve. Lastly, John changes Jesus’ accusation of deviltry against Peter (in Mark) and shifts the charge to Judas. Jesus, in John’s gospel, does not say which disciple was the devil. John adds a gloss to the text saying that Judas was the one whom Jesus meant. John’s gloss completely undoes the accusation against Peter in Mark. I emphasize here that it is John who appears to make the changes, not Mark. It does not appear feasible that Mark would work backwards through each of these scenes and gathering them together to make Peter look so bad. On the other hand, as I have laid it out, there seems to be a pattern in John of exonerating or enhancing Peter in particular and the other disciples in general. As part of this rehabilitation of Peter, John has some other major difference from the way Mark lays out Act 5. John has taken the two erroneous perceptions of Jesus, one like Moses and a king, at the beginning of Act 5 and separated them out from the rest of the story by moving them into the transition scene between the miracle of the loaves and the walking on water. He then took the part where Peter describes his understanding of Jesus and moved it from before the talk of resurrection, where Mark had it, to after that teaching, at which time John has Peter provide a more accurate description of Jesus. Mark-A 6:14–16 provides still another version of the story. Instead of a discussion between Jesus and the disciples, Mark-A presents a discussion between Herod and his court. Initially, this scene shows the same public perception of Jesus that Mark-B has. But in describing John the Baptist as one of the alternatives, it refers to John the Baptist “raised from the dead.”147 Herod examines the alternatives and describes Jesus as “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”148 This account is much briefer than that of Mark-B and John. Here Herod replaces Peter as the one making the erroneous identification and at the same

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time incorporates the idea that Jesus can be raised from the dead. Here, however, Herod sees Jesus already raised from the dead rather than someone who will be raised in the future. It is difficult to know what to do with this passage. It clearly shares the themes of erroneous identification and Jesus rising up from the dead but in ways that isolate it from both Mark-B and John. I suspect that this scene was originally one of Mark’s duplicate scenes from a second source and that he altered it in order to avoid the appearance of duplication. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll pass over this version of the story in the review below.

Scene 5a: The Public Perception of Jesus (John 6:14; Mark 8:27–28) John places this scene immediately after the miracle of the loaves. Those who saw this “sign” began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.”149 This identification appears to reference Deuteronomy 18:15, where Moses says, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet.” Mark places the scene right after the healing of the blind man in Bethsaida and shifts it to a new geographic location, Caesarea Philippi. In my reconstructed order of Mark’s scenes, it follows after the request for a sign. While traveling through the countryside Jesus asks the disciples how the public perceives him. The disciples reply, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”150 John and Mark agree that members of the public think of Jesus as someone like an ancient prophet, perhaps a prophet prophesied to appear (Elijah, one like Moses,) but they choose different role models. In either event, the public perception is wrong. Jesus is more than a prophet. John may have changed the prophet to one like Moses in order to keep within his Passover-themed framework. The scene is placed right after the multiplication of the loaves, which invokes the theme of “manna” from heaven. Also, almost immediately after, Jesus emulates Moses by miraculous crossing over the stormy sea. When Jesus arrives on the other side, he is asked to act show a sign, just as Moses did.

Scene 5b: Jesus as King (John 6:15a; Mark-B 8:29) In Mark, after the disciples tell Jesus what the public thinks, he asks them who they think he is. Peter responds, “You are the Messiah.”151 I have already discussed

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 89 the ambiguity of this answer above and pointed out that Mark’s Peter is thinking of Jesus as some sort of human earthly king rather than a supernatural being. This is close in line with the idea that Jesus is like an old time prophet, many of whom performed spectacular miracles but were still human. Jesus then instructs Peter and the disciples to say nothing about this conversation.152 In John, after the witnesses to the bread miracle acclaim Jesus as the prophet like Moses who is to come into the world, they try to force him to be king.153 As with Peter in Mark’s telling, the idea that Jesus is an earthly king is erroneous. John uses this action of forcing Jesus to become king as an excuse to explain why Jesus went up on the mountain in Scene 2b. (In Mark, Jesus went up on the mountain to pray, but John doesn’t ever show Jesus in casual prayer so he needed to replace the prayer explanation.) Jesus’ withdrawal from the crowd constitutes a rejection of their understanding about who he is. I have already discussed above the elaborate set of changes that John appears to have made to this entire act in order to protect Peter from any accusations of error. Since the identification of Jesus as king is an erroneous understanding, John has eliminated all of the apostles as the author of this declaration and alters the underlying source by substituting a different set of witnesses to the bread miracle. He has also separated these first two scenes with the erroneous perceptions of Jesus from the rest of the literary unit that accurately describes Jesus and placed them in this new location between the miracle of the loaves and the walking on water. In addition, John has given Peter a new declaration that more accurately describes Jesus and has moved this new declaration to a more helpful location. After Jesus talks about rising up (in Scene 5c) disciples desert him and he turns to the Twelve and asks if they want to leave also. Peter responds,154“Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Peter here has correctly recognized that Jesus can bring eternal life.

Scene 5c: Jesus Rising (John 6:60–65; Mark-B 8:31) John begins with “many of [Jesus’] disciples” complaining. “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”155 John doesn’t say which disciple made the remark or whether it was one of the Twelve. Implicitly, John refers back to the Bread of Life Discourse. But is that the case? The intervening statement at John 6:59 that the preceding Bread of Life Discourse took place in the Capernaum synagogue suggests that what follows may belongs to a different scene, perhaps even a different time and place.

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If that is the case, then this complaint may be a further attempt to rehabilitate Peter. In Mark, after Jesus talks about his death and resurrection, Peter becomes upset and rebukes Jesus. But Mark doesn’t tell us what Peter said. Obviously, Peter has a negative reaction to hearing about Jesus dying and doesn’t want it to happen. I suspect that John’s words about the teaching being too difficult to accept, uttered by a nameless follower, were, in the proposed common source, the words that Peter used to rebuke Jesus. If I am right about this, then John has moved the statement from after the teaching about resurrection to just before it, further isolating Peter from the negative remark. Mark has omitted the words altogether. John tells us that Jesus perceived that the disciples were complaining and said to them, “Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before [emphasis added]?”156 He continues with some teachings about the role of spirit versus flesh in bringing about eternal life and accuses some of his followers of not truly believing. “But among you there are some who do not believe.”157 Jesus’ response is somewhat ambiguous. Is it meant to assuage the discomfort of the disciples by giving them hope of resurrection or is it intended to be even more offensive than what upset them in the first place? Whatever the case, “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”158 It is unclear what “this” is. Was it the original teaching that was too difficult to accept or the talking about his ascending to where he came from? When Jesus talks about ascending to where he was before we should understand that to mean he will rise up and return to heaven. John is vague, though, as to whether or not this rising to heaven is a resurrection after death or something that happens while Jesus is still alive. In Mark-B, after Peter identifies Jesus as the messiah, Jesus announces that he will be killed off by his opponents and rise again in three days “He said all this quite openly.”159 Here we have a flat-out claim that Jesus will die and be resurrected. John and Mark depict two different sorts of rising. In John, Jesus say he will “ascend to where he was before” without any reference to his dying or any period of time before the rising. Mark talks about a rising three days after Jesus is put to death. On the other hand, we have good evidence that John knew a tradition in which Jesus claimed he would die and rise after three days. In John’s account of chasing the money-changers from the Temple when the money-changers ask him by what authority he acts, Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”160 John then adds a gloss. “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”161 He also adds that the disciples remembered

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 91 this remark when Jesus was raised from the dead.162 Clearly, John knows a story in which Jesus predicted that if he were put to death (i.e., “destroy this temple/body” and he would rise again in three days). In this scene, Mark’s prediction of Jesus (describing him as the Son of Man) dying and rising up in three days is the first of three such predictions. In John, there are three instances in which Jesus talks about the Son of Man being “lifted up” and some scholars see the three statements about being lifted up as a parallel to Mark’s three death predictions. But in this parallel scene John doesn’t talk about Jesus being “lifted up” but instead uses the word “ascending,” which is a similar concept but not identical. I suggest John may have deliberately altered the passage of personal resurrection in order not to obscure his broader teaching of eternal life for all who believe in him. This was the theme of his carefully constructed and lengthy set-up in the preceding portions of John 6. In Chapter 7 I will take a closer look at Mark’s three death predictions and John’s three declarations about being “lifted up.” At that time, I will also take a closer look at John’s alteration of this passage and suggest that he shifted the parallel to Mark’s rising up from this scene to an earlier place in his gospel, inserting it into a dialogue with Nicodemus, a character who pops up on several occasions in John.

Scene 5d: Disciples Reject the Teaching (John 6:66–68; Mark 8:32) In Mark, this teaching about dying and coming back to life upset Peter, who began to “rebuke” Jesus for this teaching. As I pointed out above, Mark doesn’t tell us what Peter actually said. I suggested the approximate words may have been preserved in John, to wit, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”163 Although not explicitly stated, I suspect that Peter’s concern was more with Jesus dying than with his resurrection. In John, we also have a negative reaction to the teaching. “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him.”164 This leads Jesus to ask if the Twelve plan to desert him too. This is where John repositions Peter’s revised declaration about Jesus. “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” In both stories the teaching about Jesus rising produces negative reactions among those who don’t yet understand what Jesus has to offer. In Mark it is Peter who reacts. In John it is those outside the Twelve. And contra to Mark, John has Peter drive home the message that Jesus can bring eternal life to those who believe.

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Scene 5e: “One of you is a devil.” (John 6:70–71; Mark 8:33) In Mark, after Peter criticizes Jesus for this teaching about his need to die, Jesus becomes angry at his chief disciple for still not getting the message. “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”165 This direct rebuke to Peter shows that his understanding of “messiah” was wrong. Peter had in mind that Jesus was a human earthly king, but Jesus belonged to a divine realm. In John, after Peter delivers John’s reworked understanding of Jesus as the bearer of eternal life, Jesus appears to compliment the disciples for getting it. “Did I not choose you, the Twelve?”166 But he adds, “Yet one of you is a devil.”167 In Mark, Jesus charged Peter with being the devil. In John, Jesus doesn’t actually say which of the disciples the devil is. John, however, adds a gloss saying that Jesus was referring to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who was to betray him.168 John has altered the scene to downplay the original accusation that Peter was the devil because he didn’t understand that Jesus operated in a divine realm. In John’s previous scene Peter correctly identifies Jesus and in this scene John removes the direct accusation against Peter from Jesus’ mouth Both John and Mark end Act 5 on this note about a disciple being the devil. For John that is the end of John 6 and he moves rapidly in a new direction in John 7. Mark, as we saw above, continues with what corresponds to Scene 4g, the teaching about how to achieve eternal life. In Chapters 6 and 7 I will also look more closely at the dialogue with Nicodemus. In the course of that analysis, I will note that John has transferred Mark’s accusation against focusing on earthly things and shifted the indictment to Nicodemus. Thus, in John, Nicodemus to a large extent serves as a lightning rod for Peter’s misunderstandings, with Jesus’ death prediction and Peter’s reaction to the death prediction (focusing on earthly things) being reassigned to the earlier Nicodemus dialogue.

Act 5 Summary Act 5 dealt with public perceptions of Jesus and problematic interactions with the disciples. Both gospels show that the public identified Jesus with ancient prophets (Scene 5a), but Mark and John disagree as to which prophets were identified. Mark says Elijah; John says Moses. John’s choice may reflect his use of Exodus themes in John 6.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 93 Both gospels also talk about Jesus being perceived as an earthly king (Scene 5b), but the gospels differ as to who made this identification. Mark says it was Peter, and Jesus called Peter a Satan for focusing on earthly versus heavenly matters. John, eager to rehabilitate Peter, says it was non-disciple witnesses to the miracle of the loaves who saw Jesus as an earthly king. He also portrayed Peter as correctly identifying Jesus and shifted the accusation of deviltry from Peter to Judas. Despite the parallel agreements on Scenes 5a and 5b, John has moved the two scenes out of order. In Mark they fall just before Jesus asks Peter who he thinks Jesus is. John has relocated the parallel scenes to an earlier location between the miracle of the loaves and the walking on water. This relocation was part of John’s rehabilitating the negative image of Peter presented in Mark. Scenes 5c–d dealt with the rejection of Jesus by disciples after making statements about rising. In Mark, Jesus talked about his need to die and rise again in three days. This led to Peter rebuking Jesus for such a teaching. In John, Jesus talks about “ascending” to where he came from (i.e., heaven) which created a commotion among his non-apostle disciples, who claimed the teaching was too difficult and rejected Jesus. Scene 5e dealt with Jesus’ reaction to the rejection. In Mark, Jesus accused Peter of focusing on earthly matters rather than divine matters and accused him of being a Satan. In John, it was disciples outside of the Twelve who rejected Jesus. Jesus then turned to the Twelve and asked if they were deserting him also. Peter responded with a correct understanding of who Jesus was. “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”169 Jesus congratulated Peter and accused one of the other disciples of being a devil. John added a gloss saying that Jesus meant Judas.

John’s Apostle Filter The analysis above showed that on several occasions John and Mark appear to tell the same story but that in Mark when the chief actors are either Peter or the twelve apostles John substitutes individuals outside of the inner circle. This is the chief reason why a number of parallels between John 6 and Mark have gone unnoticed. Once that recognition is in place the connections become clearer. Let’s review the evidence. In Mark and John, after the miracle of the loaves the apostles cross the sea by boat and Jesus walks on water. When Jesus approaches the boat, Mark and John diverge from each other. Mark shows Jesus getting in the boat and calming

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a storm; he observes that the apostles are hungry; he chastises them for failing to understand the meaning of the loaves; he warns them about seeking out the yeast of the Pharisees; and the apostles don’t understand what Jesus is teaching them. Then they arrive on shore. In John, Jesus does not get in the boat with the disciples and does not calm the storm. He performs a different miracle that sends the disciples and the boat to shore without him and he mysteriously appears on shore separately from them. On land he tells other witnesses to the bread miracle that they failed to understand the meaning of the signs they saw and warns them against seeking bread that perishes. Where Mark shows the apostles in a negative light, John inserts a different set of witnesses who take on the same negative role as Mark’s apostles. In Mark and John, we have a scene where the public perceives Jesus as an ancient prophet. They each follow this up with somebody erroneously identifying Jesus as an earthly king, but in Mark it is Peter who makes the mistake and in John it is members of the public. John adds in a scene in which Peter correctly identifies Jesus’ nature. In Mark and John, Jesus talks about some form of rising up that raises objections from his audience. In Mark it is Peter who raises the objection and in John it is unidentified disciples (outside of the inner circle). In Mark and John, Jesus directly accuses one of the disciples of being a devil. In Mark, Jesus openly identifies Peter as Satan. In John, Jesus never directly says which disciple is the devil but John adds a gloss saying that it was Judas. We have two broad differences between John’s version of events and Mark’s. First, John has presented Peter in a positive light compared to Mark’s negative portrayals in the parallel scenes. Second, where Mark has negative depictions of the apostles John has portrayed the offending parties as non-apostles. This substantial conflict between John and Mark as to the role of the apostles in the John 6 narrative arc makes it highly unlikely that Mark could have used John as a source. It is inconceivable to me that Mark would take some basic stories about misunderstanding by non-followers of Jesus and transform them into stories about misunderstandings by the apostles. Even more difficult would be changing the apostle accused of being a devil from Judas the betrayer to Peter. If we accept that John made the changes then we can further add that the rebuke over the failure to understand the meaning of the loaves almost certainly took place on the boat during the sea-crossing and John has reconstructed the scene to avoid placing Jesus in the boat with the disciples, thus isolating them from Jesus’ criticism.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 95 Once we see that John has filtered out the various references to the apostles in these stories and made the appropriate changes we can more clearly see that John and Mark, for at least this part of the narrative, follow the same set of stories in almost identical sequential order. While it seems obvious that Mark couldn’t have copied from John, an argument might be made that John copied from Mark. However, because of some of Mark’s quirks and interruptions in his sequential narrative, (particularly the jump from Mark 6:51 to 8:14), I don’t think it is likely that John could have used Mark as a source for this set of events.

Luke’s Variations from Mark Earlier in this chapter I argued that the natural continuation from Mark 6:51 (after Jesus walked on water and got on the boat with the disciples and calmed the storm) was Mark 8:14–21, which continues the boat ride to Bethsaida, during which trip Jesus chastises the disciples for not understanding the meaning of the loaves. I also argued that Mark 8:10–13 (Request for a sign) belongs after 8:22–26 (Healing of a blind man in Bethsaida). At the time of that argument I observed that both John and Luke lack everything that Mark had between Mark 6:52 and the reordered 8:14–22. This omission included Mark’s second bread miracle. Luke and John both had only one bread miracle, and they each used a version in which the numbers coincided with Mark’s first bread miracle. I thought this interesting and a possible clue in support of my argument about where Mark should have picked up after Mark 6:52. What I didn’t mention at the time was that Luke’s omission from Mark’s narrative is somewhat more extensive than just the break between Mark 6:52 and 8:14. Luke also omits from the larger narrative sequence several of the scenes that have parallels in Mark and John. The most significant omission is the crossing of the sea after the bread miracle, an event that both Mark and John agree took place. Luke jumps from the bread miracle (Scene 2a) to Jesus’ inquiry about who the people think he is (Scene 5a). Luke has also omitted Scene 5c, the Satan accusation against one of the disciples. All of these additional omissions, as we have seen above, have parallels in Mark and John. A closer look at Luke, however, indicates that Luke has moved these missing parallels into a different location and into a different context. Let me review what Luke has done.

The Sea Voyage While Luke’s gospel omits the story of Jesus walking on water, other portions of the sea voyage appear to have been moved elsewhere in his gospel, placing them

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into different contexts. The most obvious clue is Mark’s warning about the yeast of the Pharisees, which led to Jesus’ chastisement of the disciples. Luke’s version of the miracle of the loaves occurs at Luke 9:10–17. If we jump to Luke 12:1, we find the following: “Meanwhile, when the crowd gathered by the thousands, so that they trampled on one another, he began to speak first to his disciples, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, that is, their hypocrisy.’ ”170 Luke has completely severed the “yeast” passage from Mark’s original context. Just prior to the warning, Luke depicts a group of Pharisees angrily criticizing him and questioning him in order to lay a trap.171 Luke has identified the “yeast” as the “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees rather than their teachings. The yeast verse is followed by several Jesus teachings about the need to acknowledge the son of Man in order to be saved and how the Holy Spirit will help the disciples speak out against further accusations in the synagogues.172 Luke has used the “yeast” warning to bolster the resolve of the disciples and has eliminated Mark’s chastisement for their failure to understand the warning and the meaning of the loaves. Instead he has directed the criticisms to the “hypocrisy” of the Pharisees. Another clue from the sea voyage has to do with Mark’s notice that the disciples were frightened by the appearance of Jesus walking on water and their thought that he was a ghost. I noted that John’s version of the walking on water lacked the ghost reference. Luke, on the other hand, appears to have moved Mark’s Jesus-ghost imagery into a post-resurrection setting. In the post-crucifixion segment when Jesus appears to the disciples, Luke says, “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.”173 I’ll discuss this scene more fully in Chapter 14. For now, however, I note that the language seems borrowed from Mark’s sea voyage and placed into a context where the disciples might be expected to think they were seeing a ghost. In support of the parallel I note that these Jesus-ghost incidents in Mark and Luke are the only times either has a scene in which disciples think an image of Jesus is a ghost. A third artifact from the sea voyage comes from Luke’s claim that the miracle of the loaves occurred in Bethsaida.174 Mark, as I argued above, says that Jesus and the disciples were crossing over to Bethsaida after the feeding of the five thousand. Since Luke has eliminated the sea voyage, he appears to have placed the miracle of the loaves at the location that would have been where Jesus and the crew landed after the crossing.

The Request for a Sign Closely related to the sea voyage is the request for a sign after Jesus has landed the boat. In Mark, the request for a sign comes immediately after the Sea ­Voyage,

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 97 although I argued that Mark has reversed the order of the request for a sign and the sea voyage from that in the proposed common source. Luke, at the very minimum, knows that Mark has placed the “sign” scene right after the sea voyage following Mark’s second story about the miracle of the loaves. In my reconstructed version of Mark’s sequential narrative, after crossing over to Bethsaida (and after healing a blind man there,) Pharisees asked Jesus for a sign and Jesus responded, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” Luke appears to have moved the request for a sign into a different context. Mark has a story about Jesus being accused of doing exorcisms with the aid of a demon.175 Luke has added to that story a feature missing from Mark’s version. “Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven.”176 This is the first part of Mark’s “sign” story. A little further on, according to Luke, Jesus says, “This generation is an evil generation; it asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.”177 This is a variation on the second part of Mark’s sign story, about the generation wanting a sign, but in this case Luke’s version is filtered through a Q overlay.178 Although the two parts are separated, they are part of a connected series of teachings to a growing crowd. Shortly after that, as part of the ongoing interaction between Jesus and others at the location, Luke inserts the “yeast” passage. Luke has placed the yeast warning and the request for a sign and Jesus’ response in a close narrative proximity occurring on the same day but has completely isolated the events from their original context and has transferred the negative criticism of the disciples to a negative criticism of the Pharisees.

The Satan Accusation In Scene 5c, dealing with the identity of Jesus, after Peter rebukes Jesus for talking about his death and rising up, Jesus accused Peter of being an agent of Satan. John altered the scene by having Jesus say that one of the disciples was an agent of Satan but didn’t have him say who he was referring to. John added a gloss to indicate that the disciple referred to was Judas. Luke has omitted that scene. However, he appears to have again shifted a scene into a different context that eliminates the negative context. In Luke, moments before the arrival of the police to arrest Jesus, he says to Peter, “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”179 These verses strike me as a

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s­anitized version of the Satan accusation that takes away the negative impact of Jesus’ original accusation and places Peter in a more venerated situation.

Summary of Luke’s Variations The two broad areas that we have explored above include the sea voyage (and its immediate aftermath) and the Satan accusation. In Mark, both events involve negative depictions of Peter and/or the disciples as a group. John has altered these scenes to eliminate any criticism of the disciples, but has maintained a close sequential agreement with Mark as to the unfolding of these events. Luke, on the other hand, has also altered these scenes to eliminate negative images of Peter but in less obvious ways and in a more scattered and disguised manner, moving the pieces out of the original narrative sequence. On a pragmatic level, it seems fair to say that John 6 adheres more closely to Mark’s sequential order than does Luke’s. Having explained Luke’s additional departure from Mark’s sequential narrative, we are back to the interesting omission in both John and Luke of the duplicative material in Mark. At this point in the analysis, we may have only a coincidence, but as other parallels build up in the course of the subsequent analysis and it becomes clear that Mark, Luke and John know a common source, the coincidence becomes further evidence that Mark has disrupted the original narrative to account for his duplicative material. In the course of my analysis in the subsequent chapters, agreements between John and Luke against Mark will often be considered evidence of what was in the proposed common source.

The Sequential Evidence I have divided John 6 into 32 consecutive scenes and attached an additional scene from John 5, the death threat against Jesus for healing on the Sabbath, 33 scenes in all. With the exception of the Passover announcement, Scene 1d, I have identified a parallel scene in Mark for each of the other 32 scenes in John. In the analysis above, I have also made argument that certain scenes in John and Mark are out of their proper narrative order. What I plan to do here is first explore the degree of sequential correlation between John and Mark if no changes are made to the existing order in either gospel and then look at how much additional correlation we find once my proposed re-ordering is introduced. Table 2.4, List of Scenes in John 6 and Mark that appear in the same narrative order, lists just those scenes in Mark and John where

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 99 Table 2.4:  Scenes in John 6 and Mark following same narrative order Scene

Description

1a

Authorities threatened to kill Jesus because he 5:1–47 healed on the Sabbath. Jesus departed (fled?) to the Sea of Galilee. 6:1 A large crowd greeted him. 6:2 Jesus had a reputation for healing. 6:2 Jesus went up on a mountain with his disciples. 6:3 Jesus wanted the disciples to feed a large crowd. 6:5–6 The cost was estimated at over 200 denarii. 6:7 There were only five loaves of bread. 6:9 There were only two fish. 6:9 Jesus blessed the food. 6:11 The available food fed the entire crowd. 6:12 Leftovers filled twelve baskets. 6:13 The disciples encountered a stormy sea. 6:18 Jesus walked across the water and caught up to 6:19 the boat. The disciples were frightened. 6:19 Jesus said, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” 6:20 A second miracle occurred at sea. 6:21 Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves were 6:25 astonished by the second miracle. Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves were 6:26 hungry. Jesus told the witnesses not to seek after ordinary 6:27 bread. The witnesses didn’t understand this teaching. 6:28 Jesus spoke about rising up. 6:60–65 Disciples of Jesus rejected this teaching. 6:66–69 Jesus accused a disciple of being a devil. 6:70–71

1b 1c 1d 1e 2a 2b 2c 2d 2f 2g 2h 3a 3b 3c 3d 3e 4a 4b 4d 4e 5c 5d 5e

John

Mark 3:1–6 3:7 3:7 3:8 3:13–19 6:37 6:37 6:38 6:38 6:41 6:42 6:43 6:48 6:48 6:49 6:50 6:51 6:51 8:14 8:15 8:16 8:31–32 8:32 8:33

we currently find sequential agreement. For this purpose, I didn’t distinguish between Mark-A and Mark-B. I chose only one of the two scenes where there were duplicates. Table 2.4 shows 24 of the 33 scenes in the same sequential order. That constitutes just under a 75% agreement in the sequential order over a lengthy narrative arc. Even without reordering the other scenes this suggests a strong ­literary

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connection between John and Mark for this portion of the gospel. Either John copied from Mark or both copied from an earlier written source. In the course of my analysis I argued that John switched the order of Scenes 2i and 2j (transition between the miracle of the loaves and walking on water) and moved Scenes 5a (erroneous perception of Jesus as a prophet) and 5b (erroneous perception of Jesus as an earthly king) out of order. I also proposed that Mark moved three Scenes out of order: 2e (the crowd numbered 5,000 people); 4c (witnesses did not understand the meaning of the loaves); and 4f (request for a sign). There are also two additional scenes that presented problems. John’s Passover announcement (1f ) is not present in Mark and we can’t determine if John added it or Mark removed it. This is the only incident in John 6 that isn’t paralleled in Mark. There is also the matter of the speech on obtaining eternal life (4g). Mark places it immediately after Act 5. John places it immediately before Act 5. That the scene is narratively linked to Act 5, “Who is Jesus?,” seems clear. Who has the correct order is difficult to say. It is my default position that, absent contrary evidence, I follow Mark’s order of events. John’s switch in the order of two consecutive scenes (2i and 2j) is trivial, as is Mark’s placement of the 5000 people (2e) within the story of the miracle of the loaves. The slight variation in narrative order does not in any way negatively impact the issue of whether John knew written Mark or Mark’s written source. They reflect simple editorial resequencing within a very short story that simply reflects the author’s judgement about how to order the details within a story. For all practical purposes, the present locations of those three scenes is consistent with the two authors both independently knowing a common written sequential order that included all three scenes in their original locations. That leaves only four out of 33 scenes that depart in a meaningful way from a common sequential order. The two variations in John (5a, 5b) were easily explained as part of John’s effort to rehabilitate a negative image of Peter as presented in Mark. The two scenes in Mark (4c, 4f ) are the product of Mark’s need to re-edit a series of similar stories to avoid the appearance of duplication. Given the high degree of sequential correlation, there should be little doubt that, at least for John 6, the evangelist clearly knew a long narrative arc that had the same sequential order that Mark knew. Given that both Mark and John each appear to have moved scenes out of order, plus John’s ability to track a parallel narrative that required a jump from Mark 6:51 to Mark 8:14, it is unlikely either is the written source for the other. Further confirmation of that thesis will be provided by the evidence presented in subsequent chapters.

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Summary In the course of our examination of John 6 and its relationship to Mark, we uncovered several useful pieces of evidence. The following list outlines the key pieces of information.











• Mark appears to have worked from at least two copies of an underlying source document that had some differences among several overlapping stories. In order to integrate both sources into his narrative and avoid the appearance of duplication, he rearranged scenes and redacted details from several stories. • The natural continuation of Mark 6:51 (calming of stormy sea) is Mark 8:14:21 (warning about yeast of Pharisees) but Mark broke the link and inserted several stories in between. This suggests that he has altered a written source. • The reconnection of Mark 6:51 to Mark 8:14 shows that Mark 8:10–13 (request for a sign) originally followed after Mark 8:14–26. • John and Luke omit all of Mark’s extra stories between Mark 6:51 and 8:14. • Mark has a previously unrecognized doublet of the calming of the sea miracle and may have deleted a second walking on water scene from his longer version of the calming of the stormy sea. • John moved John 6:14–15a, the public perception of Jesus as either a prophet or earthly king, from its original position between John 6:59 and 6:60 to its present position, an indication that John altered a written source. • John had an editorial agenda that included the elimination of negative portrayals of the apostles by shifting the behavior to those outside the inner circle. He also replaced negative images of Peter with positive images. I identified this editorial process as an “Apostle Filter.” • Luke appears to have used a similar filter but amended the scenes by transferring troubling portrayals into different contexts.

For the purpose of analysis, I divided all of John 6 into 32 consecutive scenes. I also added, for contextual reasons, the preceding scene from John 5 for a total of 33 scenes in all. Without recording any of the verses in either gospel, we saw that at least 24 of these scenes unfolded in the same sequential order that Mark had, a sequential agreement of just under 75% over a lengthy narrative arc. Even without restoring seven of the out-of-order scenes in Mark or John to the rightful place in the sequential narrative, we could see that the two authors must have each known a written source that contained at least 31 of those scenes in the same sequential order. Of the remaining two scenes, one was a Passover announcement that appeared in John but not in Mark. The other was a teaching about eternal life that appears to be closely connected to the Act 5 “Who is Jesus?” unit. John places the incident immediately before Act 5. Mark places it immediately after. The lack of agreement

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suggests one of the two evangelists changed the order of the eternal life discourse and we can’t be certain who did so. Nevertheless, it is clear that it belongs with the 31-scene narrative arc that unfolds in the same sequential order. While we clearly have a sequential agreement for a large number of scenes, Mark and John disagree as to whether the scenes were narratively connected or represented isolated events that follow one after the other. In that regard we saw that Mark depicted Scenes 4e and 4f as unconnected scenes taking place in different geographic locations and that John deliberately omitted the narrative shift from a group of witnesses to the bread miracle on shore to a synagogue congregation that knew nothing about the bread miracle. At the same time Mark has a large amount of narrative material between the end of scene 1e and the start of scene 2a. Although John implies that Scenes 1a–1e flowed contiguously into scene 2a, his placement of the Passover announcement in between showed that John 6 contains a chronological gap at the same location where Mark has several additional stories. It is possible therefore that John could have deleted or relocated some of the material in Mark’s narrative sequence. The evidence suggests that Mark knew at least two written sources for the parallel set of scenes that appear in John 6 and that he must have relied on those sources for his gospel accounts, making a number of editorial redactions and changes to avoid the appearance of repeating himself with duplicate scenes. Because of variations in Mark’s two sources we have to assume that either Mark thought that some or all of the similar scenes were independent events or that he couldn’t clearly choose which version of events to follow and integrated both in a redacted format in an effort to harmonize his multiple sources. Because Mark’s two different versions of the bread miracle differ in assorted ways from John 6’s version, we have to conclude that in this early stage of transmission the texts were not yet fixed as to details within stories and that small changes were introduced into the manuscripts as they were copied over for transmission. That John and Luke both agree that there was only one miracle of the loaves, one that was consistent with the numeric details in the earlier Mark-A version, then that would have been the version that appeared in the proposed common source (subject to proof that such a common source existed). The long sequential agreement between John 6 and Mark clearly indicate some sort of literary connection between the two that involved a lengthy manuscript (for at least this part of John) containing all the events in John 6 (except possibly for the Passover announcement). What is that literary relationship? Because of John’s Apostle Filter I don’t think it is reasonable to conclude that Mark copied from John. So, either John copied from a written version of Mark or both knew a common written source for at least the events in John 6. The fact

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 103 that the enhanced sequential agreement between John and Mark is based, in part, on the re-ordered version of Mark rather than Mark as it now appears provides a strong clue that John probably used a version of Mark’s source rather than Mark. Table 2.5, Proposed common source sequence behind John 6 and Mark, shows my reconstruction of the narrative order of events so far discussed. It follows my reordered sequences for Mark and John. The list includes locations where other stories may have been present in the proposed common source. I also list some of the events that John appears to have omitted, such as certain exorcisms and the call of the disciples. In the table, I have placed an asterisk in the Scene column where John chose to remove scenes from his gospel. John’s omitted scenes will be added in to the final reconstruction of the original proposed common source. Highlighted cells in the Descriptions column indicate where additional scenes from the proposed common source may have been located but not yet confirmed. Italicized text in the Descriptions column indicates a short commentary on the scene. Highlighted verses indicate where a gospel departed from the sequential order of the proposed common source. Table 2.5:  Proposed scene order in underlying source behind John 6 and Mark Scene

Description

John

Mark

1a

Authorities threatened to kill Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath. Jesus departed (fled?) to the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him Jesus had a reputation for signs/healings Jesus conducted many exorcisms. Jesus went up on a mountain with his disciples. Jesus appointed the twelve apostles. Possible location of other stories. To be developed later. This Passover announcement may have been present in source but we lack sufficient evidence. Jesus wanted the disciples to feed a large crowd. The cost was estimated at over 200 denarii. There were only five loaves of bread. There were only two fish. The crowd consisted of 5,000 people. Jesus blessed the food. The available food fed the entire crowd. Leftovers filled twelve baskets.

5:1–47

3:1–6

6:1 6:2 6:2

3:7 3:7 3:8 3:10–11 3:13 3:14–19

1b 1c 1d * 1e * 1f 2a 2b 2c 2d 2e 2f 2g 2h

6:3

6:4 6:5–6 6:7 6:9 6:9 6:10 6:11 6:12 6:13

6:37 6:37 6:38 6:38 6:44 6:41 6:42 6:43 Continued 

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Table 2.5:  Continued Scene

Description

John

2j

The disciples got in a boat without Jesus and sailed off to sea. Jesus went up on a mountain and prayed. John omitted the prayer and offered a different reason for going up the mountain The disciples encountered a stormy sea. Jesus walked across the water and caught up to the boat. The disciples were frightened. Jesus says, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” Jesus got in the boat In John, Jesus doesn’t get in the boat. Jesus calmed the storm. John substituted a different miracle that placed the boat on shore Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves were astonished by the second miracle at sea. Witnesses to the miracle of the loaves were hungry. Jesus chastised the witnesses for not understanding the meaning of the miracle of the loaves. Jesus told the witnesses not to seek after ordinary bread. The witnesses didn’t understand the teaching. Possible narrative location for the healing of the blind man with saliva. The crowd asked Jesus for a sign but no sign was provided. Erroneous perception of Jesus as a prophet. Erroneous perception of Jesus as an earthly king. Jesus spoke about rising up. Disciples of Jesus rejected this teaching. Jesus accused a disciple of being a devil. Jesus taught how to obtain eternal life. John introduced the concept of Jesus as the Bread of Life.

6:16–17 6:45

2i 3a 3b 3c 3d

3e 4a 4b 4c 4d 4e

4f 5a 5b 5c 5d 5e 4g

Mark

6:15

6:46

6:18 6:19

6:48 6:48

6:19 6:20

6:49 6:50 6:51

6:21

6:51

6:25

6:51

6:26 6:26

8:14 8:17–21

6:27

8:15

6:28

8:16 8:22–26

6:30–34 8:11–13 6:14 6:15 6:60–65 6:66–69 6:70–71 6:35–58

8:27–28 8:27–28 8:31–32 8:32 8:33 8:34:9:1

An asterisk in the Scene column indicates additional scenes that John chose to omit from his gospel. Highlighted Descriptions indicate where additional scenes may have been but not yet confirmed. Italicized text indicates commentary on the scene. Highlighted verses indicate where a gospel departed from the proposed original source order.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 105

Notes 1. I will argue in this chapter that John 6 also contains an unacknowledged eighth prePassion miracle. 2. (Brown, New Testament Essays 1965), 269. 3. (Aland 1985), 128. 4. Mark 6:30–44, 8:1–9. 5. Mark 6:14–16, 8:27–30. 6. Mark 6:51–52, 8:14–21. 7. Mark 6:51. 8. Mark 6:48. 9. (Nelson 1979), 295; (Neil S. Wilson, Linda K. Taylor 2001), 356. 10. (Meier 1994), 905. 11. (Meier 1994), 905 12. (Meier 1994), 905 13. (Meier 1994), 951–956. Meier includes charts supplied by Raymond Brown. 14. (Brown, New Testament Essays 1965), 268–9. 15. (Brown, New Testament Essays 1965), 269. 16. (Meier 1994), 697. 17. John  6:2. 18. John  6:3. 19. John 4:46–54. 20. John 4:54. There is a similar problem at John 2:23, where there is a claim that witnesses had seen multiple signs, even though this comes before John reports on the “second sign” that Jesus performed. I’ll deal with that problem in Chapter 6. 21. John  2:11. 22. Mark  3:6. 23. Mark  3:7. 24. Mark  3:8. 25. Mark 3:11–12. 26. Mark  3:13. 27. Luke 6:11–19. 28. Mark  1:39. 29. John  20:30. 30. Mark 3:10–11. 31. John 6:67, 20:24. 32. Mark  6:32. 33. Mark  6:33. 34. Mark  6:34. 35. Mark  6:34. 36. (Aland 1985), 135.

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3 7. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

(Dewey and Miller 2012), 87. Mark 6:7–12, 30. Mark  6:34. Mark  6:34. Mark  14:27. Matthew 14:13–21, 15:32–39. Luke 9:10–17. Mark  6:37. Mark  6:41. Mark 8:6–7; John 6:11. Mark 8:4; John 6:5. Mark  6:39. It is widely argued that Mark-A refers to a Jewish outreach by Jesus and Mark-B refers to a gentile outreach. 50. Mark  6:37. 51. Mark  8:4. 52. John  6:5. 53. John  6:6. 54. The menorah that stood in the first temple had seven branches (Exodus 25:32). The menorah used in the Festival of Dedication (Hanukah) has nine branches. 55. Mark  8:1. 56. Mark  6:45. 57. Mark  6:46. 58. John 6:14–15. 59. John  6:15. 60. John 6:16–17. 61. Cf. Mark 1:35, 14:32. 62. Mark 10:47–48. 63. John  6:22. 64. See John 7:30, 44, 10:39. 65. John  6:21. 66. Exodus 14:21–22. 67. Exodus 14:26–27. 68. Exodus  14:27. 69. John  6:17. 70. John  6:22. 71. Mark  6:50. 72. Mark  6:20. 73. Mark 6:51–52. 74. John  6:21. 75. John  6:22.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 107 76. John 6:24. 77. John 6:25. 78. Mark 4:35. 79. Mark 4:35–41. 80. Mark 4:36. 81. Mark 4:36. 82. Mark 4:38. 83. Mark 4:39. 84. Mark 4:35. 85. Mark 4:36. 86. Mark 4:36. 87. Mark 6:45. 88. Mark 6:53. 89. (Freedman 1992), s.v., Gennesaret (Place). 90. Mark 6:49–50. 91. Mark 8:10. 92. Mark 8:11. 93. Mark 8:12. 94. Mark 8:13. 95. Mark 8:22. 96. Mark 6:51b–52. 97. Mark 8:14–21. 98. Mark 8:14–21. 99. Mark 8:16. 100. Mark  8:17. 101. Mark 8:19–20. 102. Mark  8:21. 103. (Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII 1966), 272. 104. Mark  6:49. 105. Mark  8:15. 106. Mark  8:16. 107. John  6:25. 108. John  6:26. 109. John  6:27. 110. John  6:28. 111. John  6:27 112. John  6:28. 113. John  6:29. 114. John  6:31. 115. John  6:32. 116. Mark  8:15.

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1 17. Matthew 16:12. Matthew has substituted Sadducees for Mark’s Herod. 118. John  6:29. 119. John  6:30. 120. John  6:31. 121. John 6:32–33. 122. John  6:59. 123. Mark  8:11. 124. Mark  8:12. 125. John  6:40. 126. John  6:42. 127. John 6:49–50. 128. John  6:51. 129. John  6:52. 130. John  6:53. 131. John  6:58. 132. Mark  14:22. 133. Mark 14:23–24. 134. Mark  8:35. 135. Mark  8:38. 136. John  6:66. 137. Daniel  7:13. 138. Mark  8:33. 139. John  6:15. 140. Mark  8:33. 141. John 6:61–62. 142. John  6:63. 143. John  6:66. 144. John  6:69. 145. John  6:70. 146. John  6:71. 147. Mark  6:14. 148. Mark  6:16. 149. John  6:14. 150. Mark  8:28. 151. Mark  8:29. 152. Mark  8:30. 153. John  6:15a. 154. John 6:68–69. 155. John  6:60. 156. John 6:61–62. 157. John  6:64.

A Trail of Breadcrumbs | 109 158. John  6:66. 159. Mark  8:32. 160. John  2:19. 161. John  2:21. 162. John  2:22. 163. John  6:60. 164. John  6:66. 165. Mark  8:33. 166. John  6:70. 167. John  6:70. 168. John  6:71. 169. John  6:68. 170. Luke  12:1. 171. Luke 11:53–54. 172. Luke 12:4–12. 173. Luke  24:37. 174. Luke  9:10. 175. Mark 3:20–30. 176. Luke  11:16. 177. Luke  11:29. 178. (Kloppenborg 1987), 75. 179. Luke 22:31–32.

Bibliography Aland, Kurt. 1985. Synopsis of the Four Gospels. English Edition, Revised printing. New York: American Bible Society. Brown, Raymond E. 1965. New Testament Essays. New York: Doubleday Religion. Brown, Raymond E. 1966. The Gospel According to John I-XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Dewey, Arthur J., and Robert J. Miller. 2012. The Complete Gospel Parallels. Salem: Polebridge Press. Freedman, D. N., ed. 1992. Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday. Kloppenborg, John S. 1987. The Formation of Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Meier, John P. 1994. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vols. Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles. 4 vols. New York: Doubleday. Nelson, Thomas. 1979. Nelson’s Complete Book of Bible Maps and Charts. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers. Wilson, Neil S., and Linda K. Taylor. 2001. Tyndale Handbook of Bible Charts and Maps. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers.

3

The Paralytic on the Mat

In Chapter 2 I analyzed what I called the Prelude, a parallel between Mark 3:1– 19 and John 5–6:3. Both gospel segments began with a Sabbath healing story that culminated in hostility between Jesus and the authorities. These Sabbath incidents, as previously discussed, were immediately followed in both gospels by four additional parallel events. At the time, I indicated that the content of the two Sabbath stories was significantly different and that for the purpose of analysis I was only concerned at that time with what occurred in each gospel following the onset of hostility towards Jesus after he healed on the Sabbath. In John, the Sabbath story takes up all of John 5. In Mark, it is limited to just a few verses at Mark 3:1–6. In this chapter I will take a detailed look at how John 5 interacts with Mark. The connections are far more extensive than they appear on the surface and extend beyond Mark’s Sabbath story. In John 5, Jesus heals a paralyzed man who was sitting on a mat and tells him to pick up his mat and walk. In Mark 2:1–12, Jesus also encounters a paralyzed man sitting on a mat and tells him to pick up his mat and walk. In John, the story takes place on a Sabbath day in Jerusalem and leads to charges of blasphemy and violating the Sabbath. Mark’s story also leads to charges of blasphemy, but his story is situated in Capernaum, in Galilee, and it doesn’t take place on a Sabbath, so Mark has no Sabbath conflicts in his version.

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Among New Testament scholars there is some debate as to whether a literary connection exists between John’s story of the healing of the paralytic and Mark’s.1 Because of the many differences between the two gospel accounts most scholars reject any connection, arguing that the two stories constitute separate independent events. At the same time, however, many scholars have also called into question John’s claim that the healing happened on a Sabbath.2 John P. Meier, for example, who sees the two gospel stories as independent of each other, does believe the Sabbath infraction was a later amendment to the underlying tale.3 Johannine scholar Urban von Wahlde acknowledges the awkwardness of the Sabbath claim and suggests that it was probably added to the text to explain what followed afterwards.4 Much of what follows, though, depends on the claim that the event happened on a Sabbath. This suggests to me that John inserted the Sabbath claim in order to address additional issues through the story of healing the paralytic. While Mark’s story about the paralytic doesn’t occur on the Sabbath, it appears in very close narrative proximity to two stories that do take place on the Sabbath and both involve hostile confrontations. One tells of the apostles plucking grain on the Sabbath5 and the other deals with Jesus healing a man with a withered hand, which follows immediately after the grain incident.6 The latter story is the one I used for comparative purposes in Chapter 2’s analysis of the Prelude. The closeness of these two Sabbath violation stories to Mark’s account of the paralytic provides a clue that something in those Sabbath stories may have induced John to incorporate some of those Sabbath issues into his own account of the paralytic. Mark’s sequence of three stories raise several overlapping theological issues. It is my argument below that John knew versions of Mark’s three-story sequence and found Mark’s depiction of these issues troubling. In the paralytic story, for example, Mark says that Jesus claimed to have authority to forgive sins. In Mark’s apostle story, Jesus says that he is the Lord of the Sabbath. These piecemeal depictions of Jesus’ authority could have been interpreted to mean that there were some areas in which Jesus didn’t have authority. This, I suspect, troubled John, because in his account of healing the paralytic on the Sabbath, John’s Jesus claims the Father gave him all authority to make judgments on all issues.7 In Mark’s two Sabbath conflict stories, Jesus engages in legal arguments to show that his actions fall under the law. In John’s Sabbath story, however, he makes no legal defense of his actions, claiming that his authority comes directly from the Father and he is, therefore, not bound by the law. In Mark’s story of

The Paralytic on the Mat | 113 the paralytic, Jesus says that the healing proves he has authority to act. This is in line with his legal defenses in the Sabbath stories, an attempt to show that Jesus functions within the law. John, however, appears to reject that approach, since his authority to act comes directly from the Father, not the Law. While John acknowledges that deeds are evidence of a connection to God, his story of the Sabbath conflict, as we shall see, suggests that he wants people to accept Jesus’ authority to exercise judgment based on the words he teaches and not on the deeds he performs. In Mark, the apostles engage in what appears to be a clear violation of the Sabbath. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, John altered stories that portray the apostles in a negative light by substituting non-apostles for the apostles. The above examples give some evidence that John is addressing multiple issues spread out through Mark’s three stories. For these and other reasons, it is my view that John melded together all three of Mark’s stories to provide a single integrated account that addressed the overlapping theological concerns those stories presented to John. To the best of my knowledge the idea that John merged the story of the paralytic with that of the two Sabbath conflicts remains original with me. John’s transformation of the material has made it extremely difficult to see the many connections between all three stories in Mark and John 5, but careful analysis below will reveal that John 5 does indeed derive from a combination of these three stories in Mark.

The Man on the Mat in Mark 2:1–12 According to Mark, early in Jesus’ mission, before he had aroused any antagonism from hostile opponents to his teachings, he had developed a reputation for healing and exorcism.8 Upon completing a mission that involved numerous exorcisms and healings he returned home to Capernaum.9 When the local residents learned he had come back, a large crowd gathered, blocking access through the doorway.10 As the crowd listened to Jesus, four men carrying a paralytic on a mat appeared.11 Unable to get past the crowd in order to reach Jesus, they climbed on to the roof of his house, dug a hole through it, and lowered the paralytic on the mat down before him.12 Duly impressed with their faith, Jesus turned to the paralytic and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”13 Nearby, several scribes were seated. Somehow, among the din and from a distance, they were able to hear Jesus’ words from inside the house and they began to discuss amongst themselves what Jesus had just said.14 “Why does this fellow

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speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone [emphasis added]?”15 Jesus realized they were discussing this issue and rebuked them. “Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Stand up and take your mat and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins [emphasis added]”16 he turned to the paralytic and said, “I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”17 The now-healed paralytic followed Jesus’ command and picked up his mat and walked away, but he never said anything to Jesus about what happened. Implicitly, Jesus had healed the paralytic moments earlier when he told the man his sins were forgiven but nobody, including the paralytic, realized that until Jesus told him to get up. The crowd was amazed at what happened and glorified God. “We have never seen anything like this!”18 Mark doesn’t specifically say how the scribes reacted, but they may have been among those who were astonished at what had just transpired. As I observed above, the main message of this story is that by healing the paralytic Jesus proves that the “Son of Man” is authorized to forgive sins in the here and now. Keep in mind that the story only shows an authority to forgive sins; it doesn’t indicate authority to undertake any other actions that may seem to violate Jewish law.

The Man on the Mat in John 5 John’s story of the healing of a paralytic on a mat encompasses a wider range of activity than Mark’s because he placed the event on a Sabbath. This leads to more extensive confrontation because of alleged Sabbath violations in addition to accusations of blasphemy. I have divided John 5 into four broad sections, each described below. 1) John 5:1–9a: In this section Jesus comes upon the Jerusalem gate and sees many invalids lying about the porches around a pool known for its curative powers. He noticed one invalid, a man lying on his mat unable to walk, who looked as if he had been suffering by the pool for a long time. John says the affliction had lasted for 38 years but we are not told how he knows that detail. Jesus approached the man and asked if he would like to be made well. The man responded that he has no one to help him into the water when it is stirred up (presumably when the healing powers are released) and whenever he tries to get

The Paralytic on the Mat | 115 over to the pool people get in front of him and block his way. Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.”19 Suddenly, the man was cured. He picked up his mat and walked off but said nothing to Jesus about what had just happened. 2) John 5:9b–13: As the man walks off with his mat, John tells us for the first time that this day was a Sabbath. This meant that carrying the mat pursuant to Jesus’ instructions would have been a violation of the Sabbath proscription against labor. As the healed paralytic walked on, some Jews confronted him about this illegal behavior. The man responded that the person who had made him well told him to pick up the mat and walk. When the crowd asked who told him to do this, he looked around, but Jesus had disappeared into the crowd and the man didn’t know his name. 3) John 5:14–18: Later, Jesus encountered the man in the temple and said, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you [emphasis added].”20 Implicit in Jesus’ instruction, but not specifically set forth, is that the man had been made well because his sins had now been forgiven. During this second encounter between the man and Jesus, the healed paralytic identified Jesus to the crowd as the man who cured him and told him to pick up the mat. This led the Jews to start “persecuting” Jesus for “doing such things on the Sabbath.”21 Presumably, but not explicitly stated, the complaint is about Jesus healing on the Sabbath as opposed to telling the man to pick up his mat and violate the Sabbath but it may also be the case that both actions are the subject of the accusation. The text is also vague as to the nature of this persecution at this point in time and there is no indication yet of any actual attempt to physically harm Jesus. In response, Jesus confronted the crowd and defended his actions by declaring that “My Father is still working, and I also am working.”22 According to John, For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.23

The idea that Jews thought Jesus made himself equal to God by referring to the deity as his Father seems somewhat inconsistent with John 8:41, where the Jews say, “we have one father, God himself.” But, let’s put that aside. Despite the alleged threats, no physical assault takes place. I say alleged because John doesn’t describe any hostile actions. He merely asserts that this is what the Jews wanted to do. This is the first reference to any previous desire to kill Jesus

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for the Sabbath violation, and presumably it relates back to the earlier vague reference to “persecution”, but this alleged hostile desire is revealed only in the later context of wanting to kill Jesus for blasphemy. Note here a slight but significant editorial shift from Mark’s version of the story. In Mark, it is Jesus’ statement that sins have been forgiven that leads to the charge of blasphemy; in John, Jesus also said, implicitly, that the sins had been forgiven, but that is not what leads to the accusation of blasphemy. It is his very next statement, that he and the Father are both working, that induces the crowd to charge blasphemy. In both stories, Jesus forgives sins and in both stories Jesus is accused of blasphemy for equating himself with God. But John has placed a narrative barrier between the forgiving of sins and the charge of blasphemy by inserting a statement in between the two events, a statement introduced as a defense against the charge of violating the Sabbath. John has shifted the story away from accusing Jesus of blasphemy for forgiving sins and has placed the blasphemy in the context of defending his Sabbath actions by claiming that he and the Father are both working. 4) John 5:19–47: Although the crowd had just expressed its desire to kill Jesus for violating the Sabbath and for blasphemy, Jesus remains in place, unharmed, and launches into a long speech in which he defines his relation to the Father and argues that if the Jews believed in Moses they would believe in him, because Moses wrote about him. The speech is steeped in Johannine theology and it is mostly material that Mark would not have included if it was found in his source. Among the things Jesus says in this speech we have the following.



• “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son [emphasis added].”24 • “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life [emphasis added].”25 • For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself.26 • “and [the Father] has given him [i.e., Jesus] authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man [emphasis added].”27

Observations John and Mark both link “authority” to make judgments to the fact that Jesus is “the Son of Man.” But in Mark, Jesus offers the healing as proof of his authority.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 117 In John, on the other hand, Jesus doesn’t claim that healing the paralytic proves he has authority. Jesus just asserts that he has been given all authority to execute judgement and offers eternal life to those who “hear his words and believe.” In Mark, Jesus was given authority to forgive sins and heal in the present. John has expanded upon that principle, saying that he has been given authority to determine who will receive eternal life in the future, a power which includes the authority to forgive sins but encompasses so much more. John’s Jesus has the authority to act above and outside the law. John 5 ends with Jesus still addressing the crowd and invoking Moses as his witness. Despite the alleged death threats, no further action is described. No one tries to stone or arrest Jesus. The next thing we know, Jesus is heading towards Galilee at the beginning of John 6.

Comparing John and Mark re Healing the Paralytic John and Mark share several story elements in their respective accounts of the healing of the paralytic but some of the most important parallels appear in differing contexts. We also find several significant differences in the story details. Because of the different contexts and major inconsistencies most scholars tend to consider the two stories independent of each other, based on unrelated incidents. However, as I will show below, when we examine the way in which the two stories differ, we will see that John has simply replaced the underlying theological motifs with a Johannine agenda. When this is accounted for, we will see that John and Mark worked from a common version of the underlying story about healing of the paralytic. I’ll start with a brief summary of the ways in which John and Mark intersect with respect to the healing of the paralytic. Next, I’ll review the significant ways in which the two stories diverge. Lastly, I’ll show how almost all those differences can be reconciled.

Points of Intersection When we compare the two stories about the healing of the paralytic certain common elements emerge but in some instances the contexts differ.

• In both stories there is a paralytic on a mat. • In both stories the man suffered because of past sins. Mark’s Jesus says, “your sins are forgiven.” John’s Jesus says “See, you have been made well! Do not sin

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•



•



•



•



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any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” While they don’t use the same words, John and Mark are clearly expressing the same thought. In both stories the man is made well because the sins are forgiven. In Mark, the forgiveness is directly expressed and serves as the crux of the story. In John, the principle is clearly implied by Jesus’ warning to the paralytic about avoiding sin in the future, but John has put some narrative distance between the act of curing the paralytic and the explanation of how he was cured. This served to remove forgiving sin as the basis of the blasphemy charge. In both stories Jesus is accused of blasphemy for equating himself with God. But the two stories disagree as to what statement served as the basis of the blasphemy accusation. John has removed the debate over forgiving sin and inserted a non-legalistic Sabbath defense between the statement about sin and the hostile reaction to Jesus’ actions. If we remove the Sabbath claim we have a direct narrative link between forgiving sin and Jewish accusations of blasphemy, as Mark has it. In both stories Jesus defends his actions on the ground that the Son of Man has the authority to do what he did. Mark says, “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” John says Jesus has “authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.” John’s version of the story gives Jesus a wider range of authority, more specifically, the right to grant eternal life (implicitly by forgiving the sins of those who have faith in Jesus as the man sent by God to bring salvation). In both stories Jesus tells the man to “stand up, take your mat.” Mark adds “Go to your home.” John adds “walk.” The parallel wording here was sufficiently close that Kurt Aland identified it as a synoptic parallel.28 In both stories the man picks up the mat and walks away without thanking  Jesus.

Despite the variations in context the above intersections strongly hint at a common source story. Nevertheless, we must also account for the many divergences between the two stories, not just the contextual differences referenced above but the many story details that don’t match up.

Points of Divergence John and Mark have several substantial disagreements. The following list highlights many of the issues that need to be addressed.

• John places the story in Jerusalem. Mark says it happened in Capernaum. • John says the day was a Sabbath; Mark does not. • Mark says four men carried the paralytic on his mat to meet up with Jesus. John says Jesus found him lying on a mat by the pool.

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• In Mark, the crowd prevented the paralytic from reaching Jesus for a cure. In John, the crowd prevented the paralytic from reaching the pool for a cure. • In Mark, the men who carried the paralytic to Jesus climbed up on the roof and dug a hole in it so they could get past the crowd and down to Jesus. In John, no one climbs up on a roof or digs a hole through one. • Mark says that the man needed to be lowered through a roof to be cured by Jesus. John says the man needed to be lowered into a pool in order to be cured by the waters. • In Mark, Jesus explicitly says that the sins of the paralytic were forgiven at the time of the healing in a public forum. John implicitly says that the paralytic’s sins had been forgiven but does so later in a private conversation. • Mark says the accusation of blasphemy resulted from Jesus saying that the sins were forgiven. John says the accusation arose because of statements made in defending himself against accusations of working on the Sabbath. • Mark says that the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins. John says that the Son of Man had all authority to judge who will receive eternal life. • Mark says that Jesus healed the paralytic to prove that he has the authority to forgive sins. In John, Jesus makes no such argument, and offers his words as proof of his authority from the Father.

Together, these differences create an impression that John and Mark worked from different underlying stories. But when we look more closely at how and why the stories differ, the connection between the two becomes more apparent.

Reconciling the Differences Between John and Mark John places the healing of the paralytic on a Sabbath, and this leads to arguments over his alleged violation of the law and to accusations of blasphemy. But did this story originally take place on the Sabbath? It seems unlikely. Here I would like to discuss a few issues that suggest John took a non-Sabbath event and transformed it into a Sabbath healing. First, there is the positioning of the claim in the narrative flow. This is the issue that troubles so many scholars and I agree with them. John tells the healing story first, without alerting us that there was a Sabbath issue related to this healing. He appends the Sabbath notice to the end of the report, but this information is intended to draw our attention to the man carrying the mat in violation of the Sabbath and makes no mention of a Sabbath healing violation.29 The conflict over healing only comes out later.

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Second, not only doesn’t John alert us in the beginning of the story that a Sabbath violation was about to occur, after the healing and the Sabbath announcement Jesus disappears from the scene and only reappears later to face charges of blasphemy for his non-legalistic defense against violating the Sabbath. Third, if the story originally took place on the Sabbath, why would Jesus tell the man to pick up the mat and carry it away after he was healed and then abandon him? He would have to have known that he was telling the man to violate the Sabbath and there is no reason for him to do so. Jesus had already cured him. Lifting and carrying the mat had nothing to do with the healing or with exhibiting faith in Jesus. This same instruction appears in Mark’s version of the story and it has no reference to the Sabbath. This suggests that John is working from a written source in which the paralytic was healed on a non-Sabbath day. If it were a Sabbath day Jesus could have, and should have, simply said “walk,” and avoid putting the man through any further indignity. Fourth, Jesus never offers any defense for the man when Jews accuse him of violating the Sabbath by carrying the mat, suggesting that this carrying act didn’t really trigger any Sabbath violations. Fifth, after the Jews learned that Jesus healed on the Sabbath, John says only that they persecuted him, a vague description about what actions were taken. It is only after the Jews want to kill Jesus for blasphemy that John throws in an allegation that they also wanted to kill him for violating the Sabbath. This suggests that the death threat alluded to here originally referenced only an accusation of blasphemy and not any Sabbath violation. Sixth, John places the incident outside of a Jerusalem gate by a pool noted for its healing powers. He says many invalids were there. This is inconsistent with the claim that the day was a Sabbath. According to the Mishnah, a late secondearly third century compilation of Jewish rulings on the law and other matters, it would violate the Sabbath to go to a bathhouse let alone engage in certain physical acts of labor for the specific purpose of healing.30 For instance, the Mishnah forbids the anointing of one’s limbs with wine or vinegar in order to relieve pain,31 or sucking vinegar through one’s teeth if the application is for the benefit of the teeth.32 It also prohibits pouring cold water over a dislocated hand or foot.33 It even prohibits the eating of certain foods because of their healing powers.34 If this pool by the Jerusalem gate was known for its healing properties and many people regularly gathered there for healing purposes on the Sabbath, it seems highly probable that the Jewish authorities would have posted guards to make sure no one tried to violate the Sabbath by using the pool’s healing powers.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 121 Yet John says many invalids were gathered around the pool and using it for healing purposes.

The Carrying, Climbing, Digging and Lowering Problem One of the most significant areas of disagreement between John and Mark, perhaps the most important in terms of story details, concerns how Jesus interacted with the paralytic prior to healing him. Mark says that the paralytic was brought to Jesus’ location by four men carrying him on a mat. Because the crowd blocked the doorway the men climbed up on the roof, dug a hole, and lowered the paralytic down in front of Jesus. In John, Jesus is not in a house and comes upon the paralytic who is already present at the scene before Jesus arrives. No one carries the paralytic to Jesus; no one blocks the paralytic’s approach to Jesus; no one climbs up on a roof; no one digs a hole in a roof; and no one lowers the man down. Such an array of narrative inconsistencies helps explain why so many scholars have trouble making a connection between the two gospel accounts. But something important is overlooked. John placed the event on a Sabbath and Mark didn’t. All these specific differences with Mark—carrying, climbing, digging, and lowering—involve what would be a violation of the law if they happened on the Sabbath. These actions would have triggered protests from the assembled scribes who would have denounced the men who carried the mat, climbed a building, dug a hole, and lowered a man through the roof. If John incorporated those activities into his Sabbath story, he would have a lot of explaining to do and a lot of distractions to deal with. John had already shifted the theme of the story from a legal conflict over healing on the Sabbath law to a blasphemous conflict over his extra-legal authority to override the Sabbath because he was working with the Father. Having to add in additional explanations for Sabbath violations by assorted individuals acting on their own initiative would dilute or obscure his message. So, he eliminated what would be considered violations, and, as we shall see, he did so in a very clever fashion. First, he removed all those Sabbath offenses. He depicts no carrying, no climbing, no digging and no lowering. Next, and this is the clever part, he replaced the goal of reaching Jesus for a cure with the goal of reaching the pool for a cure. And, in doing this, he retained the literary links to the original account.

• Instead of carrying the man to reach Jesus for a cure, John shows the man already in place and wanting to reach the pool for a cure. There is no longer a need to climb up on the roof and dig a hole to get the paralytic to Jesus.

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• Instead of having a crowd block the path to Jesus for a cure, John shows a crowd blocking the paralytic’s path to the pool for a cure. • Instead of having to lower the man down through a roof to get to Jesus for a cure, John shows that the paralytic had to be lowered down to get into the pool for a cure.

So, in line with the sequential activities in Mark in which the paralytic tries to reach Jesus for a cure, we have a parallel set of activities in John in which the paralytic tries to reach the pool for a cure. At the same time, the man makes no attempt at moving forward to obtain any of these goals. This means that the man commits no Sabbath violation to obtain a cure. Had he physically attempted to reach or enter the pool on the Sabbath, there might have been a potential Sabbath violation to deal with. If we recognize that John has reworked the underlying story to eliminate the violations that would have occurred if Mark’s activities occurred on the Sabbath, we can eliminate one of the chief obstacles blocking our ability to see that John and Mark worked from a common story about the healing of the paralytic.

The Forgiving of Sins In Mark, prior to healing the paralytic, Jesus says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” This triggers a charge of blasphemy in that the scribes believe that Jesus is equating himself with God because only God can forgive sins. In John, prior to the healing, Jesus says, “Do you want to be made well?” There is no mention of sin here. The accusation of blasphemy occurs in the course of Jesus defending himself against a charge of violating the Sabbath by healing, when he says, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” Here too the authorities accuse Jesus of equating himself with God. So, in both Gospels Jews accuse Jesus of blasphemy for equating himself with God, but the settings are different. In Mark the focus is on the authority to forgive sins. In John it is on the relation between Jesus and the Father. But the sin issue remains present in John. Prior to the charge of blasphemy, John’s Jesus meets up again with the man he had healed and says to him, “See, you have been made well! Do not sin any more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” Although John’s Jesus doesn’t use the same words as Mark’s Jesus, he expresses the identical thought. In both gospels the paralytic’s condition had been caused by his past sinful behavior and he could only have been cured if his sins were forgiven. In Mark, when Jesus raised the sin issue, the Jews became hostile and accused Jesus of blasphemy. In John, immediately after Jesus raised the sin issue

The Paralytic on the Mat | 123 the Jews become hostile but don’t yet raise the blasphemy charge. John inserts a non-legalistic Sabbath violation defense by Jesus in between the statement about sin and the accusation of blasphemy. John’s insertion shifts the blasphemy debate from an argument about authority to forgive sins to an argument about the relationship between Jesus and the Father. John has separated the explanation for the cure from the act of the cure so that he could substitute his own theological message. That message has to do with the relationship between Jesus and the Father.

The Son’s Authority In both Mark and John, Jesus claims that “the Son of Man” has authority to act on God’s behalf but they disagree as to how the claim is presented. In Mark, Jesus says, “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins,” and then tells the paralytic “stand up, take your mat and go to your home.”35 Mark offers the ability to heal as proof that Jesus has the authority to forgive sins. John arranges matters differently. He separates the healing of the paralytic from any claim about Jesus’ authority. In the first part of the story in John, Jesus tells the paralytic, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” Mark and John clearly describe the healing of the paralytic in virtually identical language. But where Mark portrays an immediate conflict between Jesus and the Jews at the time of the healing, John has delayed the conflict to a later time. Nevertheless, in both Mark and John, despite John’s break in the continuity, the issue of authority follows immediately after the accusation of blasphemy. Mark claims an authority only to forgive sins. John claims an authority to judge everything36 (implicitly including the authority to forgive sins) and this includes authority over the Sabbath because he is working with the Father. And this authority is given to Jesus so that “all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father.”37 Jesus then adds in the kicker. “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life [emphasis added].”38 Note here that proof of authority comes from his words, not deeds. In both Mark and John, Jesus defends himself against charges of blasphemy by claiming to have authority from God to do what he did. But John has shifted the thrust of the story from an argument over forgiving sin in the present to an argument about judging all actions and granting eternal life in the future. Mark’s Jesus offers proof of authority through healing in the present; John’s Jesus offers

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proof of authority through his words, not works. He asks that people have faith that God has given him authority to judge and not rely on what acts he performs. John downplays the theme of Jesus alleviating suffering in the here and now as proof of authority to forgive sins and substitutes a promise of eternal life in the future for those who have faith in him as the messenger. Essentially, John has superimposed his theological agenda over an existing story that presented a different theological point of view.

The Death Threat John 5:18 describes two different death threats in connection with the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. One is for violating the Sabbath; the other is for blasphemy. Both notices are combined in a single sentence, but John merely asserts that this was the case. At no time does John 5 describe any specific effort to physically harm Jesus or arrest him. He eventually leaves unscathed. Earlier, when just the Sabbath violation was in issue, John does say the Jews persecuted Jesus but still doesn’t indicate any actions taken to harm him. In Mark’s story about healing on the Sabbath, he too says the Jews wanted to kill Jesus, but doesn’t quote any Jew making such a threat. There too, no immediate physical assault on Jesus is described. Only after he leaves unharmed do the Jews forge a plot to kill him.39 To this extent, John and Mark agree on the Sabbath death plot. Both say that Jews wanted to kill Jesus for violating the Sabbath, neither quotes any Jew making a threat, neither depicts any physically specific harmful act taken against Jesus in the course of the confrontation and Jesus leaves the scene without any apparent difficulty. Whatever plots there may have been occurred after Jesus left. John is no more forthcoming with the death threat for blasphemy. He quotes no Jew threatening Jesus, he describes no action to harm Jesus; and Jesus leaves the scene without any difficulty. In Mark’s version of the blasphemy story, there is no death threat. The ability to heal diverts attention away from the charge and everyone praises Jesus’ glorious teaching. Since John has merged the Sabbath story with the blasphemy story, the plot to kill is applicable to both accusations.

The Blasphemous Words Another important difference between John and Mark concerns the nature of the blasphemy. In Mark the charge is triggered by Jesus forgiving sin. There is no connection to a Sabbath violation. In John, the charge arises from Jesus’ defense

The Paralytic on the Mat | 125 against violating the Sabbath. “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” Clearly, the thrust of the blasphemy charges is significantly different. However, consider the sequential nature of the narrative. In John, after Jesus tells the man not to sin anymore, it is his very next statement that becomes the springboard for the blasphemy charge.40 In both Mark and John, Jesus talks about sins. In both instances hostility immediately breaks out. In Mark it is an accusation of blasphemy; in John it is an accusation of violating the Sabbath. Jesus’ very next statement in John, defending his Sabbath actions, triggers the blasphemy accusation. John’s Sabbath insert shifts the charge of blasphemy from the narrow issue of forgiving sins to the broad issue of working with the Father on all matters, including forgiving sins and overriding the Sabbath law.

Jerusalem or Capernaum: The Man on the Mat in Luke 5:17–26 Perhaps the most irreconcilable difference between John and Mark concerns where this story happened. Mark locates it in Capernaum while John places it in Jerusalem. For some scholars this suffices to dismiss the idea that the two stories have a common identity. A look at Luke’s version of the same episode, however, adds an interesting overlooked twist to the debate. Although on the surface Luke’s version of the healing of the paralytic seems to follow Mark’s storyline, he does have a couple of odd diversions that seem to elicit no more than an “isn’t that interesting” observation from scholars who might make note of them and quickly move on with just the briefest of comments. Let’s take a closer look. He begins with the following introduction. “One day, while he was teaching, Pharisees and teachers of the law were sitting nearby (they had come from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem).”41 This opening departs from Mark in a significant way. To begin with, Luke doesn’t say where the incident took place whereas Mark very specifically says it happened in Capernaum. Luke’s use of the transitional words “one day” also signifies a break in the narrative, isolating the story both chronologically and geographically from what precedes it. In addition, he adds Pharisees to the story, and says they gathered together from several regions, Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee. Mark makes no mention of Pharisees being present and clearly indicates that the crowd was local in nature, nothing more than neighbors who had learned that Jesus had come back to town. In addition, Mark says that the healing took place in the home of Jesus. While Luke retains the fact that the man was lowered down through the roof of the

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building where Jesus was standing, he conspicuously omits Mark’s claim that this was Jesus’ house. This further severs Luke’s locale from Mark’s locale. Why would Luke diverge from Mark’s straightforward claim about the event taking place in Jesus’ house? Luke’s opening description is thoroughly uninformative as to where the story happened. He says that it happened in a location where Pharisees, coming from “every village” of Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem, were present but doesn’t say where this location was. As written, the setting could have been in any one of those three regions or even in some fourth location outside of the three regions mentioned. What was such a major gathering of Pharisees doing at such a location? Nothing in Luke’s account suggests that they had all journeyed there to hear Jesus teach. The most likely location where such a large gathering of Pharisees would take place would be in Jerusalem, on the occasion of a religious festival. Why would Luke, who used Mark as a source, create such ambiguity as to location when Mark has such a clear and unequivocal declaration that the incident occurred in Capernaum, especially where Luke so closely follows the balance of Mark’s account? One gets the impression that Luke is torn between two versions of the story, one placing it among Pharisees gathering in Jerusalem during a religious holiday and the other, as Mark has it, in Capernaum among the locals. Luke’s odd diversion from Mark suggests he knew a variation of Mark’s story that aligned more closely with John’s account than Mark’s. This second version would have been similar to what John knew; Jesus healed the paralytic in Jerusalem during a festival. Faced with the contradiction between two sources, and unable to resolve the conflict, Luke diplomatically fudged the matter over with ambiguous language that could support either claim. Implicit in this argument is that Luke’s second source, while placing the incident in Jerusalem, followed Mark’s arrangement about the paralytic being lowered down through the roof of a building where Jesus was located. It is likely that in the original version Pharisees were present at the time Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic. Had the proposed underlying source supported John’s story details against Mark’s, Luke may not have recognized it as the same story that Mark told and probably wouldn’t have altered the location. Luke’s indication of a possible Jerusalem location raises an additional question. Did Mark change the location from Jerusalem to fit his theological agenda or did his source place the event in Capernaum? We can’t be sure, but Mark is very careful to keep Jesus away from Jerusalem until the final days before the crucifixion. So, he might have had a motive to change the location if his source placed the incident in Jerusalem. If that were the case, it would account for his dropping

The Paralytic on the Mat | 127 Pharisees out of the story. Unfortunately, we lack enough information to decide one way or the other, but Luke certainly suggests that both he and John may have had a written source that placed the story in Jerusalem during a festival.

Observations In looking at John’s account of the healing of the paralytic and comparing it to Mark we see two major types of difference. First is the theological arrangement. John has replaced Mark’s narrow focus on Jesus having the authority to forgive sins in the here and now with a Johannine emphasis on Jesus’ authority to render judgment in the future on everything (including forgiving sins and working on the Sabbath) in order to grant eternal life to those who believe him. In Mark, healing is the proof of authority. In John, words, not deeds, are proof of authority. On the theological level John has replaced the underlying theology with the Johannine theology. Second is the collection of routine story differences. Mark talks about men carrying the paralytic to meet Jesus, climbing on a roof, digging a hole, lowering the man down. But Mark’s story doesn’t take place on the Sabbath. John places the story on the Sabbath. This means that most of the ordinary story details in Mark—carrying, climbing, digging, and lowering—would constitute a violation if they occurred on a Sabbath. Therefore, John had to eliminate what would be distracting violations of the law in order to focus on his broader theological message. Consequently, John removed those actions from his story. But he did so by placing a parallel set of story elements into his account. In the parallel, the goal of reaching Jesus for a cure was replaced by the goal of reaching the pool for a cure. Crowds still block the paralytic’s way to a cure; the paralytic still must be lowered down to reach a cure. Once we appreciate that John’s use of the Sabbath in connection with his account of the healing of the paralytic required that he make changes to the underlying source story details as reflected in Mark, we can see that John and Mark worked from a common account of the healing of the paralytic.

The Mekhilta Sabbetta of Rabbi Ishmael So far, we have been concerned primarily with how John’s version of the healing of the paralytic interacted with Mark’s version of a similar event. We also need to look at how John’s account interacts with Mark’s Sabbath violation stories. But

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first, I want to look at an ancient Jewish text known as the Mekhilta Sabbetta I, which provides some insights into how the Gospel Sabbath stories may have evolved over time. Towards the end of the first century and the early second century two rabbis, Akiba and Ishmael, set out to provide a systematic analysis of the laws of Moses. Both had been alive when the Romans destroyed the Temple. Their period of great influence overlapped the final redactions of the Gospel of John and probably the production of the Gospel of Luke and perhaps the Gospel of Matthew. These two great Jewish legal scholars were rivals in that each had their own academy and differed in their methodological approach. Their teachings played a key role in what later became the important compilation of Jewish law known as the Mishnah (c. 220 C.E.). Because these writings were part of a systematic effort to comment on the Jewish law, the original texts most likely go back to the time of their teachings and were probably written down by their students at the time of these studies. Because these teachings were transmitted through their academies it is unlikely that they saw any significant alterations over the next few generations. Several Jewish scholars, though, believe that in the course of transmission there may have been some redacting of the texts over the next century or two. Only a small portion of those writings have survived, and they have been collected under the title The Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael.42 The term “mekhilta” is Aramaic and means something like “rules.” The subject matter of the Mekhilta seems to have been an exegetical analysis of the Book of Exodus on a verse by verse basis. A larger body of study encompassing all of the Torah has been assumed. For our purposes I want to focus on one very brief passage from the Mekhilta that has come to be known as Mekhilta Sabbetta I, a commentary on Exodus 31:13, in which God instructs Moses to command the Israelites to keep the Sabbath.43 The subject matter under discussion is whether one can break the Sabbath to save a life. The dialogue is of considerable interest for our review of the gospel Sabbath accounts. In the space of about one page, the text quotes arguments from several rabbis, including the following.



• The first speaker, Rabbi Eleazer b. Azariah, says, “If in performing the ceremony of circumcision, which affects only one member of the body, one is to disregard the Sabbath laws, how much more should one do so for the whole body when it is in danger!”44 • Rabbi Akiba adds this observation. “If punishment for murder sets aside even the Temple service, which in turn supersedes the Sabbath, how much more should the duty of saving life supersede the Sabbath laws!”45

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• Interpreting Exodus 31:14, which reads “And ye shall keep the sabbath for it is holy unto you,” Rabbi Simeon b. Menasiah says, “The Sabbath is given to you but you are not surrendered to the Sabbath.”46

Within these principles the rabbis provide three examples of actions that are permitted in violation of the Sabbath. One is circumcision. The second is punishment for murder. The third is Temple service. From the idea that these three acts are permitted on the Sabbath, the sages teach that the greater good of saving a life must also be permitted on the Sabbath. This is a traditional form of Jewish argument. If the lesser act is permitted than certainly a similar greater act is also permitted. It is a form of argument that we will see being used in the various gospels to defend Jesus’ actions. The argument is of a form known as a fortiori. Hyam Maccoby, a scholar of early rabbinic writings says the early Jewish name for this form was qal wa-homer, which he translates as “light and heavy.”47 He describes the principle as “What is known about something that is ‘light’ can be known ‘all the more so’ about something ‘heavy’.”48 A written description of this argument can be traced to sometime in the first or second century.49 From these principles we can see that Jewish teachers held that one can break the Sabbath if it was necessary to save life. But we can also see from Rabbi Simeon’s interpretation that the purpose of the Sabbath is to benefit you, not cause you to suffer. At the same time, we saw from the Mishnah (cited above) that taking actions designed to heal an illness or injury on the Sabbath would be a violation of the law. If we read the two sets of doctrines together, a fair reading of the Sabbath healing rule would be something like, “If no additional harm will come from waiting until after the Sabbath, you should wait until after the Sabbath, but if life is threatened or lasting harm will occur as a result of delay, you are justified in breaking the Sabbath to avoid the tragedy.

A Sabbath Argument in John 7 John 5 ends with Jesus addressing the crowd amid hostile debate. The action then suddenly switches to Galilee in the beginning of John 6. Although the ending of John 5 seems complete in and of itself, John 7, which purports to describe a subsequent trip to Jerusalem, contains additional material related to the charge of violating the Sabbath, and it very likely belongs to the original Sabbath violation story known to John.

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John 7, though, presents several problems regarding its construction and its chronology and I’ll have more to say about it in later chapters. For now, I just want to concentrate on one portion, John 7:14–24. I have divided it into three separate sections, each easily severable from the other and each serving a different function within John’s gospel. It is the last part that is my primary concern, but the first two segments are also of interest. 1) John 7:14–15: “About the middle of the festival Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. The Jews were astonished at it, saying, ‘How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?’ ” John doesn’t say what teaching elicited that reaction and this appears to be the only place in John’s gospel where he says Jesus taught but doesn’t tell us what he said. This may reflect the fact that John has moved this passage away from its original location and the reaction was to something said elsewhere in a different story. Aland, in his Synopsis of the Four Gospels, suggests that the Jewish response may parallel that in Mark 6:2.50 In the previous chapter I noted that several scholars identify John 6:42 with Mark 6:3. Mark 6:2 and 6:3 are both from the same episode, generally referred to as the Rejection at Nazareth. I will analyze the connection between John and this episode in Mark in greater detail in Chapter 5. For now, the important point is that John appears to have imported this response from another story. 2) John 7:16–18: “Then Jesus answered them, ‘My teaching is not mine but his who sent me. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own. Those who speak on their own seek their own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and there is nothing false in him.’ ”51 This is the first part of Jesus’ response to the Jews who just praised his (unstated) teaching. Note the specific theme here. Jesus’ words are proof that he is speaking on God’s behalf. The language and theme clearly reflect Johannine theology and suggests the evangelist inserted it between the two surrounding passages to form a bridge (from God) between them. (I’ll have more to say about this passage in Chapter 5.) It connects the awe over Jesus’ teaching in the previous passage on one side and the teaching (from God) about healing on the Sabbath in the subsequent passage on the other side. Originally the surrounding passages would have been independent of each other. 3) John 7:19–24: This is the portion that is of interest for our purposes. Here is the passage in its entirety. “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon!

The Paralytic on the Mat | 131 Who is trying to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I performed one work, and all of you are astonished. Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs), and you circumcise a man on the sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the sabbath in order that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because I healed a man’s whole body on the sabbath? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment [emphasis added].”

The text clearly reflects the existence of a conflict between Jesus and some group of Jews over the issue of healing on the Sabbath, but it doesn’t appear to be this group of Jews. This crowd just praised Jesus for his teaching and knows nothing about any death threat for a Sabbath violation for healing. They are shocked by his allegation that this is the case. “You have a demon,” they proclaim. That is, Jesus must be out of his mind to say such a thing. Because John 7:14–15 is probably out of sequence and John 7:16–18 appears to be a Johannine contrivance to form a bridge to this Sabbath defense, the present location of this passage is highly suspect. In support of that argument, the opening language strongly suggests a link to the end of John 5. Let’s take a closer look. This Sabbath argument begins with, “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?”52 This meshes well with the conclusion of John 5, where Jesus, in defending his actions on the Sabbath says, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say?”53 John 5 ends with Jesus defending his actions on the Sabbath by saying that Moses wrote about him; In John 7:19, Jesus resumes his Sabbath defense by saying the crowd ignores what Moses wrote by trying to kill him. Looking at the two sets of passages in tandem suggests that together they form a tightly integrated defense to the charge of violating the Sabbath. John 5:45–46: Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. John 7:19–24: “Did not Moses give you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?” The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is trying to kill you?” Jesus answered them, “I performed one work, and all of you are astonished. Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs), and you circumcise a man on the sabbath. If a man receives circumcision on the sabbath in order that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because I healed a man’s whole body on the sabbath? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

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In the first passage Jesus argues that Moses accuses the Jews of not following the law in general. In the second passage he reiterates that charge, saying that none of them keeps the Law of Moses, and gives a specific example related to the Sabbath. He argues from Moses’ teaching that healing on the Sabbath is permitted. The two passages go from the general to the specific, linked together by the repeated theme that Jews fail to follow the Law of Moses. What may particularly strike you about the legal defense is its apparent similarity to the teaching of Rabbi Eleazer from the Mekhilta. John’s Jesus says, “If a man receives circumcision on the sabbath in order that the Law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because I healed a man’s whole body on the sabbath [emphasis added]?” Compare that to language used by Rabbi Eleazar. After pointing out that one breaks the Sabbath for circumcision, “how much more should one do so for the whole body when it is in danger [emphasis added]!” John appears to know the argument, even using similar language. But there is a slight difference between John and Rabbi Eleazar. The rabbi is talking about saving a life. Jesus is talking about healing someone who could be healed the next day. Jesus has amended the argument. He has taken the position that if circumcision on the Sabbath allows you to heal a small part of the body, then one must be authorized on the Sabbath to heal a larger part of the body, to wit, a paralyzed part of the anatomy. Whether the argument would have been accepted is a different question. But John’s Jesus has adapted the argument that also appears in the Mekhilta. John’s placement and use of this legalistic defense has an interesting theological implication. By separating it from the original story it no longer functions as a defensive response to accusations of violating the law. This is reinforced by the claim that the crowd had no idea that Jesus has been accused of violating the law. Instead, it serves as an accusation against the Jews that they don’t follow their own law. By attacking the Jews for not following their own law, John’s Jesus doesn’t expressly place himself under the law. John’s broader theological theme is that Jesus’ actions aren’t restricted under the law because his authority comes directly from his relationship to the Father. The John 7 passage does raise a few problems with the consistency of John’s narrative, though. He begins with the protest that Jesus “performed one work, and all of you are astonished” and then makes a legalistic argument about why it was alright for him to heal on the Sabbath. Note here that there is no reference of any sort to the blasphemy accusation or any threat to kill him because of blas-

The Paralytic on the Mat | 133 phemy. Jesus seems to suggest that if we can just recognize that his healing actions were lawful, the troubles would all go away. The entire context is that people want to kill him for healing on the Sabbath, not for blasphemy. Yet, blasphemy constitutes the much more serious crime. And the blasphemy charge had nothing to do with the healing. It had to do with his words of defense in John 5. This scenario also creates something of a chronological conundrum for John. On the one hand, its narrative logic links it directly to the end of the John 5 speech where Jesus claims Moses wrote about him. On the other hand, Jesus says that the Jews want to kill him for healing but makes no mention of the blasphemy charge. Yet, John places the blasphemy charge before the two speeches about Moses. This suggests that John has switched data around and that at some point there must have been some sort of separation between the Sabbath accusation and the blasphemy accusation, which in turn suggests that John has merged stories together when he says in the same sentence that the Jews wanted to kill him for both blasphemy and violating the Sabbath.

A Source Issue John’s wording of the Sabbath defense contains textual clues indicating that he has worked from a written source, and that this source had already been altered from an even earlier written source. John writes that Jesus said, “Moses gave you circumcision (it is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs).”54 Note the problem here. John has corrected the statement Jesus made. Jesus says Moses gave circumcision to the Jews and John says it was the patriarchs. Why would John do this? His Jesus is perfect. His Jesus doesn’t make mistakes. Why didn’t John change the statement so that Jesus referred to the Patriarchs? The most likely answer is that John had a written source and that the argument citing Moses may have already been widely known. But there is a secondary problem. It wasn’t the patriarchs as a group that gave circumcision to the Jews; it was Abraham, the first of the patriarchs. Surely, John knew this. Why didn’t he say Abraham? I suspect that this “Patriarchs” correction was also in John’s written source, meaning that the written source was at least once removed from an earlier version of the text. Since John apparently saw it as more technically correct than the attribution to Moses, he may have chosen to leave it as is. The issue here is not who gave circumcision to the Jews. It is that John believed there was an error in the statement attributed to Jesus and John felt the need to gloss it over, suggesting he worked from a written source. In fact, although Moses never directly says that there is a legal requirement for circumcision, all Jews at the

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time believed that Moses wrote the Book of Genesis, in which Abraham institutes the practice of circumcision as a religious obligation. Therefore, an argument could be made that Moses, as the author of Genesis, handed down the law of circumcision by telling the story of Abraham. It may be in this sense that the author of the original reference to Moses and circumcision used the term. The reason he did so was that the underlying source author wanted to connect Jesus’ circumcision argument for healing on the Sabbath with Moses as the giver of the law, explicitly arguing that Jesus was the successor to Moses as the new law-giver. This elevates the legal argument from simply a legalistic defense that Jesus didn’t violate the law to a more theological claim that Moses has told the Jews that Jesus is the new law-giver and that they shouldn’t waste their time by accusing him of wrong-doing on this or any other issue. However, there is another problematic source issue. If the written source that reached John had already been altered by the time he received it, then we can’t really be sure what was in the Sabbath story that appeared in the original written source. As I will show below, the Sabbath healing story went through a variety of transformations such that even Matthew and Luke rejected Mark’s version of the story. I suspect that by the time the source reached John, the specific Sabbath story varied significantly from what may have been the version appearing in Mark.

Separating John’s Sabbath Stories from His Paralytic on the Mat Story John 5 (together with the John 7:19–24 excerpt) incorporates two stories about Sabbath conflict. In the one, Jesus heals the paralytic. In the other, Jesus instructs the paralytic to pick up his mat and walk. The accusations of violation, however, come in reverse order. First, the man carrying the mat is accused of violating the Sabbath. He says he just followed instructions from the man who healed him. This leads to accusations against Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Other than the paralytic’s own claim that he was following instructions, no defense is offered for his actions and Jesus makes no direct defense of his instruction to pick up the mat and carry it around. Implicitly, Jesus’ claim to have all judgment in order to grant eternal life encompasses his authority to give the instruction, but there is no explicit acknowledgment of such. As to Jesus’ act of healing on the Sabbath, we have two defenses. The first is the alleged blasphemous claim that he was working because the Father was working. By claiming the right to work on the Sabbath because his Father was working,

The Paralytic on the Mat | 135 Jesus implies authority over the laws of the Sabbath because of his relationship to the Father. They would be subsumed under his broader claim that the Father “has given all judgment to the Son.”55 The second was his legalistic argument about circumcision, which was displaced to John 7:19–24 and moved into a different context. Since the defense involves the right to heal, we can assume that John made use of a Sabbath healing story. Because he merged that story with the story of the paralytic’s healing, we can’t know what the original Sabbath infirmity was. The first defense involved a broad Johannine claim about who Jesus was. The second presents a more traditional Sabbath defense, like what we see in the synoptic gospels. John’s specific legalistic Sabbath defense is not present in the other gospels. The final development and redactions of John’s gospel are widely thought to have been completed in the early part of the second century, at about the same time or later than the arguments in the Mekhilta were being made. It is not improbable that John may have known the specific argument about circumcision from the Sabbath discussions of his time and adapted it for his own use, substituting this argument for the one that originally appeared in his source. I’ll say more about John’s alternative arguments after reviewing the accounts in the other gospels. Before turning to the specifics of Mark’s Sabbath violation stories, though, observe the following broad sequential agreement between Mark and John.

• Jesus heals a paralytic on a mat. • Someone acting under Jesus’ direction violates the Sabbath. • Jesus is accused of violating the Sabbath by healing.

In John the three stories are intermingled with no straight line from one element to the other, but the sequence above within John 5 is accurately set forth. In Mark, each story is separately told and follows the indicated order, but the sequence is interrupted by two intervening pericopes that fall between the healing of the paralytic and the first Sabbath hostility story.

Mark’s Sabbath Violation Stories (Mark 2:23–3:6) Mark has two stories about Sabbath hostilities between Jesus and the Jews. The first tells of Jesus’ disciples plucking grain in a field on the Sabbath.56 The second involves the healing of a man with a withered hand in a synagogue on the Sabbath.57 Neither story appears in John.

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Mark places the two Sabbath stories one after the other and they follow shortly after his account of the healing of the paralytic. In between Mark tells of only two other events: the recruiting of Levi and a subsequent discussion about why the Pharisees’ and John the Baptist’s disciples fast and Jesus doesn’t. Neither of these two intervening stories appears in John and neither seems to be of much interest to him. John doesn’t even mention the name of the apostle Levi in his own gospel. (Matthew calls this apostle Matthew and John doesn’t mention that name either.58) And contemporary manners and practices are of little concern to John unless they can serve in some way to promote his gospel of eternal life through faith. As presented, Mark’s two Sabbath stories appear to take place in Capernaum on the same day but neither the place nor the day is specifically mentioned in either story. Mark’s language is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for a chronological separation between the two stories and Luke explicitly says they occurred on different days.59 Although Matthew and Luke both use Mark as a source both seem to know similar variations from each of Mark’s accounts, suggesting some sort of widely circulating diversions from Mark’s description of events.

Plucking the Grain (Mark 2:23–28) Mark says that on a Sabbath Jesus and the disciples were crossing a grain field and the disciples began to pluck heads of grain. This caused some Pharisees to complain. “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the sabbath?”60 What Pharisees are doing in a grain field on a Sabbath, which is very probably outside the permitted Sabbath walking zone, isn’t explained, nor do the Pharisees complain about what might be an unauthorized Sabbath stroll by the disciples.61 Jesus responded. ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food? He entered the house of God, when Abiathar was high priest, and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions.’ Then he said to them, ‘The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.’62

This is the entire story. The Pharisees allege a violation of the law by the disciples and Jesus offers an argument to justify their actions. The argument can be divided into three parts.

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• The David story. • The Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath. • So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.

Mark’s David story is deeply flawed. The incident cited by Mark comes from 1 Samuel 21:1–9. It tells of David’s flight from Saul. There were no companions with David although he asked for the bread on the deceptive claim that it was for his companions whom he was going to meet up with.63 The priest involved was Ahimelech not Abiathar and he wasn’t the High priest.64 Abiathar didn’t become High Priest until after David became king. The incident took place at a village called Nob, barely mentioned anywhere else in the bible. It appears to have been a sanctuary of some sort in that priests were present. Mark’s use of the term “the House of God [emphasis added]” as opposed to “a House of God” gives the false impression that the incident took place either in the Temple or the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was not in Nob. The Temple wouldn’t be built until Solomon’s time. The bread in the Nob sanctuary was not reserved just for priests. It was given over to David on condition that his men had kept themselves away from women.65 And, of course, this David story didn’t take place on the Sabbath. The second part of the argument, about the Sabbath being for humankind, is a direct parallel to the argument appearing in the Mekhilta, in which Rabbi Simeon says, “The Sabbath is given to you but you are not surrendered to the Sabbath.” This does not mean that Mark knew the Mekhilta. Rather, it suggests that this principle was well-known before the Mekhilta, at least at the time that Mark was writing. But, as with John, the argument in the Mekhilta had to do with saving life and Mark does not apply it to that principle. Mark would need to have made the argument that the hunger of the apostles threatened their life. But he makes no such dire claim. The third part of Mark’s argument is problematic. Beginning with “So,” it implies that the preceding statement about the Sabbath being for humankind leads to the conclusion that Jesus is lord “even of the Sabbath.” As presently understood, I don’t think the conclusion follows and I don’t think it is necessary to make sense of it for our purposes. However, I want to touch on a possible understanding of “Son of Man” that may have meant something different in the underlying source than it did for Mark. It is clear from its use in the gospels that the phrase “Son of Man” has a strong theological connection to Daniel 7:13–14, a messianic apocalyptic reference to “one like the son of man.” However, in Aramaic, the same term has also been

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used as a simple locution for “I” or “human being,” with no deistic, messianic or apocalyptic implications.66 Unfortunately, while we know that the Aramaic usage appeared in written form not long after the time of Jesus, we don’t have any textual evidence from the time of Jesus that this usage was in circulation. Many scholars, therefore, won’t accept that Son of Man has at least a partial connection to the Aramaic understanding. What I strongly suspect here is that the underlying source author used “Son of Man” in its Aramaic context but Mark understood it in its apocalyptic function. In the Aramaic context, Jesus’ remark about the Son of Man being lord even of the Sabbath makes good sense. He would be arguing that since the Sabbath is for the benefit of humanity then any human being is lord of the Sabbath. Therefore, Jesus concludes, his authorization to the apostles to pick grain is allowed because he, as a human being, can authorize an action that alleviates suffering for the benefit of other human beings. In this way, the third part of Mark’s argument logically flows from the second. I don’t think Mark understood it in this manner, but it does eliminate what appears to be a logical fallacy in his argument. Mark, I suspect, simply copied the entire argument from his source. An interesting element of Mark’s concluding argument is his use of the words “even of the Sabbath [emphasis added].” It implies that there were prior indications that Jesus had authority over other legal concerns and that he also has authority over the Sabbath as well. This suggests a reference back to the healing of the paralytic just a few verses earlier. There, Mark tells us that Jesus had authority to forgive sins. Now he tells us Jesus has an additional authority, to wit, authorizing people to break the Sabbath law. The phrasing, however, raises an interpretation problem. Does it mean that there are some things that Jesus doesn’t have control over? Judging from alterations by Matthew and Luke to Mark’s account (see below), many Christians had problems with Mark’s language. John implicitly addresses this issue by asserting that all judgment has been given to Jesus.

Variations in Luke 6:1–5 and Matthew 12:1–8 Luke and Matthew each draw from Mark’s version of this story but they share five variations from Mark’s account. The following lists highlights the departures from Mark.

• In Mark, the disciples pick the grain but don’t eat it; in Luke and Matthew the disciples eat the grain.

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• In Mark, Jesus refers to when David and his companions “were hungry and in need of food?” Luke and Matthew both drop the phrase, “in need of food.” • Both Matthew and Luke not only omit Mark’s erroneous mention of Abiathar, neither mentions even the presence of any priest. • Both Matthew and Luke delete that part of Mark’s Jesus response that says “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” • Both Luke and Mathew also use the same shortened form of Mark’s Sabbath defense by Jesus. Mark says, “the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath.” Both Luke and Matthew drop out “even,” eliminating the possible interpretation that there are some things Jesus is not lord over.

So many verbal similarities between Luke and Matthew against Mark are highly unusual. This has led some to suggest that a version of the episode appeared in Q,67 but some of the leading Q scholars don’t include this episode in their proposed Q text.68 The changes seem to reflect a significant theological revision of Mark’s story, one that had enough circulation to reach both Matthew and Luke. To begin with, they add in that the apostles ate the grain but remove the phrase “in need of food” from the David story. They also removed the argument that the Sabbath was made for mankind. Finally, they eliminate the phrase “even of ” from Mark’s description of Jesus’ authority over the Sabbath. The thrust of the changes in Luke and Matthew elevate Jesus from Lord “even of ’ ” the Sabbath to Lord “of ” the Sabbath. This changes the sense so that it doesn’t necessarily allow for Jesus’ authority to be limited. I have the impression here that the author of these changes recognized that starvation might authorize a breaking of the Sabbath law under the principle that the Sabbath was given to mankind, and wanted to create a situation in which Jesus authorized a breaking of the Sabbath not because life was in danger but because Jesus, as “lord of the Sabbath” could make any Sabbath rules he wanted. So, the author made sure to show that the disciples ate the plucked grain even though they weren’t in need of food, and then removed the line about Sabbath being for the benefit of mankind as Jesus (the theological Son of Man) was the one who determined the rules for the Sabbath. Matthew and Luke, despite both using Mark as a source, both chose to make this same set of identical changes. It clearly suggests a strong sense of dissatisfaction with Mark’s version of the story and reflects some theological evolution in Christian circles. Whatever the source, Mark appears to be the earlier form as he is unlikely to have made these changes to what would otherwise have been a clean

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theological story line. Matthew has also added an additional argument to his account of the grain field. He says, Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath the priests in the temple break the sabbath and yet are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless.69

In the Mekhilta, argument was made dealing with the principle that the priests are authorized to violate the Sabbath to perform temple services. Matthew has made a theological jump that makes use of the proper form of legal argument. Starting with priests violating the Sabbath for temple services, he says that something greater than the temple is here. He means Jesus. From this he jumps to the conclusion that Jesus is lord of the Sabbath. Matthew’s argument is an enhancement of Mark’s. Matthew eliminated the entire premise of Mark’s argument that Jesus was lord of the Sabbath and substituted this new argument. Interestingly, he eliminates one of the arguments used in the Mekhilta and draws upon another. This is not to argue that Matthew or Mark knew the Mekhilta. I am suggesting, though, that the thrust of the arguments used in the Mekhilta were probably already in service when the gospels were written.

Comparison Between John and Mark John’s story about the man carrying the mat on the Sabbath is obviously very different than Mark’s story about the plucking of the grain. But we do have some points of intersection between the two worth exploring. First, in both Mark and John the first accusation of a Sabbath violation is against a person taking direction from Jesus. In Mark it is the disciples. (One can assume from the presence of Jesus on the scene and the defense offered that Jesus had told them it would be okay to eat the grain.) In John it is the man who was told by Jesus to pick up his mat. As I pointed out in the previous chapter, on several occasions John made editorial changes whenever the disciples were accused of negative behavior. He either substituted someone other than the disciples as the actors or enhanced the description to make the disciples look better. Second, in both Mark and John, this first accusation of violating the Sabbath is immediately followed by a second accusation of violating the Sabbath by healing.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 141 Third, in both Mark and John, the person acting under Jesus’ instructions is accused of violating the Sabbath, but no action is taken against the violator. Fourth, Mark’s defense that Jesus was “lord even of the Sabbath,” modified later by Matthew and Luke to “lord of the Sabbath,” seems to be similar in spirit to John’s defense of Jesus’ actions, “My Father is still working, and I also am working,” implying the same principle, the Jesus has authority over the Sabbath. John’s Jesus has been given charge over the Sabbath by the Father. As if to emphasize the point, John’s Jesus further argues, “the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.”70 To this we must also add Jesus’ direct statement, referenced above, that “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son,” Noticeably missing from John’s first Sabbath violation story, the carrying of the mat, is the lack of any defense by Jesus for the man’s actions. He is left twisting in the wind for his alleged violation of the law. What seems to have happened in John is that the evangelist took the phrase “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath” from Mark’s first violation story and transformed it into the what became the basis of the blasphemy accusation, that the son of the Father can work on the Sabbath because the father has authorized him to do so. This is then also used as a non-legalistic defense for healing on the Sabbath rather than for authorizing someone (i.e., the paralytic, the apostles) to break the Sabbath. The original legalistic defense for healing on the Sabbath was shunted off to John 7. Having used the theological defense in John 5 the author didn’t want to dilute it with a legalistic argument in the same narrative arc. Similarities between John and Mark as to this first conflict story include the following:



• A person (the paralytic or an apostle) acts on Jesus’ instructions. • The person is accused of violating the Sabbath. • Jesus makes an argument that he has authority to suspend the Sabbath law. In Mark, Jesus says he is lord of the Sabbath. In John, Jesus makes an argument that he could violate the law because he is doing the father’s work and then makes the larger claim that his is granted judgment over all matters. • No action is taken against the person accused of the Sabbath violation.

The Man with the Withered Hand (Mark 3:1–6) In Mark’s second Sabbath violation story Jesus entered a synagogue and met a man there with a withered hand.71 “They” watched to see if Jesus would cure the man on the Sabbath so that they could accuse him of violating the law.72 Mark

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doesn’t initially explain who “they” are but at the end of the story it appears that “they” were the Pharisees and perhaps the Herodians.73 Implicit in Mark’s claim that “they” watched so that they may accuse him is that “they” believed Jesus had the power to heal, but Mark makes no direct connection between their action and what they must have believed about Jesus’ powers. When Jesus sees the man with the withered hand, he says to him come forward. At this point he turns to the watchers and asks, “Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?”74 The watchers remained silent, implicitly indicating that they couldn’t challenge Jesus’ argument. Nevertheless, Jesus was angry with them because he thought they were hardhearted.75 Jesus told the man to stretch out his hand. He did so, and the hand was cured. This caused the Pharisees to immediately leave to conspire with the Herodians about how to “destroy” Jesus.76 The question asked by Mark’s Jesus homes in precisely on the question at the root of the discussion in the Mekhilta Sabbetta I. Can you break the Sabbath to save a life? The problem, however, is that in Mark’s case the man’s life isn’t threatened. The act of healing could be put off to the next day with no additional damage. This induced Mark to amend the principle by going from “saving life” to “doing good” on the Sabbath. Here Mark presents a different argument. Mark is trying to argue that if some larger good (saving life) is authorized then some lesser good (healing) is authorized. This is contrary to the basic form of the “light and heavy” argument used by the Rabbis. The proper form of the argument is that if some lesser good is authorized then a similar greater good must also be authorized. Mark has gone from the greater act, saving life, to a lesser act, doing good by healing an injury that can wait to the next day without further harm. John, as I pointed out above, followed the proper form of argument even though he changed the nature of the act in issue. As we will see below, Luke and Matthew, like John, both introduced new more sophisticated arguments as to Jesus’ right to heal on the Sabbath.

Matthew’s Version of Mark’s Sabbath healing (Matthew 12:9–14) In Matthew, contrary to Mark, it is the watchers who raise the legal issue in the hope that Jesus would give the wrong answer and they could accuse him of wrongdoing.77 Moreover, they ask a question that directly covers the situation. “Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath [emphasis added]?”78 This is the direct issue

The Paralytic on the Mat | 143 in question, as opposed to the issue of saving life, and they have made a clear open direct challenge to Jesus regarding the Sabbath rules. The argument in the Mekhilta was that it was lawful to save lives, but not necessarily to heal. The question by the watchers asks Jesus to defend this lesser act of healing. Jesus responds, Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a pit on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath [emphasis added].79

Note that the italicized portion of the answer contains a truncated version of Mark’s statement by Jesus, omitting the issue of life and death. Matthew has filled in what Mark has missed. He provides an example of a good act allowed on the Sabbath, saving a sheep, and argues that if such a good act is allowed towards a sheep, then a similar good act is allowed for a human being (because a human being is more valuable than a sheep). Matthew has turned the tables on the watchers. They asked if it is lawful to cure on the Sabbath. His Jesus provided a legal argument that it is lawful on the Sabbath to do a good act to alleviate suffering, which implicitly includes curing an individual who suffers. Matthew’s defense follows the traditional form of legal argument. The watchers make no response to Jesus’ argument, and because Jesus offered a legal defense to curing on the Sabbath and no response issues forth from his opponents, Jesus can act as if they accept his argument and proceed accordingly to heal the man. Nevertheless, following Mark, Matthew adds that the Pharisees wanted to destroy Jesus, but he omits Mark’s claim that they conspired with the Herodians.80 A question we will touch on in a moment is where Matthew got this additional legal argument from. Was it his invention based on knowledge of Jewish arguments or were there sources floating around that had differing versions of Jesus’s confrontation over healing on the Sabbath? What we do see from Matthew is how substantially an evangelist might alter a source story with new details and a change of facts. Matthew, clearly working from Mark as a source, has altered the specific order of Mark’s narrative and substituted an entirely different and more sophisticated legal defense to Jesus’ act of healing on the Sabbath. John has also substituted a different defense. Given Matthew’s reaction to Mark, it would not undermine our argument about drawing upon a common source to say that John may have known a version of the story used by Mark and, like Matthew, chose to replace the weak defense with a better one.

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The Man with Dropsy in Luke 14:1–6 I have already remarked on the numerous linguistic agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark regarding the grain field episode, which suggest either a very unusual coincidence or the sharing of a common source such as Q or some other written document. As to the man with the withered hand Luke adheres closely to Mark’s version but does have a couple of changes. He tells us up front that the watchers were Pharisees and Scribes81 and at the end, although the watchers “were filled with fury,” they do not plot to kill Jesus.82 Luke says only that they discussed among themselves what they should do about him. Luke, however, also has an additional Sabbath violation story not present in Mark. It tells of the healing of a man suffering from dropsy and, most interestingly, it incorporates elements like those Matthew added to Mark’s withered hand story. The comparison below suggests that Matthew and Luke both knew a common written story in which these elements were present. In Luke’s second story, Jesus joined some Pharisees for a Sabbath meal but, again, “They were watching him closely.”83 In front of him was a man with dropsy.84 When Jesus sees the man, he turns to the Pharisees and asks, “Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?”85 This is the same question that Matthew uses in his version of Mark’s withered hand story, but it doesn’t appear in Luke’s version of Mark’s story. The watchers remained silent in response to the question and Jesus took the man, healed him, and sent him away.86 Why Jesus sent the man away is not explained. After the man departs, Jesus asks, “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?”87 Luke says that no one could reply to this question either. Luke continues the story with a parable about hospitality, but we need not examine it. Again, Luke’s legalistic defense is virtually identical to the one Matthew inserts into his version of Mark’s withered hand story and which, again, is also missing from Luke’s version of Mark’s story. Despite a few trivial differences in detail, Matthew’s version of the withered hand story tracks more closely with Luke’s account of the man with dropsy than it does with Mark’s telling of the man with the withered hand. While the disease differs (dropsy versus withered hand) and the setting (synagogue versus dinner) the main features of the stories in Matthew and Luke closely align with each other against Mark. In Matthew’s withered hand story and Luke’s dropsy story the initial question is the same. Is it lawful to cure on the Sabbath? This is different from the question initially asked in Mark’s story and it more closely targets the issue in

The Paralytic on the Mat | 145 question. Mark placed it in the context of life and death, which wasn’t relevant to the situation. Matthew and Luke placed it in the context of alleviating suffering. Although Matthew and Luke disagree as to who asked the question, that is the same disagreement that Matthew has with Mark. Luke’s form of the dropsy story, therefore, more closely parallels the narrative structure of Mark’s withered hand story than does Matthew’s. In Matthew’s withered hand story and Luke’s dropsy story Jesus make a legal argument about rescuing creatures that fall into a well on the Sabbath. Matthew places the argument before the healing. Luke places it after. But Mark has no such argument at all. At the same time, in both Mark’s withered hand story and Luke’s dropsy story the Pharisees watch to see if Jesus will heal in order to catch him out. Matthew eliminated the watching angle and substituted the change as to who asked the initial question. So, in Matthew, instead of watching Jesus to catch him out, they question him to see if he can defend such actions. Again, Luke’s dropsy story more closely aligns with the narrative structure of Mark’s withered hand story than does Mathew’s. These similarities between Matthew and Luke strongly suggest that they both knew a written Sabbath healing story that contained these same elements missing from Mark’s story. Whatever the source and nature of this common background, it shows us how the early poorly designed legal arguments present in Mark’s story evolved into more sophisticated presentations such that the original story was almost unrecognizable in the altered form. In fact, if Matthew hadn’t mentioned the withered hand infirmity one would be more likely to identify his story with Luke’s dropsy story than with Mark’s withered hand story, even though Matthew used Mark as a source. In form, though, Luke’s dropsy story looks to me like a close parallel to Mark’s withered hand story and I suspect it may have been a variation on the story used by Mark. Luke, however, appears to have seen it as an independent incident. How Matthew saw it is hard to say. He may have just adopted the legal arguments and added them to his version of Mark’s story, or he may have seen it as an alternative version of the story and adopted it whole.

Mark’s Sabbath Elements in John John’s merger of a story about the healing of a paralytic with a story about a healing on a Sabbath, coupled with his overlay of Johannine theology onto the un-

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derlying stories, has made it difficult to see the underlying Sabbath parallels with Mark. Nevertheless, we can extract from John a few traces of Mark’s stories. John’s account has two Sabbath violation stories. In the first a man following Jesus’ instructions is accused of violating the Sabbath. In the second, Jesus is accused of violating the Sabbath by healing. This is the same sequential accusation structure that Mark has, but there are some story details that differ. Mark’s first story involved the apostles plucking grain from a field. John’s first story involves the man carrying the mat. In both stories an accusation against the violator is made but no punishing action is taken. In Mark, Jesus defends the apostles’ actions by making the claim that he is the lord of the Sabbath. In John, Jesus makes an argument that evokes that principle but wraps it in Johannine theology. He says that he is working, and the Father is working. When we couple this defense with Jesus’ remark that all judgment has been given to him by the Father, we can see that John has incorporated into his story the idea that Jesus is the lord of Sabbath and has the authority to execute judgment as to what is right and wrong on the Sabbath. Two key differences between John and Mark concern the specific act and the specific actor. In Mark, the act is plucking grain and the actor is an apostle. In John the act is picking up the mat and the actor is the paralytic. Clearly, they are different. However, we have already seen in the previous chapter that when John sees a story about apostles being accused of behaving in a way that places them in a negative light, John either substitutes a non-apostle for the apostle, or gives the apostle an enhanced image. At the same time, we also know through Mark that telling the paralytic to lift the mat was such a key element of the story that Mark and John used almost identical language to describe it. Since the instruction to lift the mat was a well-entrenched element of the paralytic story, and John placed the story in Jerusalem away from any grain fields, his merger of Mark’s first Sabbath story with the healing of the paralytic led him to substitute the lifting of the mat by the paralytic for the actions of the apostles in the grain field. The primary theological function of Mark’s first Sabbath story was to give Jesus authority to allow someone to break the Sabbath. As described above, John incorporated that idea into his version of events but gave Jesus an enhanced authority that combined both the forgiving of sin and the authority to decide what can be done on the Sabbath. Mark’s second story is a simple account of healing an infirmity on the Sabbath followed by a legal defense that said healing the afflicted was allowed on the Sabbath. John didn’t want legal arguments to get in the way of his larger t­ heological

The Paralytic on the Mat | 147 arguments. So, he shifted the defensive passage to John 7 and transformed it into an accusation against the Jews for not following their own law. Nevertheless, the text makes clear that the passage was a defense of healing on the Sabbath and that John’s Jesus used a circumcision argument known to the Jewish sages to make the case. We also saw that the argument had been severed from the speech that Jesus made towards the end of John 5 about Moses. We also know from John’s gloss on the story about who gave circumcision to the Jews that he was working from a manuscript that was at least once removed from the original. Therefore, we don’t know what other changes were made to the story before it reached John. We also don’t know what the victim suffered from in John’s original Sabbath healing story, so we can’t compare the specific infirmity to the one in Mark. But Luke’s dropsy story shows other deformities could easily have been substituted in transmission. John’s legal argument also differs from Mark. In that regard we see that even Matthew substituted a completely different legal argument for healing from the one that Mark used. Matthew and Luke showed us that more advanced legal arguments were being composed after the advent of Mark’s story and were starting to receive wide circulation. It is not surprising, therefore, that John would have used a more advanced argument than the one used by Mark’s source. Structurally, the Sabbath template healing debate is simple. Heal and make a legal defense that healing is lawful on the Sabbath. The specific malady doesn’t really matter, and which defense doesn’t really matter. Luke’s dropsy story, Mark’s withered hand story, and Matthew’s use of the legal arguments present in Luke’s dropsy story as a modification of Mark’s withered hand story shows us how different maladies and legal arguments can coexist.

Expanding the Prelude to John 6 In the previous chapter I analyzed what I referred to as the Prelude to John 6. I described it as incorporating John 5 and having a direct connection to John 6:1–3. I pointed out that John 5 dealt with a hostile reaction to Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and that Mark also had such a story. At the time, however, I cautioned that while the content of the two stories differed, I was only concerned with what Mark and John say happened after Jesus healed on the Sabbath. The analysis there showed that Mark and John each followed the Sabbath violation with a sequence of parallel stories that appeared to be based on a common source, although John may have deleted some details from those stories.

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We have now had the opportunity to analyze John 5 and the Markan parallels. If we can accept the argument above that John merged the story of the healing of the paralytic with the two Sabbath violation stories in Mark, we can now see that John and Mark both knew the following three-story sequence.



• A story about the healing of a paralytic on a mat, leading to charges of blasphemy against Jesus for equating himself with God by forgiving sins, and Jesus, the “Son of Man,” proving that he had such authority by healing the paralytic. • A story about a Sabbath violation by someone following Jesus’ instruction, with Jesus claiming that the “Son of Man” had authority over the Sabbath. • A story about Jesus being accused of violating the Sabbath by healing someone, with Jesus making a legal argument that healing on the Sabbath is permitted.

In Mark there is a slight break between the healing of the paralytic and the two Sabbath violation stories. In between he has two stories absent from John. John, on the other hand, has done a lot of rearranging of story details but even within his alterations of narrative order we can find the following sequence: (1) healing the paralytic, (2) accusation that someone following Jesus’ instructions violated the Sabbath, (3) an accusation that Jesus violated the Sabbath by healing, and (4) a hostile reaction to Jesus’ act of healing. We can now see that John 5 consists of three stories that follow the same order in Mark and form a run-up to John 6. This means that John 5 and John 6 form a relatively tight sequence of stories that shares an almost identical story order known to Mark, with only trivial variations that don’t undermine the common connection.

Summary A review of the evidence shows that John and Mark each knew a three-story sequence that promoted certain theological views. In Mark, each of the theological arguments appears in a separate story. Because of objections to how the set of stories reflected on Jesus’ authority, John integrated the three stories into a single event that presented an alternative theological message. Mark’s three theological arguments included the following.

• Healing a paralytic proves the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on God’s behalf.

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• The Son of Man can authorize people to break the Sabbath because the Son of Man is “lord even of the Sabbath.” (Later modified by Matthew and Luke to lord “of the Sabbath.”) • A proper understanding of the Law of Moses authorizes the healing of an infirmity during the Sabbath.

John had several problems with the messages as set forth in Mark’s stories and needed to address those issues. His objections included the following.





• The piecemeal listing of areas of authority (i.e., forgive sin, control the Sabbath) left open the possible interpretation that there were some areas where Jesus had no authority. • Jesus did not need to argue that his actions were legal under the law because his authority allows him to supersede the law. • Asking people to believe in Jesus because of his deeds of power undermined the principle that people needed to have faith in Jesus because his words proved that he spoke on behalf of the Father. • People should be more concerned with obtaining eternal life in the future through faith in Jesus than they should with the alleviation of suffering in the here and now.

Because of these disagreements with the three source stories the author of John came up with the idea of blending the three stories together in a way that replaced the underlying principles with his own theological agenda and relocating the offending themes to other parts of the gospel in ways that didn’t interfere with his reconstruction.





• Instead of having two healing stories, he had only one, merging the original infirmity in the Sabbath healing story with the healing of the paralytic. • Instead of having Jesus engage in two separate arguments about his authority from God, one dealing with blasphemy and the other dealing with authorizing people to break the Sabbath, he merged the two accusations into one, by claiming an authority over the Sabbath that led to accusations of blasphemy. • Instead of claiming that his acts of healing in the present proved his authority, he downplayed the healing and emphasized that his words were proof of his authority and that they could lead to eternal life. • Instead of incorporating the legal argument that healing on the Sabbath was authorized under the law, he moved the argument to John 7, isolating it from the discussion in his merged account and transforming it from a legal defense to an accusation of hypocrisy by the Jews.

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The merging of the non-Sabbath story about healing the paralytic with the two Sabbath stories introduced some difficulties. Several activities in the story about the paralytic would be violations of law if they occurred on the Sabbath. These involved various efforts to help the paralytic reach Jesus for a cure, including carrying, climbing, digging, and lowering. Such Sabbath violations would be a distraction to John’s refocused themes, so he came up with an alternative scenario. Instead of trying to reach Jesus for a cure, he had the paralytic try to reach the healing-pool for a cure. Crowds still blocked the paralytic’s path and the paralytic still needed to be lowered down for a cure, but no actual actions in violation of the Sabbath took place. Because John merged the three stories together, replaced the original theological claims with his own, and disguised the nature of the original actions needed to bring the paralytic to Jesus, many scholars have been unable to recognize that John and Mark worked from the same underlying story about the healing of the paralytic. At the same time, many scholars recognize that the Sabbath context was a Johannine addition to the story and not part of his original source. Nevertheless, we were able to retrieve just about every story element in Mark’s account of the paralytic and show how John manipulated the text to transform the arguments present in Mark. While John altered the contexts, we found the Markan themes lurking in the background.







• Both stories involve a paralytic on the mat. • Both stories show that the healing of the paralytic involved the forgiving of sins. Mark made the connection explicit. John separated cause from effect, placing the role of sin later in the story. • In Mark, immediately after Jesus’ remark about sin, the Jews accuse him of blasphemy for making himself the equal of God. In John immediately after the discussion of sin, John throws in an intervening accusation of violating the Sabbath and has Jesus defend his Sabbath actions. Then he is accused of blasphemy for making himself the equal of God. • In both stories Jesus tells the man to pick up his mat and walk. • I have already described above how John took Mark’s specific details about bringing the paralytic to Jesus for a cure and replaced them with details about the paralytic trying to reach the pool for a cure. • John rejected the argument about the healing of the paralytic being proof of authority and substituted a teaching that Jesus’ words were proof of authority.

This shows that John has addressed virtually every element of Mark’s story about the paralytic in one way or another. Such coincidences strongly imply that they both knew the same basic story.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 151 John’s account of the paralytic also included two accusations of violating the Sabbath. One was against the man for carrying the mat pursuant to Jesus’ instructions. The other was against Jesus for healing on the Sabbath. Although John’s two Sabbath stories don’t look like Mark’s, they play with the same ideas. In Mark’s first Sabbath violation story, the apostles acting under Jesus’ authority pick grains in the field and are accused of violating the Sabbath. Jesus defends them on the ground that the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath and no action is taken against the apostles. In John, the apostles are replaced by the man on the mat, who acts under Jesus’ authority and is accused of violating the Sabbath. John provides an alternative to Mark’s argument in which Jesus argues that he is working because the Father is working. No action is taken against the man, but Jesus is accused of blasphemy, merging the Sabbath story with the account of the paralytic. In Mark’s second Sabbath violation story, Jesus is accused of healing on the Sabbath and Jesus makes a legalistic argument that healing on the Sabbath is allowed under the law. In Mark’s story the man suffered from a withered hand. John made two changes. First, he replaced the original infirmity with the paralysis of the man on the mat, so we don’t know if the infirmity in his source matched Mark’s or not. Second, he transferred the original legal argument that belonged to the speech at the end of John 5 and moved it to John 7, isolating it from its original context and transforming it into an accusation of hypocrisy against the Jews for not following their own law. As to the injury, we saw through Luke’s “man with dropsy” story that variations of the basic Sabbath healing story were floating around with different injuries and using more sophisticated legal arguments. Matthew substituted a completely different legal argument from the one used by Mark and it matched the legal argument used by Luke in the dropsy case. So, the fact that John has a different legal argument doesn’t undermine the fact that he has merged an underlying Sabbath healing story into his account of the paralytic. We also saw evidence that John worked from a written source that had already been altered. What ought to be clear from the above analysis is that John took a group of three stories from Mark that each dealt in piecemeal fashion with the broad question of what authority Jesus has been given and he integrated them into a single account that claimed all authority has been given to Jesus by the Father and that the true gospel is that faith in Jesus as the one sent by God will bring about eternal life in the future. In John’s theology, Jesus doesn’t come under the law but is above the law because he has been granted all authority by the Father. Consistent with that view,

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John also took a passage where Jesus appeared to defend himself under the law and moved it into a different chapter in a different context so that Jesus appears to be accusing the Jews of not understanding their own law rather than defending himself under the law.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

(Meier 1994), 680. (Meier 1994), 681. (Meier 1994), 681. (Wahlde 2010), 219. Mark 2:23–28. Mark 3:1–6. John 5:27. Mark 1:45. Mark 2:1. Mark  2:2. Mark  2:3. Mark  2:4. Mark  2:5. Mark  2:6. Mark  2:7. Mark 2:8–10. Mark  2:11. Mark  2:12. John  5:8. John  5:14. John  5:16. John  5:17. John  5:18. John  5:22. John  5:24. John  5:26. John  5:27. (Aland 1985), 41. He translates the underlying word for “mat” as “pallet.” John 5:9b–10. (Neusner 1988), m. Shabbat 1:2C. (Neusner 1988), m. Shabbat 14:4 D. (Neusner 1988), m. Shabbat 14:4 A.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 153 3 3. (Neusner 1988), m. Shabbat 22:6 F. 34. (Neusner 1988), m. Shabbat 14:3 A–J. The operating principle is that one cannot eat a food if the purpose is to take advantage of its healing powers. Hyssop is forbidden because healthy people don’t eat it. Palm-tree water, which is a purgative, and root water, which is used for jaundice, may not be swallowed if they are used for healing purposes but may be taken if no healing function is involved. For example, one can drink Palm water if the purpose is solely to quench thirst. 35. John  5:8. 36. John  5:22. 37. John  5:23. 38. John  5:24. 39. Mark  3:6. 40. John 5:14–18. 41. Luke  5:17. 42. (Lauterbach  2004). 43. (Maccoby 1988), 170. Bear in mind that the present bible verse divisions didn’t exist in the time of Jesus, and the reference to verse sections is only an approximation of the passage under discussion. 44. (Lauterbach 2004), 494. 45. (Lauterbach 2004), 494. 46. (Lauterbach 2004), 494. 47. (Maccoby 1988), 173. 48. (Maccoby 1988), 173. 49. (Maccoby 1988), 173. 50. (Aland 1985), 128. “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? (Mark 6:2).” 51. John 7:16–18. 52. John  7:19. 53. John 5:46–47. 54. John  7:22. 55. John  5:22. 56. Mark 2:23–28. 57. Mark  3:1–6. 58. Matthew 9:9, 10:3. 59. Luke  6:6. 60. Mark  2:24. 61. On the Sabbath one is generally restricted to the house. The Pharisees developed a tradition known as the Erubin, in which beams were placed between houses to extend the definition of a home, although the Pharisee sects disagreed with each other about the proper construction of these. m. Erubin 1.2.

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62. Mark 2:25–28. The underlying Greek word translated as “humankind” actually refers to “man.” 63. 1 Samuel 21:23. 64. 1 Samuel 21:1. 65. 1 Samuel 21:4. 66. (Keener 1993), in the glossary, s.v., “Son of Man.” 67. (Jackson 2009), s.v., Mark 2:23–26. 68. (Kloppenborg 1987), 74–76. 69. Matthew 12:5–8. 70. John  5:19. 71. Mark  3.1. 72. Mark  3:2. 73. Mark  3:6. 74. Mark  3:4. 75. Mark  3:5. 76. Mark  3:6. 77. Matthew  12:10. 78. Matthew  12:10. 79. Matthew 12:11–12. 80. Matthew  12:14. 81. Luke  6:7. 82. Luke  6:11. 83. Luke  14:1. 84. Luke  14:2. 85. Luke  14:3. 86. Luke  14.4. 87. Luke  14:5.

Bibliography Aland, Kurt. 1985. Synopsis of the Four Gospels. English Edition, Revised printing. New York: American Bible Society. Jackson, J. G. 2009. Synopsis of Matthew, Mark and Luke. Bellingham: Logos Bible Software. Keener, C.S. 1993. The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Kloppenborg, John S. 1987. The Formation of Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Lauterbach, Jacob Z. 2004. Mekhilta of Rabbi Ishmael. Translated by Jacob Z. Lauterbach. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. Maccoby, Hyam. 1988. Early Rabbinic Writings (Cambridge commentaries on writings of the Jewish and Christian world 200 BC to AD 200; 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Paralytic on the Mat | 155 Meier, John P. 1994. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vols. Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles. 4 vols. New York: Doubleday. Neusner, Jacob. 1988. The Mishnah: A New Translation. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wahlde, Urban C. von. 2010. The Gospel and Letters of John. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

4

True Kindred and the Devil

In Chapter 2 I defined the Prelude to John 6 as a sequence running from John 5 through John 6:4. In Mark, the corresponding sequence ends at Mark 3:19, with a lengthy jump from the end of Mark 3:19 to the miracle of the loaves in Mark 6 and Mark 8. Although John shows the Prelude leading directly into that miracle story, I showed that John had a lengthy chronological gap of about three months between John 6:3 and John 6:4, where other stories could have fit in. In this chapter we will look at Mark 3:20–35, the next set of scenes after the Prelude in Mark’s narrative order of events and see how John interacts with those episodes. These include the belief by Jesus’ family that he is acting crazy, an accusation by scribes that Jesus is in league with Satan, arguments by Jesus and an apparent claim by Jesus that his family has not yet enlisted in his cause. Obviously, if John has versions of these Markan stories, they don’t fall into the same narrative sequence that Mark has. But does John have parallels to Mark’s stories? Nothing in John’s gospel looks anything like this narrative sequence in Mark and I don’t think there is much support, if any, for the idea that John has integrated Mark 3:20–35 into his gospel. Nevertheless, I plan to argue that John 8:31–59 and John 9 (which follows immediately after) are built up and out of a version of Mark 3:20–35. Mark 3:20–35 revolves around two central concerns, complications in the relationship between Jesus and his immediate family and accusations that Jesus

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conducts exorcisms through an alliance with Satan, and, implicitly, is a sinner. Neither of those elements are present in the John 8:31–59 and John 9 narrative sequence. Additionally, John 8:31–59 and John 9 come across as independent episodes. The former involves some virulent arguments between Jesus and the Jews. The latter relates the story of Jesus healing a blind man through the use of saliva. There is nothing in Mark 3:20–35 that involves healing a blind man. But Mark 8:22–26 does have a story about Jesus healing a blind man through the use of saliva and there is some debate among scholars as to whether the two healings with saliva derive from a common story. There are several other important differences between Mark 3:20–35 and John’s two narratives. Among the most important are 1) Mark’s story involves conflicts with Jesus’ mother and brothers and these family members make no appearance in either of John’s two segments and 2) John 9 tales place on a Sabbath but Mark’s healing of the blind man does not fall on a Sabbath. The arguments in support of my position are complex so I will just give a general summary of what I will argue and fill in the evidence below. Mark 3:20–35 consists almost completely of material that John would have found offensive but which dealt with important issues that needed to be addressed. The most important of these was the accusation by Jesus’ opponents that he was a sinner, a theological thread that could not be allowed to hang loose without mending. Mark addressed the issue in his gospel and John needed to do the same, but in a manner that differed from Mark’s approach. John had to retell the same underlying stories but in a way that removes all the objectionable elements. This required that he substitute many details that differ from the original version of the story, but which serve the same thematic roles. John made numerous changes to the original account but two of the most significant were these. He replaced the healing through exorcism issues in Mark with a healing of a blind man who was incapable of being healed by an exorcist; and he replaced the criticisms of Jesus’ family with criticisms of the descendants of Abraham. How he worked in these new motifs to address several theological concerns raised in Mark’s story is the subject of this chapter’s analysis.

Mark’s “True Family” Sandwich (Mark 3:20–35) Mark 3:20–35 takes a literary form frequently described as a Markan Sandwich.1 The evangelist from time to time begins a story, interrupts it for another story, and

True Kindred and the Devil | 159 then returns to the original story. In this case the bread consists of indications of difficulties between Jesus and his family and the filling consists of an accusation by scribes that Jesus is in league with Satan and Jesus’ responses. For purposes of analysis I have divided Mark 3:20–35 into five basic story elements. Items 1 and 5 below belong to the first story line and items 2–4 belong to the inserted second story. The five basic elements are:



1. Some action by Jesus makes his family think he is balmy (3:20–21). 2. Scribes accuse Jesus of conducting exorcisms through an alliance with Satan (initially called Beelzebul), implicitly identifying Jesus as a sinner against God (3:22). 3. Jesus offers a logical proof through parables that he couldn’t be in league with Satan and, therefore, not a sinner (3:23–27). 4. Jesus accuses the scribes of blasphemy (3:28–30). 5. Jesus rejects his biological family for his true kindred, those who follow his word (3:31–35).

Mark’s story begins immediately after Jesus called the disciples onto the mountain and designated them as his apostles. After leaving the mountain, Mark says that Jesus went home, presumably to Capernaum where he and his family have taken up residence.2 He was greeted by a crowd so large that people (or, perhaps, just Jesus and the apostles) couldn’t even eat.3 When his family heard about this they tried to “restrain him” because people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.”4 It isn’t clear, here, why people said that or why the family tried to restrain him but there is a hint that Jesus had just conducted an exorcism and the process may have involved some sort of strange behavior by Jesus that led people to think him mad. There is no specific claim in Mark that Jesus had just performed an exorcism but the story is primarily about his ability to do so. Both Luke and Matthew (in a Q version) specifically say that an exorcism took place in the course of this incident, and both agree that the afflicted man was mute, a fact omitted by Mark.5 Matthew says the man was also blind.6 Since Mark has no clear explanation for why people thought Jesus mad and Matthew and Luke say that Jesus did perform an exorcism, and because the ability to perform exorcisms is central to the main story, it is reasonable to assume that Mark redacted the image of Jesus appearing mad through his behavior in conducting an exorcism. I will proceed below on the assumption that in the original story Jesus conducted an exorcism in a manner that made some people think he was out of his mind. Another important difference between Mark and the other two synoptic versions is that where Mark says that people thought Jesus mad and the family

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tried to restrain him, both Luke and Matthew omit those details. Nevertheless, Mark’s account gives us our first indication that Jesus had some family problems. The absence of this element in Luke and Matthew suggests early Christian concern over the allegation. At about this time, Mark says some scribes from Jerusalem happened to be present and they knew that Jesus performed exorcisms. The scribes immediately complain, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”7 Since Mark omits the actual exorcism, we have no explanation for why the scribes suddenly raise the issue of exorcisms. The reasonable assumption is that they had just witnessed Jesus’ odd behavior in the course of an exorcism and now offer their own explanation for what had just happened. This accusation by the scribes should be understood as an escalation of the preceding charge that Jesus was mad. Being somewhat mad was thought to be the result of demonic possession.8 The scribes argue that Jesus’ behavior is not merely the result of being possessed but that he is in league with the “ruler of demons.” Implicit in this accusation is that Jesus is a sinner in alliance against God. When Jesus heard this, he said to the scribes, “How can Satan cast out Satan?”9 The reference to Satan indicates that Beelzebul is just another name for the devil. Jesus proceeds to explain through parables how it cannot be logically true that his exorcisms come through Satan.10 I won’t go through the details other than to mention one of the more famous quotes attributed to Jesus. “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”11 Luke and Matthew have similar parables that substitute Q variants for Mark’s text. At the conclusion of the parables Jesus makes a major pronouncement. “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin (emphasis added).”12 Mark adds that Jesus said this because they accused him of having an “unclean spirit.”13 This addendum equates the attack on Jesus as a blasphemy against God that can’t be relieved. This makes explicit that the accusation that Jesus worked through Beelzebul was the equivalent of saying that Jesus sinned against God. In the Q version, Luke and Matthew indicate that a sin against the Son of Man can be forgiven but not a sin against the Holy Spirit. “And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.”14 So, where Mark appears to suggest that blaspheming against Jesus can’t be forgiven because it is a sin against the Holy Spirit, Q seems to contradict this view.

True Kindred and the Devil | 161 As the debate continued, Jesus’ mother and brothers came near the crowd, calling out to him and sending messages through the crowd.15 Some in the audience told Jesus that his mother, brothers, and sisters were calling him.16 But Jesus, upon receiving the message, replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?”17 He then answers his question by pointing to the ones around him listening to his teachings and says, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”18 This seems to suggest that Jesus thought that his family didn’t believe in him. As to this part of the story, generally referred to as “The True Kindred of Jesus,” Luke and Matthew closely follow Mark’s scenario. I have already alluded above to a few variants in Matthew and Luke with respect to this narrative arc. They also have some structural differences in how the stories unfold. Consistent with their omitting the family attempt to restrain a mad Jesus, Luke and Matthew both also separated the True Kindred story from the exorcism story. Matthew inserts a few incidents between the end of the Beelzebul story19 and the beginning of the True Kindred story.20 Luke puts a greater distance between the exorcism story21 and the True Kindred story,22 but also reverses the sequential order of the two incidents, placing the True Kindred story much earlier than the exorcism argument. In addition, Luke further breaks the Beelzebul story into two separate incidents. He begins with the argument over whether Jesus was possessed but places the blasphemy accusation at a later location,23 breaking the link between the two parts. Luke and Matthew each insert an additional item not present in the other’s version or in Mark. Matthew says that after the exorcism, people said, “Can this be the Son of David?”24 Luke adds, “Others, to test him, kept demanding from him a sign from heaven.”25 Luke’s addition, as I observed in Chapter 2, appears to be a remnant of Mark 8:11–13, which Luke places in a different narrative setting from that in Mark. There is one more detail in Luke’s Q version of Mark’s story of interest. In Jesus’ rebuttal to the demonic possession charge, he says, “Now if I cast out the demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your exorcists cast them out?”26 This indicates that many people other than Jesus were thought to be able to perform exorcisms. This may help explain why John so vigorously objected to using exorcisms and healings as a sign of Jesus’ authority from the Father. That Luke and Matthew omit the claim that Jesus’ family thought him mad as a result of his exorcism behavior, and their separation of the True Kindred story from the scribal complaint about exorcism, which disassociates the family

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from the scribal criticism, suggests that there was a growing concern among later Christians with the details of Mark’s story.

Potential Johannine Objections In considering whether John adapted some version of Mark 3:20–35 for his own gospel, we need to be cognizant as to what themes or issues John might have had problems with. For starters, Mark’s story is about what can be inferred from Jesus’ exorcisms and John eliminates exorcisms from his gospel. In Mark, Jesus offers a logical proof through parables that his exorcisms are untainted. But John also eliminates parables from his gospel. Other factors that may have been problematic to John would be the allegation that the family of Jesus thought he was mad or that Jesus rejected his family. So, if John included a version of this story in his own gospel it would have to exclude the exorcisms, the parables, the allegations that Jesus’ family thought him mad, and the implication that Jesus’ biological family was not his true family. In other words, almost everything in Mark’s story would have to be eliminated and replaced. Obviously, if John included a version of Mark’s story in his own gospel it would look almost nothing like Mark’s version. Therefore, establishing such a connection seems like a tall order to fulfill. But, as we shall see below, John has adapted Mark 3:20–35 for his gospel in a manner that addresses his theological concerns.

True Family in John 8:31–59 Raymond Brown says that a structural analysis of John 8, from 8:12 on, “is perhaps more difficult than that of any other chapter or long discourse in the first part of the gospel [through John 12].”27 Based on apparent literary seams, he sees divisions at 8:21 and 8:31, a conclusion with which I agree.28 John 8:31–59 contains one of the most virulent attacks on the Jews in all the gospels. Although seemingly addressed to those who believe in Jesus,29 it rapidly deteriorates into hotly charged verbal attacks between Jesus and the crowd that was before him. Jesus accuses the crowd of being the children of the devil, who “was a murderer from the beginning,”30 and being murderers like their true father.31 The Jews in response accuse him of being possessed by a demon.32 Brown notes that the “technique of developing the discourse through objections on the part of ‘the Jews’ reaches perfection here, and one can readily sense the increasing bitterness on both sides.”33

True Kindred and the Devil | 163 The Q source has a similar verbal assault on the Jews. Although it doesn’t call Jews the children of the devil it accuses them of being descended from a long line of murders who killed God’s prophets and that “this generation may be charged with the blood of all the prophets shed since the foundation of the world. “34 John’s composition may have been influenced by at least the Q meme if not the text itself. The narrative backbone of the segment is the relationship between and the definition of Abraham’s descendants. The arguments between Jesus and the Jews revolve about who Abraham’s true descendants are, either his biological chain of offspring or those who follow in the word of Jesus. As I will suggest below, John has replaced Jesus’ immediate family with a different biological/bloodline family, the descendants of Abraham. It is members of this alternative biological family that will think Jesus mad and reject him. John’s narrative begins with Jesus addressing those who had believed in him.35 He tells them, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”36 This is essentially the same principle that Mark used to separate members of Jesus’ immediate family from his true family. The audience responds, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free?’ ”37 Jesus initially responds with a brief discussion about people being a slave to sin and how the Son of Man can make them truly free of sin.38 But he throws in a shocker that seems to come out of left field. “I know that you are descendants of Abraham; yet you look for an opportunity to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word.”39 John seems to have shifted audiences without telling us that he did so. He was initially addressing a group of believers. Now he accuses the audience of wanting to kill him. Brown observes that it is very difficult to reconcile this “very sharp disagreement” with the claim that Jesus was initially addressing a group of believers.40 However, we can reconcile this apparent conflict through Mark. Mark begins by telling us that Jesus was swamped by believers. Next a group of scribes from Jerusalem come forward to attack him. If John is adapting his story from a version known to Mark, then this dichotomy in audience reactions reflects the two conflicting audiences in Mark. John appears to have combined the two separate groups into a single crowd, containing both admirers and critics. To this we should add that the claim that Jews want to kill Jesus is an overflow from the Sabbath conflict in John 5, where Jesus was accused of blasphemy and

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Sabbath violations. Yet, no attempt is made here to arrest Jesus and no Sabbath or blasphemy issue is raised. At this point in John, the Abraham issue moves to the fore. In this initial stage, John recognizes his opponents as descendants of Abraham, but this is going to change. He next advises the crowd to do “what you have heard from the Father.”41 The antagonists answer that “Abraham is our father.”42 John’s “Father” is God but the audience, as usual in John, doesn’t understand what Jesus is talking about. Now Jesus shifts the terms of the debate. If the antagonists “were Abraham’s children” they would do what Abraham would do. But instead they want to kill him for bringing the truth that Jesus heard from God; Abraham did not do that.43 Jesus adds, “You are indeed doing what your father does.”44 John has started to develop the following line of argument. The antagonists can’t be the children of Abraham because they want to do something that Abraham wouldn’t do; they must be the children of someone else, someone who would want to kill Jesus. The antagonists respond to this line of reasoning. “We are not illegitimate children; we have one father, God himself.”45 John’s Jesus moves the argument forward. The antagonists, he says, can’t be the children of God because they don’t love Jesus and God sent Jesus to them. You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.46

Jesus adds that the antagonists can’t see that he is telling the truth from God because they are not from God.47 John has done something very important here. He has set up a true family of Abraham as opposed to a biological family descended from Abraham. What sets this true family of Abraham apart from the bloodline family is that the former believes that Jesus is doing God’s will and the latter doesn’t. In Mark, a similar distinction applies. The true family is  ”whoever does the will of God.” For all practical purposes, John has replaced Jesus’ immediate bloodline family, his mother and brothers and sisters as Mark has it, with the extended bloodline family of Abraham’s descendants. This eliminates any indication that there is a problem between Jesus and his mother and brothers and sisters, or that they lack faith in him. Immediately after this accusation by Jesus, the antagonists respond. “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon (emphasis added)?”48 The demon accusation here is that Jesus is out of his mind because he is possessed

True Kindred and the Devil | 165 by a demon. Although the underlying Greek uses the word for “demon,” Brown translates the accusation as “you are . . . demented.”49 This is the accusation made against Jesus in the beginning of Mark’s story. We find, therefore, in close connection to a discussion about which family is the true family of Jesus, a claim by Jesus’s bloodline Abrahamic family, that Jesus is “mad,” possessed by a demon. This was the initial problem in Mark’s story. Jesus’ immediate bloodline family wanted to restrain him because they were told he was mad, implicitly that he was out of his mind because he had a demon, an “unclean spirit” per Mark. The scribes then escalated the accusation. In Mark, Jesus makes no response to the charge that he is possessed by a demon. But he does respond to the scribe’s accusation about working with Satan. In John, Jesus responds only to the demon/madness accusation but does so in a dismissive accusatory manner, not in a defensive mode. “I do not have a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me.”50 Note a somewhat subtle switch here in John’s account. In Mark, the critics accused Jesus of being in league with the devil and in John they only accuse him of being possessed by a lesser demon. At the same time, in John, it is Jesus who accuses the critics of being in league with Satan instead of the other way around. This has some significance. Being in league with the devil would be an unforgiveable sin against God. In Mark, that is the accusation against Jesus and he responds in part that those who accuse him of such sin are blasphemers against God, committing an unforgiveable sin. By reversing the accusation John makes the same claim in a different form. His critics, children of the devil, are committing an unforgiveable sin by wanting to kill him, God’s messenger. In Mark, Jesus responded to the charge of satanic alliance with parables indicating through logic that he couldn’t possibly be possessed by Satan. John doesn’t do parables and he doesn’t use a defense based on parables, nor does he directly address the charge of being a sinner, either through parables or otherwise in the course of John 8:31–59. As we shall see, he saves that for John 9, separating out the defensive argument from the main story, much as he did with the circumcision defense in John 7 in response to the Sabbath accusation in John 5. This is because John’s Jesus doesn’t directly engage in defensive arguments with his opponents. He might make accusations against them, but he usually doesn’t personally make arguments that his actions are lawful. He either puts defensive arguments in the mouths of others and/or moves the argument into a different context where Jesus accuses but doesn’t defend. I’ll reserve discussion of those arguments for the analysis below of John 9.

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Jesus subsequently explains that whoever keeps his word will never see death.51 This leads the antagonists to reiterate their charge that Jesus is possessed by a demon.52 How, they ask, can he say that believers will not taste death when Abraham and the prophets all died?53 Jesus continues with remarks about his glorifying God and accuses the Jews of being liars who don’t know God. “But I know him; if I would say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you.”54 Jesus follows up with the coup de grace. “Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.”55 The antagonists are astounded. “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?”56 Jesus responds, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am (emphasis added).”57 The use of “I am” identifies Jesus with the biblical name for God, raising an issue of blasphemy. His opponents, therefore, picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid away in the temple and escaped from their wrath.58 We are suddenly whisked away to the beginning of John 9, where, without fear, Jesus and the disciples were calmly walking along and see a man born blind.

Observations In the discussion above we saw several connections between Mark 3:20–35 and John 8:31–59. Most important, we saw that John created an alternative bloodline family for Jesus, replacing his mother and brothers with the descendants of Abraham. In Mark it is the personal immediate family that thinks Jesus is mad and possessed by a demon; in John it is the Abraham bloodline that accuses Jesus of being mad and possessed by a demon. In Mark, the accusation was based, implicitly, on his behavior during an exorcism. In John, who omits exorcisms, it was based on rejecting Jesus’ words. In addition, Mark says that Jesus rejected his immediate family, mother and brothers, for not following in his words; in John Jesus rejects the Abrahamic family that does not follow in his words. In both gospels Jesus says that the true family consists of those who follow in his words. We also have evidence that John merged the two audiences mentioned in Mark, one favorable to Jesus and one hostile, into a single crowd that included both factions. John does not include the charge that Jesus is in league with the devil, but he does turn the tables on this charge. In John it is Jesus who accuses his opponents of being in league with the devil, instead of vice versa in Mark. This switch in accusations serves as a substitute for the claim in Mark that Jesus chastised his accusers for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

True Kindred and the Devil | 167 In Mark, Jesus uses the accusation that Jesus is in league with Satan as a basis for saying that Jesus’ accusers have committed an unforgivable sin by blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. John skips over the charge that Jesus was in league with the devil but still accuses his critics of committing an unforgiveable sin against the Father by being in league with Satan. In both gospels, then, the accusation that Jesus’ critics have committed an unforgivable sin by blaspheming revolves around the charge that someone is aligned with Satan. In both gospels the accusation falls into the middle of the story about a true family of Jesus. Here is a summary list of parallels between Mark 3:20–35 and John 8:31–59.

• Both begin with Jesus surround by admirers. • Both show hostile Jewish authorities from Jerusalem appear. • Both show a bloodline family is also present. In Mark, it is Jesus’ immediate family. In John, it is the descendants of Abraham. • Both show that the bloodline family thought Jesus was possessed by a demon and out of his mind. • Both show that the bloodline family had problems with Jesus’s teachings. • Both show that those who insult Jesus by failing to recognize that he bears the word of God will be damned for eternity. • Both include an accusation that someone is in league with the devil. In Mark, the scribes accuse Jesus. In John, Jesus accuses his opponents. • Both gospels teach that the true family of Jesus consists of those who do God’s will as expressed through the teachings of Jesus • Both gospels teach that those members of Jesus’ bloodline family that don’t follow in Jesus’s words are not part of his true family. • Both gospels place all these parallels within the same story arc.

These coincidences strongly suggest that John 8:31–59 shares a common source with Mark 3:20–35. But there are some omissions in John that we need to address. In Mark, Jesus appears to have just performed an exorcism although Mark omits that specific detail. Luke and Matthew both depict an exorcism at the heart of the story. The exorcism serves as the basis for accusing Jesus of being in league with the devil, an indication that Jesus is a sinner. Jesus makes a logical argument through parables that he couldn’t be in league with the devil, which in turn means he is not a sinner. John doesn’t depict exorcisms and doesn’t utilize parables. John 8:31–59 does not deal directly dealt with the charge that Jesus is a sinner and does not include a logical proof that Jesus is not a sinner. It could be argued that by reversing the accusation of working with Satan, John no longer needs to deal with the related charge of being a sinner or include a

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logical defense against the accusation. That strikes me as a reasonable conclusion and if John stopped there I could be satisfied with such an explanation. But in my analysis of John 9 below, I present evidence that John does directly address those issues and that will strengthen the argument that John has adapted for his gospel the events depicted in Mark 3:20–35.

The Transition from John 8 to John 9 John 9, which follows immediately after the John 8:31–59 sequence, tells of Jesus healing a man born blind. Although I will argue that John’s account of the healing of the blind man draws upon two stories in Mark about healing a blind man, I will also suggest that, given the sequential connection between John 8:31–59 and John 9, that John has substituted the healing of the blind man for the healing through exorcism in Mark and has created an alternative context for discussing the question of whether or not healings by Jesus show he is a sinner. At the end of John 8, Jews picked up stones to throw at Jesus but he hid in the temple and managed to escape.59 At the beginning of John 9, Jesus and the disciples are calmly walking in the street and spot a man born blind.60 This sudden transition from stoning to a quiet walk through the streets is a small clue that what follows may have originally been inserted from some other location in the narrative. When the disciples see the blind man they ask Jesus, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”61 Of course, if the man was born blind it is not possible that the lack of sight was due to his sinning, so the claim that he was born blind may not have been part of the original story. Meier says we can’t be sure one way or the other as to whether the “born blind” claim is original to John or his source.62 In the course of John’ story, though, the blind man says “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind.”63 This establishes that Jesus’ act of healing is something no exorcist can replicate. Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”64 John adds on some additional Johannine teachings to Jesus’ answer that we need not address.65 What is essential here is that Jesus says the man and his parents were without sin. This means, in terms of the narrative, there is no demonic possession causing the blindness and that any healing does not involve an exorcism. John will use this healing as a substitute for the exorcism in the Mark 3:2–35 narrative and make it the focus of arguments about whether Jesus is a sinner.

True Kindred and the Devil | 169 Before we look at the rest of John’s account, I want to look at two incidents in Mark where Jesus heals a blind man. I will argue below that John knew versions of these two Markan healings and combined them into a single incident to use as a substitute for the exorcism in Mark’s story. The editorial process is not unlike what we saw in the analysis of John 5, where John substituted the non-Sabbath healing of a paralytic for the Sabbath healing of the man with a withered hand and then merged the stories into a single account of healing on the Sabbath.

Healing a Blind Man Mark has two stories about healing a blind man. The first is at Mark 8:22–26 and takes place in Bethsaida. In it, Jesus uses his saliva to enable a blind man to regain his sight. In Chapter 2 I noted that this was the only story in Mark 8 that didn’t have a counterpart in John 6. I will argue below that the parallel to this incident is incorporated into John 9, where Jesus also uses his saliva to bring sight to a blind man. Mark’s second story occurs at Mark 10:46–52, during Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem for the last time. This healing incident is nothing like the one on the first occasion. It will be argued that John has incorporated this healing story, too, into John 9, melding both of Mark’s stories about healing a blind man into a single event. John’s story takes place in Jerusalem during what John depicts as Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. John, however, places his healing incident on a Sabbath day, a detail not present in either of Mark’s two stories, and this adds some complex theological layers to John’s account that need to be addressed. In the analysis below, I present a detailed look at the three healing stories and the related issues and explain why I think John has combined versions of both of Mark’s two stories into a single account in his own gospel.

The Healing at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22–26) Mark positions the healing at Bethsaida immediately before the scenes in which Jesus first asks how he is perceived by others and next asks the disciples how they perceive him. This leads to Peter making a mistaken identification of Jesus as an earthly messiah. I argued in Chapter 2 that Mark had altered the chronology and moved the healing scene from its original narrative location and placed it in this new location. However, that change still leaves the healing scene in close proximity to Peter’s identification.

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According to Mark, while Jesus was in Bethsaida, up by the Sea of Galilee, some people brought a blind man to Jesus and asked him to touch the man in order to heal him.66 Jesus led the blind man away from the village, implicitly to avoid anyone seeing him perform the actual cure, and put saliva on the man’s eyes and laid hands on him.67 Jesus asked the man if he could see and the man replied, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.”68 Jesus again laid hands on the man’s eyes.69 The man’s sight was restored and Jesus told him to go home and avoid going into the village.70 The story is short, just five verses, but there are a couple of important features that we should look at. First, Jesus uses saliva to restore the man’s sight. The spitting element would normally be associated with a form of magic and suggests a primitive understanding of Jesus as a magician/healer.71 The spitting suggests to several scholars that this Jesus miracle story belongs to the earliest strata of Jesus tales.72 Mark also has a second story in which Jesus uses spit to heal but in that case it is a deaf man who is healed.73 Mark’s two spit stories share a number of parallel features and Meier proposes that these two “spit” stories in Mark probably go back to a “twin narrative” that preceded Mark.74 Meier places both incidents within Mark’s “bread section” (described in Chapter 2) and makes each the terminus of the two sets of stories.75 Interestingly, both Luke and Matthew have eliminated both of these spit scenes from their gospels. The second important feature of this story is the two-stage healing process. Initially, after the application of the saliva the man’s sight is only blurred, not fully restored. The second stage involves the laying of hands and this leads to a full cure. Many scholars view this two-stage procedure as theologically significant, dividing the first half of Mark’s gospel from the second. In the first stage the blind man’s restored vision is unclear and the man can’t discern images well. After the second stage, he sees clearly. The theological twist is that the two stages signify how the apostles see Jesus. In the first stage of the story up to this point, they don’t have a clear understanding of who Jesus is. In the second half, their understanding will increase and eventually lead to a full understanding. To some extent, this healing scene symbolically parallel’s Peter’s initial misidentification of Jesus, which, in Mark, follows shortly after the healing scene. An important element of the two-stage healing process is that it could lead to the possible interpretation that Jesus failed to fully heal in the first stage. This may be why Luke and Matthew dropped the scene. Below, we will see that John’s reconstruction of the story addresses that specific problem.

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The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) Mark’s second story about healing of a blind man is nothing like his first. In this incident Jesus sets out along the road from Jericho to near-by Jerusalem. Large crowds were also heading to Jerusalem, presumably for the Passover festival. A blind beggar named Bartimaeus, sitting on the side of the road, learns that Jesus is passing by and calls out to him, identifying him as the “Son of David” and asking Jesus to have mercy on him.76 Although many in the crowd told him to be quiet, he repeated his cry to the Son of David.77 Jesus called the man over in front of the full crowd and asked him what he wants.78 The man refers to Jesus as “Rabbi” and says he wants to see again.79 Jesus replies, “Go; your faith has made you well.”80 The man regains his sight and follows Jesus to Jerusalem. The very next scene shows Jesus approaching Jerusalem and entering the city. Note the contrast between Mark’s healing procedures for the two blind men. In the first incident Jesus removes the man to a private location and places spit in the man’s eyes and lays hands on him. The cure is only partially affected. Jesus lays hands on again and a cure is realized. In the second story there is no spitting and no touching. If Jesus doesn’t have to engage in those actions to heal the blind man before the public in the second story, why does Jesus need to do those things in private in the first story? The answer probably goes back to the need to create a symbolic two-stage healing process to set up the theological division of the gospel into two parts.

Healing a Man Born Blind (John 9) Let me turn now to John 9. I have already discussed the transition in which Jesus tells the disciples that the man born blind was without sin. I will pick up from that point. After Jesus explained to the disciples what the role of the blind man is, Jesus approached the man, spat on the ground and mixed the dirt and saliva to make mud. He placed the mud on the man’s eyes and instructed him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash.81 John adds in a gloss telling us that the name Siloam means “Sent.”82 It is generally assumed that this is a pun, playing off some underlying pronunciation of Siloam in its original language form, but we don’t know what actual word, either in Hebrew or Greek, John relies on.83 “Sent,” of course, echoes John’s theological agenda; Jesus is the man “sent” by God to bring eternal life. Consequently, the identification of this pool as the location of the incident must be suspect. John may have deliberately inserted it because of the literary connection between the name and the function. The iden-

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tification of the pool with Siloam is, in fact, the only element within John 9 that specifically establishes a connection between this story and Jerusalem. The mention of “Siloam” may be John’s strategy for transferring the story from its original geographic location to Jerusalem. The man with the mud on his eyes washed and returned, now able to see.84 Jesus, however, had already left the scene. When the man comes back, many question whether this was the blind man they knew as a beggar and the crowd splits over the issue.85 (This is the first mention in the story that the blind man is a beggar. In Mark’s Bethsaida story, the blind man is not described as a beggar but in Mark’s second story, the blind man is described as a beggar.) The man keeps reiterating that he is indeed the former blind beggar and the crowd wants to know how he regained his sight.86 The man says someone named Jesus put mud in his eyes and told him to wash it off at Siloam.87 The crowd asked where this man was and the beggar said he didn’t know.88 The crowd then brings the man to the Pharisees.89 We learn now for the first time that this was a Sabbath day.90 Therefore, the making of mud constituted a Sabbath violation. So, also, is the healing. After questioning the man about how he received his sight a debate breaks out among the Pharisees. Some said that Jesus can’t be from God because he doesn’t observe the Sabbath.91 Others argued that no sinner could produce such a sign.92 The authorities then asked the man what he believed about Jesus. The man replied, “He is a prophet.”93 John’s story describes a continuing hostile examination of the former blind man and his family. The investigation ends with the following words from the man born blind. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.94

Note here what John has done. He has used the violation of the Sabbath as a way to raise the question of whether Jesus is a sinner, substituting the Sabbath healing of the blind man (who is not possessed by a demon) for the healing of a man possessed by a demon in Mark’s story. In both instances, the healing act brings a charge that Jesus is a sinner. In Mark, Jesus uses parables to make a logical proof that Jesus couldn’t be a sinner. John doesn’t use parables so he substitutes a debate, but because he doesn’t have Jesus make defensive arguments, he places the terms

True Kindred and the Devil | 173 of the debate in the mouths of others. One side argues that Jesus must be a sinner because he didn’t observe the Sabbath. The other side argues that he couldn’t be a sinner because God wouldn’t allow a sinner to heal on the Sabbath. So, we have in John a logical proof that Jesus couldn’t be a sinner. This provides the parallel to Mark’s parables. John continues. The council accused the man (erroneously) of being born in sin and drove him out.95 Outside the hearing, Jesus and the man meet up again. Jesus reveals himself as the Son of Man, who “came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.”96 The man born blind now has a better spiritual view of Jesus. He is not a prophet, as he thought earlier, but the Son of Man sent by the Father. The man now “worshipped” Jesus.97 This leads to a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees as to whether they are blind.98 The story appears to end as Jesus’ responds. “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.”99 A curious feature of John 9 is that despite concerns about Jesus violating the Sabbath and Jesus being a sinner, there is no actual dialogue or even a meeting between Jesus and the authorities until this one statement at the end of the chapter, and it has no direct connection to the earlier accusations. The earlier actions among the authorities revolve solely around the debates among the Jews as to whether Jesus is a sinner. So, when Jesus says the “sin remains” he must be talking about an earlier confrontation in which there was an argument about sin and, in terms of narrative continuity, that would have been the previous argument between Jesus and his opponents over the nature of Abraham’s descendants. The sin remains because they still believe Jesus is a sinner. Before going into a comparison between John and Mark regarding the healing of a blind man, I first want to look at some evidence creating a direct link between John 8:31–59 and John 9. For that I need to look at what follows in John 10.

A Proposed Link Between John 8:31–59 and John 9 John 9 ends with Jesus accusing the Pharisees of remaining in sin because they claim to see. I suggested above that the claim points back to the argument over Abraham’s descendants in John 8:31–59. John 10:1–18 is generally known as “The Good Shepherd” speech. In it, Jesus talks about his symbolic role as a shepherd and what it entails, including laying down his life for his flock. It is a Johan-

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nine creation that appears to be a continuation of Jesus’ teaching at the end of John 9 but really stands as an independent discourse that has no real connection to what precedes it and can easily be inserted almost anywhere John wants. My concern is with what comes after the speech, John 10:19–21. Again the Jews were divided because of these words. Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?” Others were saying, “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind [emphasis added.]?”

The issue for me is: what words caused a division among the Jews. This passage is generally treated as a conclusion to the Good Shepherd speech.100 This would imply that the Good Shepherd speech contains the words that divided the Jews and led to allegations of madness. But such a reaction seems out of proportion to the content of the speech. The accusation here is that Jesus has a demon and is out of his mind. (Having a demon explains why he is out of his mind.) This is a throwback to the arguments in John 8:31–59, right after Jesus has accused the Jews of being the children of the devil. (“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”101) Other Jews, however, refute the claim that Jesus is out of his mind with a logical argument. “These are not the words of one who has a demon. Can a demon open the eyes of the blind?” What John has set up here is an argument indicating that Jesus can’t be possessed by a demon or, implicitly, Satan (John 8:48) because he opened the eyes of a blind man (John 9:7). In other words, the healing of a blind man in John 9 refutes the allegations in John 8 that Jesus is out of his mind because he has a demon. John 10:19–21, therefore, establishes a direct narrative link between John 8:31–59 and John 9. The healing of the blind man on the Sabbath in John 9 serves as a substitute for the exorcism underlying Mark’s “True Kindred” sandwich. The accusation that Jesus sinned by healing on the Sabbath serves as a substitute for the claim that Jesus sinned by exorcising in the name of Beelzebul. The logical argument that Jesus couldn’t be a sinner because God wouldn’t let a sinner heal on the Sabbath serves as a substitute for the parables that prove Jesus couldn’t be a sinner in the thrall of Beelzebul. Mark presents the entire episode as a “sandwich,” with all the give and take presented between the surrounding accounts of conflict with Jesus’ family. John partially adheres to that arrangement by keeping the accusation about Satan within the true family story, suggesting that if John knew a common source be-

True Kindred and the Devil | 175 hind Mark, the so-called “Markan Sandwich” was already within the pre-Mark source. John appears to have kept part of the literary sandwich intact by retaining the central Satan portion in the middle of the surrounding True Kindred narrative, but has moved what was originally Jesus’ defense of his powers to exorcize into a different context, replacing the exorcism with the healing of a blind man on the Sabbath and having Jews, rather than Jesus, provide the logical argument that he couldn’t be a sinner. Intriguingly, both Luke and Matthew followed John’s example, separating the exorcism story from the “True Kindred” story. This suggests that to some extent John’s separation of the True Family story from the healing/exorcism story may have been influenced by an evolution in how the story circulated within the Christian communities. Having shown, I hope, that the act of healing of the blind man on the Sabbath in John 9 connects up with John 8:31–59 and those two segments of John form a parallel to Mark’s “True Kindred” sequence, we now return our attention to any connections between the narrative content in John 9’s healing story and one or both of Mark’s two stories about healing a blind man.

Healing a Blind Man: Mark and John Compared As with John’s version of the paralytic story, scholars argue about at least two major issues regarding Jesus’ healing of a blind man with saliva. First, do Mark and John share a common source or were their sources independent of each other?102 Second, did John add the Sabbath element to his account or was it part of his original source?103 Here, too, scholars tend to see the stories as independent but strongly suspect that the Sabbath element was added in.104 As I have tried to show above, the Sabbath element of this story was a Johannine invention for the purpose of refuting the claim that Jesus was a sinner. Let me now turn to other parallels between John 9 and Mark.

Mark’s Healing at Bethesda and John 9 Mark’s healing of a blind man has two major components, the use of spit in the healing process and the two-stage healing process. It is primarily the use of the spit that suggests a link between Mark 8:22–26 and John 9. Those who reject a connection between Mark and John point out that in Mark, Jesus applies the spit directly to the man’s eyes and in John, Jesus spits on the ground and mixes the

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liquid with dirt to create mud. Given that little else in John’s story looks anything like Mark’s story, this difference as regards the use of the saliva suggests to them that the two stories have no common source. At the same time, there seems to be little recognition that John, like Mark, has a two-stage healing process with respect to the blind man. It will be my argument below that John altered the original story because of the appearance that Jesus failed to heal on the first try and that introducing the mud mixture was his way of addressing the flaw while still preserving the two-stage nature of the story. Obviously, the first question that should be raised is why would John have Jesus use mud made from spit in order to heal a blind man? In John 4:46–54 Jesus, while in one city, heals a sick child near death in a different city without having to even be present. John’s Jesus is God’s agent on earth, with the power over life and death. Why does he need a mud poultice to heal the blind man? The answer is that John had a problem with an underlying written source showing a two-stage healing process that can be interpreted as a failure of Jesus to heal on the first try. John has replaced the initial obscured vision in Mark’s story with an initial obscured vision based on the mud over the man’s eyes. John still requires a second process before the man is healed. He has to go to a pool and wash the mud off. Only after the mud is removed does his vison become clear. John’s two-stage process doesn’t allow for the impression of failure. It unfolds as a deliberate two-step arrangement to bring back sight. This second step, in a small way, also demonstrates Jesus’ ability to heal over distance without being present. Not only does John present the two-step process that eliminates the image of failure, he does so in a way that shows Jesus even more powerful than the original story did. As several scholars have pointed out, Mark’s two-stage process serves as a foreshadowing of how the apostles develop. In Mark, as presently preserved, the healing story appears immediately before the scene in which Peter misidentifies Jesus as an earthly prophet (and even in my reconstructed chronology, the two scenes appear in relatively close narrative proximity). Afterwards Peter has a better view, learning to focus more on heavenly matters than earthly matters. This culminates in Peter’s clear picture after the resurrection of Jesus. In John, the blind man also starts off with an erroneous view of Jesus, calling him a prophet. Only after he talks again to Jesus does he recognize that Jesus is not an earthly figure but the heavenly Son of Man. Since John rejects negative views of Peter, his blind man might be considered a stand-in for Peter, who has a mistaken view of Jesus almost immediately after the Bethsaida healing. So, just as

True Kindred and the Devil | 177 Peter and the blind man in Mark go through a two-stage recognition process, the blind man in John also goes through a similar two-stage process. Another parallel between John and Mark is that in both stories Jesus sends the man away after applying the spit/mud. In Mark the man is sent away after the full cure is achieved. In John the man is told to go to the pool before the cure is realized, but he and Jesus are separated after he is sent away. The analysis here shows that the two dominant features of Mark’s story—the use of spit to heal and the two-stage healing process—first obscured vision and then clear vision—are present in John 9. But John has made a key alteration to get around the possible misinterpretation that Jesus failed to heal on his first try. He has Jesus mix the spit with mud in order that the blind man’s vision be initially obscured, and had the man then go to wash the mud off to regain his sight. In this way, there is no indication that the initial obscuring of the vision can be seen as a failure of Jesus to heal. We also see that Mark follows up the Bethsaida healing with Peter having an obscured vision of who Jesus really was. John replaced Peter with the blind man, who also misidentifies Jesus in the initial stage. Both Peter in Mark and the blind man in John later have a clearer vision of who Jesus is. I should note that most discussions of the Sabbath violation in John 9 seem to revolve around the making of the mud, admittedly a Sabbath violation but a trivial one, and ignore the more serious Sabbath offense of healing. It is essentially the healing on a Sabbath that is the focus of John 9. It proves that Jesus couldn’t be a sinner because God would not allow a sinner to heal someone born blind. something that had never been done before. The making of mud was for the purpose of obscuring the man’s vision in the first stage of the healing. It is not the issue that the authorities were concerned with.

Mark’s Healing of a Blind Man by Jericho and John 9 While John’s story appears to be primarily based on the same underlying incident behind Mark 8:22–26, there also seem to be some parallels between John 9 and Mark 10:46–52, the second story in Mark’s gospel about healing a blind man. This one takes place on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem.



• In both cases the blind man is a beggar. In Mark’s Bethsaida story, the blind man is not identified as a beggar. In Mark 10:46–52, the blind man is identified as a beggar. John also says the blind man was a beggar. • In both cases the man erroneously identifies Jesus. In Mark the man calls him the Son of David. Since no one in Mark’s gospel truly knows who Jesus is

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until after his death, the identification is in error. Mark even has a later story in which Jesus denies that the messiah can be the son of David.105 In John, the blind man erroneously calls Jesus a prophet. • In both cases, the blind man becomes a follower of Jesus. In the earlier Bethsaida story, the blind man does not become a follower of Jesus. There isn’t even an indication that the man in Bethsaida had any faith in Jesus. • In both cases the story connects with Jesus going to Jerusalem for the last time. In Mark, the very next story has Jesus enter Jerusalem.106 In John, this story takes place during Jesus’ last visit. I should note, however, that there are significant chronological and sequential problems between Mark and John regarding the events of Jesus’ last visit. We will look at those issue in more detail in Chapter 7.

While Mark 8:22–26 clearly appears to be the dominant source for John 9 (minus the Sabbath and sin issues) there appears to be some indication that John also introduced some elements from Mark 10:46–52 to flesh out the story. To a large extent, John seems to have an interest in consolidating stories with similar facts or similar themes, combining key elements into a single narrative. The motive here may be to avoid having to deal more than once with similar issues.

The Original Narrative Sequence of Events As I have previously noted, the Prelude to John 6 contains a large chronological gap of at least three and a half months between the unidentified festival in John 5 and the Passover festival announced in John 6:4. Mark 3:20–35 begins precisely where the gap in John 6 begins. In view of John’s massive reworking of the stories that appear in that Markan narrative, including the use of Mark’s Bethsaida healing and probably the Jericho healing, as well as moving the sequence into the middle of what John portrays as Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem (which is a very questionable Johannine claim, discussed more fully in Chapter 7) I am strongly inclined to accept Mark’s chronology for Mark 3:20–35 over John’s. In terms of John’s gospel this means that the narrative sequence should have originally fallen into the chronological hole between John 6:3 and John 6:4. I have already discussed the sequential location of Mark 8:22–26 in Chapter 2. At that time, I suggested that Mark had moved the story slightly out of its original sequence and that Mark 8:10–13 (crowd asks Jesus for a sign) should appear after 8:26. At the time I associated John 6:30–34 with the request for a sign. In terms of narrative chronology then, the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida

True Kindred and the Devil | 179 belongs between John 6:29 and John 6:30. This places it between John’s version of the warning against bread that perishes and the request for a sign. John, however, has moved it out of its original narrative location and into John 9 to serve as a substitution for the exorcism in Mark 3:20–35. The last episode to be accounted for is the healing of a blind man on the road to Jerusalem. Mark makes it the last scene before Jesus enters Jerusalem for the last time. John placed it into John 9, during what constitutes John’s account last visit to Jerusalem. John’s account of this last visit is highly problematic, and as we shall see in Chapter 7, almost completely without chronological credibility. We have already seen that John 9 is largely wrapped around the healing in Bethsaida and out of sequential order. So, I am inclined to follow Mark’s chronology for the healing on the way to Jerusalem, at least to the extent it occurs before Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. In terms of John’s gospel, the most likely original location for this story would probably be between John 7:10, when Jesus heads out from Galilee to Jerusalem, and John 7:11, where the action switches to Jerusalem. John omits any account of what happened between these two events so the location seems to be a good setting for what Mark describes as the last act of Jesus before arriving at Jerusalem for the final (and only) visit.

Summary Underlying Mark 3:20–35 is a story containing five basic scenes. John had numerous theological problems with this scenario and had to make numerous changes to the underlying narrative to address his concerns. John 8:31–59 and John 9 contain his reworked version of Mark’s story. The five basic scenes are as follows.





• Jesus’ odd behavior during an exorcism made people think he was possessed by a demon and out of his mind. His immediate family was among those concerned with his behavior. • Jesus’ opponents accused him of conducting exorcisms through an alliance with Beelzebul (i.e., Satan by another name), ruler of demons, which implied that Jesus sinned against God. • Jesus used parables to prove he couldn’t possibly be aligned with Satan and therefore he was not a sinner. • Jesus accused his opponents of blaspheming against God because of their accusations against him. • Jesus indicated that his true family consisted not of his bloodline relatives but those who followed in his words.

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John objected to any depictions of Jesus’ family as not being supportive of him. So, he needed a reasonable substitute for the members of Jesus’ family. He came up with the idea of a different bloodline family connected to Jesus, the descendants of Abraham. It is this alternative bloodline family that thinks Jesus is mad and which rejects his teaching. In this manner, John can still make the argument that Jesus’ true family consists of those who follow in his words but does not include those blood relatives who do not follow in his words. In this formulation there is no reason to think that Jesus’ mother thought him mad or that Jesus rejected his mother and brothers. This alternative family and its actions are introduced in John 8:31–59. In Mark, Jesus was accused of being a sinner because he healed people through exorcisms in concert with the devil. Jesus made logical arguments through parables that he couldn’t possibly be in league with the devil and therefore he couldn’t be a sinner. John never depicts Jesus doing exorcisms and doesn’t utilize parables, so he needed an alternative scenario to show that an act of healing by Jesus couldn’t be used to accuse him of being a sinner. He handled this issue in John 9 by introducing a man born blind who was not a sinner and who couldn’t be healed through exorcisms. However, he arranged to heal the man on a Sabbath, giving rise to the argument that Jesus must be a sinner because he violated the Sabbath. Some Jews disagreed with this claim by arguing that Jesus couldn’t be a sinner because God wouldn’t allow a sinner on the Sabbath to heal a man born blind, something that had never been done before. The healing of the blind man substituted for the healing of the man possessed by a demon. The healing on a Sabbath that gave rise to the claim that Jesus was a sinner replaced the claim that Jesus was a sinner because he conducted exorcisms through Satan. The argument that a sinner couldn’t heal on a Sabbath replaced the parables that proved Jesus couldn’t be a sinner aligned with Satan against God. John also countered the accusation that he was aligned with Satan by switching around the accusation, charging his opponents of being the children of the devil. In Mark, Jesus accused his opponents of an unforgivable sin, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, because they accused him of being in league with Beelzebul. By reversing the accusation, Jesus accused his opponents of unforgiveable sins against the Father by not loving Jesus and following in his words. In this manner John hit on all the same basic theological issues in Mark’s story but recast them in terms that satisfied his theological agenda. But he had a new problem that he had to address. In introducing the healing of the blind man, he relied primarily on a story known to Mark about healing a blind man with saliva.

True Kindred and the Devil | 181 In Mark’s saliva story the healing occurred in two stages, symbolically identifying a theological theme of his gospel. In the first stage, after applying the spit directly to the man’s eyes, his sight was better but still blurry. In a second laying of hands the man now had a clear view. This was followed up in Mark almost immediately afterwards by having Peter fail to, at first, accurately identify Jesus’ true nature, but to later learn who Jesus really was. Mark’s two-stage scenario apparently upset several early Christians. A key issue appears to have been that the unclear vision in the first stage could be interpreted as a failure by Jesus to heal on the first try. Matthew and Luke both omitted the story from their gospels. John could not accept the idea that Jesus could fail at anything he wanted to do. So, he addressed this interpretative problem in an interesting way. He mixed the saliva with dirt to create mud and placed the saliva-dirt mixture to the man’s eyes and told him to go to another location to wash it off. This, too, created a two-stage healing but the obscured vision was a part of the process of full vision and not the result of any failure on Jesus’ part. In the first stage the man’s vision was obscured only by the mud, not by any failure to heal. In the second stage the man left to wash off the mud and when he did his vision was clear. In this manner there was never a partially restored vison that could be interpreted as a failure. In concert with Mark’s evolution of Peter’s vision of Jesus, John shows the blind man initially not knowing Jesus’ true identity and later learning who Jesus really was. The blind man in John appears to be a stand-in for Peter. John never depicts Peter failing to understand Jesus and has substituted someone else to make the erroneous declaration. In recreating this story about healing a blind man, John relied primarily on a variation of Mark’s healing with saliva, but John appears to have fleshed out the story with some additional details taken from a second story in Mark 10:46–52, also about the healing of a blind man. In this second account, the man healed was a beggar and became a follower of Jesus after he was cured, details not present in Mark’s first story but which were part of John’s narrative. Lastly, we looked at John 10:19–21, which, I suggested, showed that John 9 and John 8:31–59 were linked together as part of a continuous narrative. According to these verses, John couldn’t be a mad man possessed by a demon as alleged in John 8:48 because he healed the blind man in John 9:6–7. All in all, the evidence above shows Mark and John knew the following seven scenes from a common source.

1. Jesus’ bloodline family thought he was mad and possessed by a demon because of his behavior during an exorcism.

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2. Jesus’ opponents accused him of being a sinner against God by working with the ruler of demons. 3. Jesus defended himself by making a logical argument showing he couldn’t be a sinner. 4. Jesus accused those who attacked his character as blasphemers against God who committed an unforgivable sin. 5. Jesus said his true family consisted of those who followed in his word, and those bloodline relatives who did not take in his teachings were not part of his true family. 6. Jesus healed a blind man by using saliva and the healing process involved two stages, one with obscured vision and one with clear vision. 7. Jesus healed a blind man who became a follower of Jesus.

John has altered the sequential location of these scenes. Scenes 1–5 originally belong chronologically between John 6:3 and John 6:4. Scene 6 would have been located between John 6:29 and John 6:30. Scene 7 belonged between John 7:10 and John 7:11.

Notes 1. (Mays 1988), 989. Other examples of this practice have been identified with Mark 5:21–43, 6:7–32, and 14:54–72. 2. Mark 3:19. 3. Mark 3:20. 4. Mark 3:21. 5. Luke 11:14; Matthew 12:22. 6. Matthew 12:22. 7. Mark 3:22. 8. (Brown 1966), 387, n.20. 9. Mark 3:23. 10. Mark 3:23–27. 11. Mark  3:25. 12. Mark 3:28–29. 13. Mark  3:30. 14. Luke 12:10; Matthew 12:32. 15. Mark  3:31. 16. Mark  3:32. 17. Mark  3:33. 18. Mark 3:34–35. 19. Matthew  12:32.

True Kindred and the Devil | 183 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60.

Matthew  12:46. Luke  11:23. Luke 8:19–21. Luke  12:10. Matthew  12:23. Luke  11:16. Luke 11:19; Matthew 12:27. (Brown 1966), 342. (Brown 1966), 342. John  8:31. John  8:44 John  8:41. John  8:48. (Brown 1966), 361. Luke 11:50; Matthew 23:35. John  8:31. John 8:31–32. John  8:33. John 8:34–36. John  8:37. (Brown 1966), 354. John  8:38. John  8:39. John 8:39–40. John  8:41. John  8:41. John  8:44. John  8:47. John  8:48. (Brown 1966), 353. John  8:49. John  8:51. John  8:52. John 8:52–53. John  8:55. John  8:56. John  8:57. John  8:58. John  8:59. John  8:59. John  9:1.

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61. John 9:2. 62. (Meier 1994), 698. 63. John 9:32. 64. John 9:3. 65. John 9:4–5. 66. Mark 8:22. 67. Mark 8:23. 68. Mark 8:23–24. 69. Mark 8:25. 70. Mark 8:26. 71. (Meier 1994), 693. 72. See, for example, (Meier 1994), 969. 73. Mark 7:31–37. 74. (Meier 1994), 691. 75. (Meier 1994), 712. 76. Mark 10:47. 77. Mark 10:48. 78. Mark 10:49–51. 79. Mark 10:51. 80. Mark 10:52. 81. John 9:6–7. 82. John 9:7. 83. (Keener 1993), s.v., John 9:7. 84. John 9:7. 85. John 9:8–9. 86. John 9:10. 87. John 9:11. 88. John 9:12. 89. John 9:13. 90. John 9:14. 91. John 9:16. 92. John 9:16. 93. John 9:17. 94. John 9:30–32. 95. John 9:34. 96. John 9:39. 97. John 9:38. 98. John 9:40. 99. John 9:41. 100. See, for example, (Brown 1966), 384–85, 387 n. 20, 21. 101. John  8:48.

True Kindred and the Devil | 185 1 02. (Meier 1994), 697. 103. (Wahlde 2010), 427. 104. (Wahlde 2010), 427; (Meier 1994), 695. 105. Mark 12:35–37. 106. Mark 11:1–11.

Bibliography Brown, Raymond E. 1966. The Gospel According to John I–XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Keener, C.S. 1993. The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Mays, James Luther. 1988. Harper’s Bible Commentary. San Francisco: Harper and Row. Meier, J. P. 1994. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Vols. Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles. 4 vols. New York: Doubleday. Wahlde, Urban C. von. 2010. The Gospel and Letters of John. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

5

You Can’t Go Home Again

In Chapter 2, during my analysis of John’s Discourse on Bread, I pointed out that one of the verses in that sequence, John 6:42, which referenced Jesus’ family, appeared to be a parallel to Mark 6:3, a verse belonging to the Mark 6:1–6 story about Jesus being rejected by his “hometown” congregation. This story is usually referred to as the Rejection at Nazareth although Mark never directly says that the story took place in Nazareth. At that time, I said that in order to avoid the distraction of a complex analysis of that passage’s role in John 6 that I would treat it separately. I do that in this chapter. The Discourse on Bread runs from John 6:31 to 6:58, although many scholars treat 6:51–58 as a later addition.1 The inclusion of John 6:42 in the Discourse identifies, as does its parallel in Mark, the synagogue where Jesus spoke as one where Jesus’ family was known. In addition, both gospels, in other verses that do not share similar language, show that the congregation that knew Jesus’ family rejected him, although Mark (for reasons to be explained later) is quite vague as to why this happened. Despite this double parallel in language and story line, the consensus appears to be that the integration of John 6:42 into the Discourse is just an isolated coincidence worth no more than an “Isn’t that interesting” observation. But there is another verse in the Discourse that extends the parallel between John and Mark

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and suggests a tighter integration between the Discourse on Bread and the Rejection at Nazareth. According to John 6:36 Jesus said, “But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.” Although the specific language doesn’t appear in Mark’s story it is thematically identical to the substance of Mark’s story. In Mark, the crowd, despite knowing about Jesus’ deeds, rejected him and Jesus was “amazed at their unbelief.”2 Both stories emphasize that the congregation rejected Jesus even though they had direct knowledge of his activities. Although on the surface there appears to be no similarity in story details between the two gospels, I will show that the Discourse on Bread was created in large part out of the Hometown Rejection story and that John made numerous changes for specific theological reasons, much along the lines that we saw in the previous analysis of John 5. John’s editorial changes deliberately disguised the nature of the underlying story. Within Johannine circles many scholars regard John 6:31–50 as an unusual (for the gospels) literary composition, taking the form of a first century Jewish homily.3 This homiletic structure turns out to be a very important factor in showing how John developed his Discourse on Bread from the same source used by Mark for the Hometown Rejection story. The homiletic form of teaching involves the interpretation of a passage in scripture. As a literary form, John’s use has been thought to be unique in the gospels. However, I will show below that Luke 4:16–27, that gospel’s version of Mark’s rejection story, also follows the same homiletic form in its treatment of Mark’s story. I will explain the homiletic structure below and show why it is applied to John 6:31–50 and why it should also be applied to Luke. That both John and Luke tell a story using the homiletic structure with direct links to Mark’s account of the Rejection at Nazareth provides important evidence indicating a common source for all three gospels as to that story. John also has what appears to be two other direct links to Mark’s story, but they appear outside of the Discourse on Bread. Aland, in his Synopsis of the Four Gospels, sees connections between John 4:44 and Mark 6:4 and between John 7:15 and Mark 6:2.4 Aland, therefore, connects three of Mark’s six verses to John but the latter doesn’t present them in a unified fashion. Each of John’s three verses appears in separate stories in differing contexts in different geographical regions. At first glance, nothing in John’s gospel looks like a direct variation of Mark’s story but, coupling these three verses with the parallel theme present in John 6:36, it is obvious that John had some familiarity with a substantially complete version of the Rejection story underlying Mark’s account. This raises the question of how

You Can’t Go Home Again | 189 John seems to know so much of Mark’s story but doesn’t have any explicit variation of it. I will address this issue further below. The earliest extant version of the story appears in Mark 6:1–6, which briefly recounts how Jesus returned to his “hometown” synagogue and the congregants took great offense at him.5 Mark also says, in a somewhat throw-away manner, that Jesus lost his powers in the course of this incident. Only six verses long, the story suffers from several flaws, the most notable of which are that Mark fails to tell us why the assembly turned against Jesus and what it meant that Jesus lost his power. Mark’s account leaves the clear impression that he left out a few important facts. Luke 4:16–30, which uses Mark as a source, has an expanded version of this episode that contains several factual additions that can’t be reasonably inferred from a reading of Mark. It also addresses some of Mark’s flaws. At the same time, Luke, on occasion, seems to agree with John’s variations against Mark as to the story’s content. Still, there are some flaws in Luke’s account that also create a concern about missing material. Where Luke’s additional material came from is one of the problems I hope to solve in this chapter. After reviewing the rejection incident in all three gospels I will argue that there originally existed a widely circulated story among the Jews in which Jesus claimed prophetic status with the ability to heal but when challenged to perform Jesus failed in this task. This contributed to a rejection among Jews of Jesus’ claim to special status with God. Embarrassed by this episode, a Christian Jew prepared a written response to these charges in which it was argued that scripture proved that even if Jesus failed to heal, he should still be accorded prophetic status. This writing took the form of a first century Jewish homily. I will argue that Mark, Luke and John all knew this story either as an isolated written account or as part of an underlying larger written source. In Chapter 3 I showed that John had a significant theological problem with the idea that deeds of power proved that Jesus had authority from God to make judgments. For John, Jesus’ proved his authority through words, not deeds of power. John also disapproved of the gospel that emphasized the elimination of suffering in the here and now, preferring instead one that emphasized gaining eternal life in the future. Toward that end, I showed that John rewrote stories that contained the objectionable themes and replaced the underlying theology with his own. He also moved the disputed teachings into a new context that undermined the nature of the original claims. This means that the underlying story that I say stood behind the Rejection at Nazareth would have been especially repulsive to John. It not only relied on

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deeds as proof of authority, but in the end, Jesus failed to perform the deed that would validate his claim, the healing of someone who suffered. As a result, I will argue, John followed procedures like those he used with the Sabbath and Blasphemy stories. He merged the underlying scenario with other stories, substituted his own theological take, and moved some of the offensive parts to other locations in different contexts. As with Mark and Luke, he never specifically says that Jesus failed to heal somebody. By looking at how this story moves through each of the gospels we can gain significant insights into the ways that each of the evangelists manipulates source data and see how they can produce radically different versions of a text even though they may share common material.

The Rejection Story in Mark 6:1–6 On the surface, Mark tells a short simple story, just six verses. On a Sabbath day Jesus returned to his “hometown” and taught in a synagogue where members of his family were known. Although we are not told what Jesus said or did, the crowd initially seemed to approve of Jesus’ teachings but quickly turned hostile. Suddenly, Jesus lost his ability to do “deeds of power” although he still managed to pull off a few healings. Finally, Jesus departed, amazed by the congregation’s lack of faith. Within the short span of this story’s narrative, several issues present themselves, one of the most important of which is that Mark never explains why the synagogue assembly became angry with Jesus. The shift in attitude is sudden and jarring. Did it have anything to do with his inability to perform deeds of power? Just below I set forth Mark’s narrative in his exact order, but I subdivided the text into smaller units dealing with separable thoughts rather than divide it verse by verse. The gospel’s text appears in italic, and after each textual unit I added some brief observations. He left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. (Mark 6:1) Mark doesn’t identify the name of the hometown and scholars routinely assume it is Nazareth. But “hometown” can have multiple meanings. On a literal level it can be the place where one was born; it can be the place where one was raised and spent most of one’s childhood; it can be the place where you started your career; and it can be the place where you are currently living. In the latter two instances that would probably be Capernaum, about which we will have more to say later. “Hometown” can also have a figurative meaning, in the sense of

You Can’t Go Home Again | 191 a proverb, in which case it would simply mean a place where one was known, or with which one is identified. Mark’s gospel has very little information about where Jesus’ hometown may be. It has no birth story; it makes no mention of any connection to Bethlehem; and it never addresses the issue of where Jesus was born or grew up. It does say that Jesus came from Nazareth, but only at a point just before the start of his mission, “in those days” when John the Baptist was baptizing.6 He doesn’t say where Jesus lived before that time but he does acknowledge that Jesus was known as “Jesus of Nazareth.”7 After Jesus has been arrested, Mark even has one of the High Priest’s servants refer to Jesus as the “man from Nazareth.”8 By the time Mark gets to this rejection story, though, Jesus has already set up a home base in Capernaum.9 It may be that Mark doesn’t actually know where Jesus grew up. Given Mark’s lack of information about where Jesus was born or where he grew up as well as his limited description of Jesus’ connection to Nazareth, his use of “hometown” to describe where Jesus went seems like an odd designation. At this point in his narrative the hometown could be either Nazareth or Capernaum, and Mark gives no clear guidance as to which city he is referring to. His ambiguity may be due to a written source for this story and “hometown” was the word used. That is the theory I will support later. It may also be the case that because Jesus chastised the congregation by saying “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown [emphasis added]”10 he may have assumed from that quote that the story took place in some actual hometown of Jesus, wherever that may have been, rather than a proverbial hometown. But that doesn’t tell us which of several possible hometowns, literal or figurative, Jesus meant when Mark used that term. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue (Mark 6:2a) Mark depicts the day as a routine Sabbath with no indication of any problem. Yet, towards the end of the story he tells us Jesus did a few healings. This is quite strange. Much earlier in the gospel Jesus got into deep trouble for healing on the Sabbath and Mark tells us that “The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.”11 But here he is again healing on the Sabbath and not a hint of difficulty. In Mark’s defense we might consider his language slightly ambiguous as to whether the healings occurred on that Sabbath day or shortly after, although he gives us no reason to believe there was any delay. Matthew, on the other hand, removed Mark’s references to the Sabbath, suggesting that he was bothered by Mark’s seeming indifference to possible multiple violations of the Sabbath.12

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and many who heard him were astounded. (Mark 6:2b) What was it the crowd heard? Mark omits that little detail. Why? An answer will be suggested below. The word “astounded” and other similar words like “amazed” or “astonished” are uninformative as regards approval or disapproval of whatever causes the reaction. One can be astounded by either a good act or a bad act. For example, at the end of this story Jesus is “amazed” at the lack of faith, a bad act. So, was the crowd astounded because they liked what they heard or because they were offended by what they heard? L. W. Hurtado, in his commentary on Mark, writes, “Nevertheless, this astonishment does not mean insight or faith but something considerably less.”13 They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him”(Mark 6:2c–d) The use of the term “wisdom” does suggest a positive reaction to the teaching of Jesus. On the other hand, the crowd does ask what this wisdom is, as if it is something they haven’t heard before. Therefore, it is possible that this reaction could be negative, in that they find this “wisdom” repugnant or problematic. In that case “wisdom” could be considered a sarcastic or mocking usage. Absent the actual teaching, we can’t be sure which sense is intended. John, as we will see, depicts the crowd as puzzled by the teachings rather than enthusiastic. What deeds of power are being done by his hands! (Mark 6:2e) This statement by the crowd suggests that they are in awe at Jesus’ abilities. But what gave rise to this response? It is a direct claim that they know he has done great deeds. But the story has no reference to such deeds being performed before them. Hurtado remarks that Mark’s phrasing here “is difficult to follow” when considered in context with Mark 6:5–6, which says that he did no miracles there.14 “To what miracles does the crowd refer to in 6:2?” he asks.15 Of course, it is not unreasonable to assume that the crowd may have heard about his reputation for healings or exorcisms although that knowledge isn’t mentioned in the story. In Luke’s version, it is just such a reputation the crowd is referring to. John, of course, would be highly offended by this emphasis on deeds of power and would have likely edited it out if it was in his source. “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3a–b) The congregation knows both Jesus and his family. The reaction indicates that nothing they know about either Jesus or his family would lead its members to

You Can’t Go Home Again | 193 believe that Jesus could say or do such “astounding” things. We have another ambiguous reaction to Jesus’ teachings. It doesn’t tell us whether the crowd approved or disapproved of Jesus’ teachings. It just indicates that whatever he said or did was inconsistent with what they know about him and his family. An unusual feature about the crowd’s reference to the family is that it doesn’t mention Jesus’ father. The congregation tells us the mother’s name and the brothers’ names, and that his unnamed sisters were with them, but they make no reference at all to a father. Some ancient manuscripts, as well as Matthew 13:55, have an altered form of this verse that refers to Jesus not as the carpenter, but as the “son” of the carpenter.16 But even there the father remains unnamed. It could be argued that Jesus’ father may have passed away by this point so there was no reason to include him in the family roster. However, throughout Mark’s gospel there is never any reference at all to Jesus having a human father. As Mark tells us in the first verse of his gospel, Jesus is the son of God. While Mark may be following a theological agenda as to whom he lists as family members, the presence of named family members turns out to be an important feature of this story in all the gospels and provides some evidence for a written source. We will return to this point later. And they took offense at him. (Mark 6:3c) This is a major surprise in Mark’s story and he doesn’t prepare us for it in any way. He has implicitly suggested by the way he phrased the earlier verses that things were going well for Jesus, and then, suddenly, the hammer falls; the crowd is angry. What did the audience take offense to? The only reference back to Jesus saying or doing anything is at Mark 6:2; he taught in the synagogue. If we follow the logic of Mark’s narrative structure, it comes down to this: Jesus made a speech, the crowd had trouble figuring out where he got these teachings from, and they took offense at him. There is no intervening event between the crowd’s reaction and the taking of offense. The textual flow suggests that the crowd’s earlier remarks may have arisen in a negative context and that Mark is massaging the narrative. The offense must be something Jesus said or did either when he delivered that initial message or after the congregation mentioned knowledge of Jesus’ family. But Mark says nothing about the details of either event. In journalistic terms, Mark could be said to be “burying the lede,” beginning a story with secondary facts and placing the chief highlight near the end. In Mark’s case, burying the lede gives a distorted view of Jesus’ initial impact in the synagogue. His story omits one of the most important details, what Jesus said or did to trigger such reactions.

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Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” (Mark 6:4) Jesus reacts to the taking of offense by saying that prophets get no respect in their hometown or from their own family or household. His statement clearly criticizes his family and household, for not giving him the respect due. This gives added context to the crowd’s earlier expression of knowledge about Jesus’ family. The crowd considered Jesus’s remarks inconsistent with what they knew about his family and Jesus charged that his family gave him no honor. Jesus has aligned the hostile synagogue members with hostility from his family. This strongly suggests that when the crowd referred to the inconsistency between Jesus’ teaching and what they knew about his family, such comparison was originally meant in a far more negative manner than indicated by Mark’s narrative flow. As I pointed out in Chapter 4, Mark 3:21 and 3:33 evidence an earlier problematic relationship between Jesus and his family. In the first instance the family tried to restrain him, thinking him mad. In the other incident, when his mother and brothers sent a message that they wanted to speak to him, he rejected their request and defined his followers as his real mother and brothers. So, Jesus’ remark about a lack of family respect has some antecedent roots in Mark’s gospel. John seems to confirm this hostile relationship when he writes, “For not even his brothers believed in him.”17 And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. (Mark 6:5) Jesus could do no deed of power in his hometown. Mark doesn’t say he chose not to exercise his powers, only that he couldn’t exercise those powers. This is shocking; the most surprising element of the story, perhaps of the whole gospel mission, and it just hangs there without explanation. What could it mean that Jesus, whom Mark describes as the son of God, lost his power? Why did this miracle worker lose his power? What power did he lose? Something must be missing here. Mark modifies the loss of power by stating that Jesus still did a few healings and cured some people. To this point in Mark’s gospel that is Jesus’ only publicly known power, healing, primarily through exorcism.18 Should we read this as an indication that there were some people he couldn’t cure? The connection between loss of power and a “few” healings seems to suggest that Jesus failed to heal somebody, but Mark’s wording, without more evidence, doesn’t quite allow us to draw that conclusion. Obviously, Jesus must have attempted to do something and failed to do it. That is the only sensible reading of Mark’s story. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know

You Can’t Go Home Again | 195 that he was unable to exercise his power. The most logical implication consistent with his broader gospel narrative is that Jesus failed in some way to heal somebody. Earlier in the story the crowd allegedly exclaimed that Jesus executed deeds of power by his hands. Whether they personally witnessed such deeds or only heard about them, the inability of Jesus to do any deed of power must have been extraordinarily disappointing to them. Such an event would also have been extremely embarrassing to Mark and he would have an impetus to minimize the damage. By adding in that Jesus still healed a few people despite losing his power Mark appears to be mitigating the awkwardness. And he was amazed at their unbelief. Then he went about among the villages teaching. (Mark 6:6) The positioning of this statement after the notice that Jesus lost his power raises another ambiguity in Mark’s report. Did they lack faith because of what Jesus said or did earlier, or did they lack faith because he lost his power? If the latter, in what way did they know he lost his power? Also, what was their unbelief about: Jesus’ role or some aspect of his scriptural teaching? Mark doesn’t say. Since we don’t know what Jesus said or what power he couldn’t exercise it is hard to determine why the people lacked faith in Jesus. But the narrative flow strongly suggests a connection between the loss of power and the lack of faith.

Additional Observations on Mark’s Story Mark’s story suffers from several defects. His phrasing is ambiguous and lacks context. He doesn’t tell us what Jesus said or did to cause the crowd to take offense or what caused Jesus to accuse his own family of dishonoring him; he doesn’t tell us what caused the crowd to lack faith or what they lacked faith in; he doesn’t provide any context for the congregation’s reference to knowing the members of Jesus’ family. But Mark’s great reveal, though modified and insulated, is that Jesus couldn’t perform deeds of power in front of his hometown community. The implication is that Jesus couldn’t heal someone, but Mark never makes this explicit and one must read between the lines to drag it out of him. Mark’s defects suggest that he is working from a written form of the story and doesn’t like everything he reads there. As an author he has the power to create and transform. If he is working from a written source, he is somewhat bound by the strictures of that source. After all, if he has a written source then he knows that other people might have access to such a source and could raise questions about

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any inconsistencies between what he writes and what others say. Omitting important details, however, is not the same as being inconsistent. It’s just not kosher. Mark’s version reads as a troubled attempt to rescue Jesus from what the evangelist sees as bad press. Reading between the lines of Mark’s account, certain underlying facts appear to be part of the original source story.

• Jesus taught in a synagogue where his family was known. • Jesus said or did something in the synagogue that made the congregation unhappy. • Jesus accused the congregation and his family of failing to give him the honor due a prophet. • Jesus, for some reason, either by choice or due to an inability to perform, did not exhibit some deed of power, very probably a healing. • The crowd became upset with Jesus over his failure to perform some sort of sign and lost faith in him.

The Rejection Story in Luke 4:16–30 Luke uses Mark as a source, so it is helpful to see how he deals with Mark’s many flaws and how he retells the story from his own perspective. He has added several additional pieces of information to his version, much of which cannot be reasonably intuited from Mark’s narrative. How much of this comes from his imaginative attempts to salvage Mark’s story and how much may come from an alternative source is one of the questions I will deal with along the way. Luke begins by relocating the story to the beginning of Jesus’ mission, the very first act that takes place in his crusade. Mark places it towards the middle. Loose threads in Luke betray the re-patched nature of the narrative cloth. For example, he tells us that Jesus had a reputation for doing great deeds in Capernaum, but at this point of the narrative he has just started his mission and has not yet publicly exercised his power. Additionally, Luke has no indication that Jesus has ever been in Capernaum before this incident. The best evidence that Luke has relocated the story, aside from his departure from Mark’s narrative order, is evident in the very next story following his rejection account. He says that Jesus went to Capernaum, “a city in Galilee,”19 as if he hadn’t just told us that this was a place where Jesus had a reputation for doing great deeds of power. This follow-up reference to Capernaum as just “a city in Galilee” shows that Luke used a written source, almost certainly Mark at a minimum, which had the rejection story further on in the narrative. In fact, Luke’s mention

You Can’t Go Home Again | 197 of going to Capernaum, “a city in Galilee,” derives from Mark’s account of Jesus’ first visit to Capernaum.20 A second major radical change from Mark involves the ending of the story. Luke transforms the crowd in Mark from one that simply takes offense to one that engages in a homicidal plot to kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff. His is the only gospel to make such a shocking accusation. This certainly doesn’t come from Mark and it makes little sense. As in Mark, Luke places the story on a Sabbath. Any attempt to kill Jesus by throwing him off a cliff would be a horrendous Sabbath violation, far more serious than anything hinted at in Mark’s version. Yet, the subject never comes up. There is neither a remark by Jesus about the Sabbath violation nor a gloss by the evangelist pointing out the conflict. Nor does Luke ever reference this incident again. This suggests that Luke borrowed the attack on Jesus from some other story and attached it here, but why? Several scholars have commented on the relocation of the story and the addition of the homicide plot. A popular theory is that Luke did this to foreshadow at the beginning of the mission the plot by Jews to kill Jesus at the end of the mission. I suspect, though, that he moved the story to the beginning of the mission in order to diminish the impact of the rejection and overwhelm it with subsequent successes. As to the narrative itself, Luke begins by jettisoning Mark’s “hometown” terminology and placing the incident directly in Nazareth, “where he had been brought up.”21 Later, when incorporating Mark’s quote about a prophet without honor in his hometown, Luke has effectively equated Nazareth with “hometown.”22 Although Luke placed Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem in Judea, one possible hometown, that place wasn’t in Galilee, so Luke needed to come up with a different location. Therefore, he placed the event in the town where he says Jesus grew up, using another variation of the hometown definition. At the beginning of Luke’s story, Jesus enters the synagogue on a Sabbath and reads a passage from the scroll of Isaiah in which that great prophet makes the following claim. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.23

The scripture predicts good news for the poor, sick and oppressed and Isaiah says he has been anointed by God to bring about the good news. When he finishes

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the reading, Jesus looks over the audience and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”24 In other words, Jesus, according to Luke, indicated to the congregation that he has been anointed by God to bring some good news, the elimination of suffering in the here and now. Luke then says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’ ”25 There is a slight problem here with Luke’s passage. What were the gracious words that Jesus spoke? Luke doesn’t say. He starts off with a reading from scripture and then says that the scripture has been fulfilled “in your hearing.” This seems to suggest that the audience “heard” something from Jesus between the reading of the scripture and the declaration that it had been fulfilled “in your hearing.” I will have more to say about what may be the missing “gracious words” later. Following the complimentary remarks Jesus says, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ”26 Luke’s story sequence, so far, breaks from Mark in several ways. First, and most important, Luke has Jesus publicly declare that he has been anointed by God to bring the good news that the poor, the sick and the oppressed will be liberated from their condition. As a general principle, Mark wouldn’t have Jesus publicly declare that he was anointed by God to save the people. That would violate one of his chief theological themes, that no human being knew the true nature of Jesus while he was still alive. Second, Luke has a specific teaching and Mark has no teaching. Third, in Luke the crowd mentions knowledge only of Jesus’ father, whose name is given, whereas that is the one person specifically omitted in Mark’s extensive family roster. Fourth, Luke has the congregation ask Jesus to perform great deeds in their presence and Mark lacks such a request. Fifth, where Mark places knowledge of deeds of power between the teaching and the crowd’s knowledge of Jesus’ family, Luke, places it after the reference to Jesus’ family and has Jesus utter the words on behalf of the audience. In Mark, the arrangement suggests that the evidence of Jesus’ deeds is inconsistent with what they know about his family. In Luke, it is only the teachings that are inconsistent with what they know; the deeds don’t create any issues as to what they know about Jesus’ family. This may have something to do with the fact that Luke describes the birth of Jesus as a miraculous event whereas Mark has no such claim. Let me return now to Jesus’ discussion of the audience’s knowledge about his deeds in Capernaum and the follow-up to that knowledge. Luke’s Jesus makes

You Can’t Go Home Again | 199 clear that the audience wants to see him exercise those talents here in the synagogue. While the nature of the deeds in Capernaum isn’t specifically described, Jesus performs no wonders for the congregation, and he cites scriptural passages defending his behavior. He never explicitly says, as Mark does, that Jesus lost his ability to do deeds of power, but if we carefully analyze his various remarks it becomes apparent that he has omitted an incident in which Luke’s Jesus, like Mark’s Jesus, could not or chose not to perform deeds of power. The very first thing Jesus says to the audience after he says that he is the fulfillment of scripture is “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ ” This is a very subtle statement by Luke. Jesus knows that this is what the audience would say to him, so he must have thought the congregation had some reason for thinking he needed to be cured. You don’t get asked to cure yourself unless you have first exhibited some sort of flaw. In context, the flaw must have been somehow connected to Jesus’ claim to have been anointed by God to alleviate suffering (i.e., act like a doctor). Something must have happened between Jesus’ declaration and his assessment of the audience’s reaction. The congregation knows what it is because the members evidently witnessed the event, but Luke doesn’t tell us what caused the reaction. Obviously, it is something that Luke doesn’t want his readership to know. But we have clues. Jesus’ statement admits that something happened to undermine his claim to be God’s anointed and he tells us that the cure would be to do the deeds here in Nazareth (or “hometown”) that he has done in Capernaum. Since he claimed to be able to alleviate suffering, and the audience compares his behavior with that of a doctor, the cure almost certainly refers to healing. After all, that is what Jesus has basically been known for; his mission is primarily a healing mission, and such ability is the public sign that he has an inside track to God. So, if Jesus has failed to do something, and the cure is to heal someone, it is a good bet that what he failed to do was to heal. But Jesus takes offense at this request to cure himself. He says, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”27 Note, here his variation from Mark. Luke excludes the family and household from Jesus’ criticism. So far, Jesus’ position seems to be: I may have failed to do something that you think I should have done to prove my claim, but, since you know that I have already done such deeds in Capernaum, you should give me the accord due a prophet. Luke is still cagey here, never quite saying what it is that has the audience upset. As he has structured the narrative the casual reader might think that Jesus simply refused to perform a healing and that is what the dispute is about, a refusal

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rather than an inability. But the next part of Jesus’ statement gives away the game, if you read it carefully. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.28

Jesus offers this scriptural reference as a defense against the congregation’s criticism. What does it tell us? The key is the phrase, “heaven was shut up three years and six months.” Heaven refers to God. What this passage says is that even the great prophet Elijah could not alleviate suffering for three years and six months because God withheld the power from him. Implicit in this defense is that Jesus, like the great Elijah, could not heal somebody because God withheld the power from Jesus to do so. Luke’s narrative has Jesus build the following argument: Since the congregation knows Jesus has the power to heal because of what he has done in Capernaum, they should understand that the reason he has failed to heal here in Nazareth is because “Heaven is shut” and God wills that he not be able to heal. Therefore, why do you doubt he is the one anointed by God? Luke still hasn’t specifically acknowledged that Jesus tried to heal someone and failed, but the scriptural defense offered above only makes sense as an analogy if Jesus demonstrated a lack of power to heal. This argument is followed up with a second scriptural argument. “There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”29 This scriptural argument differs significantly from the previous one. It no longer talks about God’s will suspending the prophet’s power but moves back to the earthly plain. The passage tells us that the great prophet Elisha did not cure any lepers in Israel, yet he was a great prophet. The Israelites knew he was a great prophet because he did other deeds that proved his connection to God. Luke’s Jesus has cited three arguments, each of which defends him against charges that he failed to heal someone. 1) You know I am a prophet because of what I have done in Capernaum; 2) If God suspends a prophet’s power, you should still respect the prophet; and 3) As long as you know someone is a prophet you shouldn’t criticize him for not exercising his power just because you want him to. This range of arguments in defense of a prophet’s action in not exercising his power clearly speaks to an incident in which Jesus failed to exercise his power dur-

You Can’t Go Home Again | 201 ing his appearance in the synagogue. But Luke has obviously omitted the actual incident so that his readership would not know what the offense was. Either Jesus deliberately chose not to heal, or he tried to heal and failed. The Elijah defense clearly points to an inability to heal because God has suspended the power. To this we should add Mark’s claim that Jesus could not do any deed of power in his hometown. Luke knows that Mark said that and has deleted that reference from his version of the story. This shows that Luke consciously omitted evidence that Jesus could not do deeds of power in his hometown. This raises the question of why Luke provides such an extensive defense of Jesus’ inability to perform a deed of power in his hometown but makes no actual explicit reference to Jesus not performing the deed. Luke, of course, would not want to show Jesus unable to perform, but if that’s the case why didn’t he simply omit this story from his Gospel rather than mount an elaborate defense that raises questions? My answer, as I argue below, is that Luke had a written source for this story other than Mark and that these arguments already appeared in that source. As the story would have been circulating Luke would have wanted to make sure the defense remained in circulation while diminishing the evidence of failure. But, consistent with his perspective on Jesus, he edited the story so that Jesus danced around the failure without explicitly acknowledging it. After Jesus offered these defenses, Luke says that the congregation became outraged, and drove Jesus out of town to the edge of a cliff, where they tried to kill him by throwing him over the edge. In the final line of the story, Luke tells us, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”30 I will have more to say about Luke’s version of the rejection story and the matter of sources after I review the accounts in Matthew and John.

The Rejection Story in Matthew 13:54–58 Matthew, for the most part, follows Mark’s version of the story but has made a few editorial changes to the text. Most of the changes are trivial, editorial rewordings of the text that smooth out the narrative flow but leave most of Mark’s ambiguities in place. But he has also made a few significant tweaks designed to eliminate some perceived problems with Mark’s account. Matthew’s version of the story omits the reference to this being a Sabbath day, eliminating the possibility that Mark’s Jesus may have violated the Sabbath by healing. Another significant change concerns the quotation about prophets

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without honor. Matthew has retained the reference to “hometown” and “own house” but has eliminated the phrase mentioning “their own kin.” Matthew may have been concerned about depicting any conflict between Jesus and his family. In that regard, he also omitted from his gospel Mark’s earlier story about Jesus’ family thinking him mad and trying to restrain him.31 A particularly interesting variation from Mark concern’s the identity of “the carpenter.” Mark says Jesus was the carpenter. Matthew says Jesus was the carpenter’s son. These are the only two references in the New Testament regarding Jesus’ connection to carpentry. Mark’s reference is the only historical basis for claiming that Jesus was a carpenter. Since Matthew uses Mark as a source, why did he make this change? Did Mark redact his source because of his desire to eliminate any reference to a human father? Did Matthew know from tradition that Mark had it wrong? One possibility may be that Matthew just didn’t want to portray Jesus as an ordinary craftsman and chose to emphasize the father’s profession instead. Mark, on the other hand, may have changed the carpenter’s identification to avoid mentioning Jesus’ human father. If either Jesus or his father was a carpenter, the odds are that the other was too. The father would hand down his trade to the son and the son would continue in his father’s footsteps unless something happened to change his mind. If Jesus started his mission at about thirty years of age, as Luke says, then he probably worked in the family business before then. Both Mark and Matthew could be correct.32 The other big change from Mark concerns Jesus’ loss of power due to a lack of faith. Matthew has altered the text so that it reads, “And he did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.” Note the subtle shift. Mark says that Jesus couldn’t do any deeds of power and was amazed at the lack of faith but doesn’t directly connect the two events. Matthew’s phrasing indicates that Jesus did some deeds of power (indirectly referencing Mark’s few healings) but didn’t do more “because” of their unbelief. In Mark, Jesus couldn’t perform; Matthew says Jesus didn’t perform but doesn’t say whether it was by choice.

John’s Variations on the Rejection Story John has no continuous story that in terms of subject matter and content looks anything like the rejection story in Mark and Luke. Yet, in Synopsis of the Four Gospels, a standard reference work on parallel verses in the four gospels, Kurt Aland connects three John verses, 4:44, 6:42, and 7:15, with Mark’s rejection

You Can’t Go Home Again | 203 story (to wit, Mark 6:4, 3, 2, to parallel John’s sequential order.) He also identifies a fourth verse, John 10:39, as parallel to Luke 4:30, the last verse in Luke’s version of the story33 To this collection we should add John 6:36, which, as I pointed out above, parallels Mark 6:6, the final verse of his Hometown Rejection story. Together, we have Johannine parallels to four of Mark’s six story verses, a rather high degree of correlation that doesn’t seem reasonably explained by coincidence. The following arrangement shows the four Johannine verses, in Johannine order, that appear to parallel Mark. I am omitting the one parallel between Luke 4:30 and John 10:39 that I don’t think belongs to the Hometown Rejection story. Table 5.1, Hometown Verse Parallels in John, Mark and Luke, sets forth the same verses alongside the corresponding verses in Mark and Luke.

Table 5.1:  Hometown verse parallels in John, Mark and Luke. Source: Author John

Mark

Luke

[F]‌or Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country. (4:44)

Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” (6:4) And he was amazed at their unbelief. (6:6)

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” (4:24)

But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. (6:36) They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (6:42) The Jews were astonished at it, saying, “How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?” (7:15)

[Luke omits.]

Is not this the carpenter, They said, “Is not this “the son of Mary and Joseph’s son?” (4:22) brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” (6:3) They said, “Where did this [Luke omits.] man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!” (6:2)

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• [F]‌or Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country. (John 4:44, parallel to Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24) • But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. (John 6:36, parallel to Mark 6:6, no direct parallel in Luke, but implied) • They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:42, parallel to Mark 6:3, Luke 4:22) • The Jews were astonished at it, saying, “How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?” (John 7:15, parallel to Mark 6:2, not in Luke)

Note that each John verse is some substantial textual distance away from the other. Three of the four appear in different Johannine stories that take place in different geographic locations. John 4:44 belongs to a story involving a journey from Samaria to Galilee; John 6:36 and 6:42 belong to a story set in Capernaum; John 7:15 takes place in Jerusalem. John’s quote about prophets without honor differs from Mark and Luke in that it uses the term “own country” rather than “hometown.” Like Luke, though, John also omits Mark’s reference to the family and the household not paying due respect to Jesus. So, Luke seems to agree more with John than he does with his Markan source. John’s version of the reference to Jesus’ family also differs significantly from Mark in that John names only the father and mentions the existence of the mother without telling us her name, while Mark omits any reference to the father but names the mother and brothers. Luke, like John, also names only the father, and differs from his Markan source in that he omits the name of every family member recited by Mark. In this regard, again Luke appears to agree more with John than with his Markan source.

The Prophet Without Honor (John 4:44, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24) In order to more fully understand this verse in John 4:44 we need to place it in context. Jesus had just left Judea under hostile circumstances and started towards Galilee, stopping over in Samaria on the way. Upon leaving Samaria, John says: When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country). [emphasis added] (John 4:43–44)

You Can’t Go Home Again | 205 John doesn’t claim that Jesus made this statement at the time he left Samaria. The evangelist only indicates that he knows of some occasion when Jesus made this statement, and that this teaching explains why Jesus went to Galilee. It doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus made the statement prior to this point in the mission; only that he made it at some point in the mission and the author finds such information useful as a guide to understanding Jesus’ particular action of going to Galilee. It seems reasonable, therefore, to assume that John knows a version of Mark’s story and has implicitly cited that story as the source for this quote. Nevertheless, there are some differences between the two versions of what Jesus said. Where Mark says prophets get no respect in their “hometown, John says they get no respect in their “own country.” Where Mark includes Jesus’ family among those who disrespect him, John lacks any such accusation. In addition, the two gospels place the quote in very different narrative contexts. In Mark, Jesus makes the statement immediately after the crowd talks about Jesus performing “deeds of power.”34 The implication is that the audience is impressed with Jesus’ ability to do great deeds but they are surprised by his ability because of what they know about his family. Luke confirms this interpretation of Mark in that he places the quote about prophets without honor right after the audience demands that he do some great deeds like he did in Capernaum. In John, there is no connection between this quote and “deeds of power.” The author just says that at some unidentified point in time, in some unidentified context, Jesus made this statement. This is consistent with John’s objection to the use of deeds as proof of authority. Our first task in resolving the dissonance is to determine what John means by “own country” as opposed to Mark’s “hometown.” Initially, we should acknowledge that on a few occasions John’s gospel clearly indicates that Jesus came from either Nazareth or Galilee.35 So, at first blush the answer would seem to be that Jesus either identified Galilee as his “own country” or some place in Galilee as his “hometown.” But John’s narrative context argues against either of those options as the intended location. The chief difficulty is figuring out why Jesus would go to Galilee if that is where prophets are without honor. While I suppose any number of reasonable hypotheses can be concocted, I suggest that a close reading of John indicates that he is referring to Judea as Jesus’ “own country.” At John 4:1–3, the gospel says, “Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, ‘Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John’ . . . he left Judea and started back to Galilee [emphasis added].” I understand this sentence to mean that Jesus felt threatened by the Pharisees who saw him growing in popularity relative to John the Baptist and that for safety reasons Jesus decided to go

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back to Galilee. So, we start with the recognition that Jesus’ prophetic status as a baptizer is threatened by some Pharisees in Judea. He is without honor in Judea, and he needs to leave for reasons of personal safety. Following Jesus’ flight from Judea, John 4:4 through 4:42 covers John’s stopover in Samaria on the way back to Galilee. The Samaritans receive him with acclaim, which eliminates any charge of rejection in that region. This brings us to John 4:43–44: “When the two days were over, he went from that place to Galilee (for Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in the prophet’s own country).” If we eliminate the sojourn in Samaria and jump from John 4:3, where Jesus leaves Judea to go to Galilee due to a hostile reaction from the Pharisees to his growing popularity, to John 4:43, when he leaves Samaria two days later, we have a coherent narrative explaining the quote about prophets without honor, to wit: Because Jesus was without honor in Judea he went from that place to Galilee.36 Note how John contextualizes this relationship between the quote about prophets and the lack of respect. He says it has to do with the lack of respect in Judea for preaching God’s word and drawing people to baptism. Any link between the prophet’s role and proof through deeds of power has been severed. The prophet’s status comes from his bringing of God’s word. But why would Jesus of Nazareth identify Judea as his “own country”? Nazareth is in Galilee. It could be argued that if we accept that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, then Judea is, in fact, his home country, and that would be a reasonable editorial interpretation of a source text phrase that simply said “hometown.” However, John never says that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and implicitly suggests otherwise. At John 7:42, some Jews argue that the Messiah had to come from Bethlehem and that Jesus didn’t meet that requirement. John never offers a refutation of that argument. And, as I noted above, on a few occasions, John’s Gospel clearly indicates that Jesus came from either Nazareth or Galilee. Throughout John, though, these identifications are placed in the mouths of other Jews. Jesus, himself, always says that he has been sent from heaven. In the opening verses of John’s Gospel, the evangelist tells us Jesus preexisted all creation. Implicit throughout John’s gospel is that wherever on earth Jesus may have come from is irrelevant as he was sent from Heaven to do the Father’s bidding. Although John’s Jesus probably wasn’t from Judea, that country was where Jerusalem, the Jewish religious center, was located. Judea functioned as the remnant of the Davidic kingdom of Israel. For all Jews, wherever they lived, David’s

You Can’t Go Home Again | 207 kingdom was the ancestral homeland and Jerusalem was their ancestral and current capitol.37 Even if a Jew never went to Jerusalem, that city was still, on an emotional and religious level, the Jewish hometown, and Judea was the ancestral homeland. Additionally, most of Jesus’ mission in John’s gospel takes place in Jerusalem and Judea and very little happens in Galilee. This suggests that John sees Jesus more intimately related to Jerusalem than Galilee. The Q text offers some support for the idea that John may have associated Judea with the place where prophets have no honor. According to that source, Jesus says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!38

A city that kills its prophets and whose citizens Jesus can’t bring into the fold certainly seems to be a good candidate for a place where prophets are without honor. On a symbolic level, then, one can say that Jerusalem is the spiritual hometown for Jews, and Judea is the home country for Jews. Such an interpretation would bring this part of John into line with Mark’s “hometown” location, even though Mark probably understands “hometown” to be some place other than Jerusalem. This brings us to the problem of the missing family members in the quotation. Mark says that Jesus accused his own family of being among those not honoring prophets. Luke, like John, however, also excludes them. As we don’t have the original source text, we don’t know if the family originally belonged in the quote. But such exclusion may be very well due to a theological desire to avoid depicting any rift between Jesus and his family. In John’s case, there is a further possible explanation. If John did exclude the family from this quotation, the action may best be explained by the context. John has admittedly borrowed the quote from another story and is using it to explain why Jesus left Judea and headed to Galilee. John’s family has nothing to do with that decision. They weren’t with him in Judea and they weren’t part of the reason he fled to Galilee. Mentioning them would only cause confusion; omitting them does no violence to Jesus’ primary teaching. While we can’t be certain that John’s source of information included the reference to the family members, we can say that the usage in this context is not necessarily inconsistent with Mark’s gospel. John acknowledges the existence of a quote from elsewhere and has not necessarily given us the entire quote. John’s placement of the quote has some additional impact on the narrative. Immediately after this quote, John successfully heals a royal official’s child in a

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spectacular manner that rises above the ability to conduct an exorcism.39 John is in the city of Cana at the time and the feverish child is in Capernaum, where John later places the rejection story. So, the placement of John’s “prophet without honor” quote serves three functions. (1) it removes Jesus’ family from the criticism; (2) it places the quote in the context of a spectacular healing instead of a significant failure; and (3) it separates the quote from the original context in which Jesus responded to criticism of his failure to heal.

They Don’t Believe (John 6:36, Mark 6:6) Mark 6:6 says, “And he was amazed at their unbelief.” John 6:36 says that the Jews “have seen [Jesus] and yet do not believe.” Mark places this notice of disbelief after Jesus’ rejection, and shortly after the reference to Jesus’ family. John positions it before the rejection and before the mention of Jesus’ family at 6:42. John 6:36 and 6:42 both belong to the Discourse on Bread. Despite the slight difference in location, Mark and John echo the same theme. Despite having seen what Jesus can do, the people still reject him as a messenger from God.

Knowing the Family of Jesus (John 6:42, Mark 6:3, Luke 4:22) John 6:42 appears in the middle of the Discourse on Bread.40 As you will recall, that speech dealt with Jesus’ controversial teaching about how to get eternal life and the crowd’s negative reaction to that lesson. Here is the John 6:42 passage in its surrounding context. Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves.”41

John presents a striking contrast to Mark’s vague descriptions. In the immediate setting we see that there was a specific teaching by Jesus, the crowd began to complain and invokes its knowledge of Jesus’ family. But the knowledge of Jesus’ family here has a different use than it does in the synoptic versions. In Mark, the reference to Jesus’ family comes immediately after they wonder about the deeds of power that Jesus has done. Nothing they know about Jesus’ fam-

You Can’t Go Home Again | 209 ily leads them to think Jesus had these powers. In John, the reference to Jesus’ family serves as an objection to his words. Jesus can’t be from heaven, they say, because they know his earthly parents. So, John has replaced a context relating to deeds with a context relating to words. In both gospels, however, despite the different use to which the family quote is put, the congregation objects to Jesus’ teachings. The narrative flow of these few verses strikes me as a close structural parallel to Mark’s account, adding in a specific teaching that gives rise to the statement. The teaching, however, differs significantly from that in Luke, and Mark’s silence makes it difficult to determine what the original teaching may have been. In Luke (and implicitly in Mark), after the congregation mentions Jesus’ family, they say in part, “Do here” a deed as proof. In John, after the congregation mentions Jesus’ family, they remark in part, “How can he say” such a thing. Note the subtle difference. Luke’s crowd rejects Jesus because of failed deeds. John’s crowd rejects Jesus because of failed words. The contrast is between “do” and “say.” John has arranged matters to isolate the family reaction from complaints about deeds of power and placed them in the context of difficult teaching. John has also done something else, though. He has transformed the nature of the teachings. Where Luke (and implicitly Mark) says that Jesus talked about a gospel of healing in the here and now, John replaces it with a gospel about obtaining eternal life in the future.

The Man of Learning (John 7:15; Mark 6:2) Aland’s third Johannine link to Mark’s story appears at John 7:15. Again, it is helpful to look at this passage in context in order to see how it interacts with the underlying rejection story. Here is the expanded excerpt. I placed the parallel portion in italics. The Jews were astonished at it, saying, “How does this man have such learning, when he has never been taught?” Then Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own. Those who speak on their own seek their own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and there is nothing false in him.”42

You may recognize this passage from our analysis of the Sabbath violation defense in Chapter 3. This is the introduction to the argument about circumcision on the Sabbath that justified healing on the Sabbath.

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In Mark, the parallel quote is “They said, ‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands!’ ”43 Luke omits Mark’s passage, and this may reflect that Luke places the reference to deeds of power in a hostile context rather than the way Mark has it. Let’s look at how Mark and John compare with each other. Both begin with a recognition that a teaching by Jesus seems beyond what they expect from him. John says Jesus has not been taught by anyone. Mark asks where Jesus got this exceptional wisdom from. And in both cases, neither gospel says what the teaching was. For Mark, this is understandable. He keeps Jesus’ true identity secret. But for John, this is unusual. He normally never misses a beat when it comes to telling us what Jesus told a crowd. This is a good clue that John has moved this passage from a different location to its present position to serve as a transition to a different teaching. After the initial wonder about where Jesus got this (unidentified) teaching from, the two gospels diverge. In Mark, the crowd next asks, “What deeds of power are being done by his hands!” Mark’s crowd is emphasizing the power of deeds as an indication of special authority. That theme is anathema to John, who believes that Jesus’ words, not his deeds, prove his authority. So, it shouldn’t surprise us that John replaces the crowd’s emphasis on deeds in Mark with John’s emphasis on words. He says, in part, “My teaching is not mine but his who sent me. Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own.”44 If John 7:15 does parallel Mark 6:2, then we find that at the very place where Mark emphasizes deeds of power as proof of authority, John emphasizes the role of Jesus’ words as proof of authority. John then goes on to use this borrowed and amended passage from the rejection story to serve as a lead-in for his accusation that the Jews don’t follow the words of Moses regarding Sabbath healings.

Luke 4:30 and John 10:39 (or John 7:30) I mentioned above that Aland indicates a possible connection between Luke 4:30, the last verse in Luke’s version of the Hometown Rejection, and John 10:39. Here are the two verses.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 211 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (Luke 4:30) Then they tried to arrest him again, but he escaped from their hands. (John 10:39)

Because I don’t believe that Luke 4:30 was part of the original rejection story, I don’t think a possible connection to John 10:39 is relevant to the analysis at hand. I would note, however, that John 7:30 preserves a second similar verse regarding the attempt to arrest Jesus. “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.” Both Johannine verses fall within John’s account of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem, which is radically different from Mark’s account of the final trip to Jerusalem. (See Chapter 7.) Although Mark indicates that the Jewish authorities wanted to arrest Jesus while he was in Jerusalem, he does not indicate any effort to seize him while he was there and has no occasion in his gospel where the authorities are unable to place hands on him. In Luke’s later account of the final visit, he also omits any failed effort by the authorities to place hands on Jesus. Since Luke’s account of the effort to kill Jesus in the course of the Hometown Rejection has no parallel in Mark or John, it appears that Luke has attached an artificial ending to the story and may have borrowed the failed attempt to seize Jesus from the later episode of the final visit in Jerusalem, as John has it.

A Homiletic Structure in John and Luke Many Johannine scholars accept that John 6:31–50, the Discourse on Bread, takes the form of a first century Jewish homily common to the time of Jesus, an occurrence seemingly unique to the gospels.45 The homiletic literary form is an instructional method for interpreting a passage in scripture. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, Urban von Wahlde summarizes the formal elements of the homiletic form and applies them to John.46 Per von Waldhe, it contains the following features.

• • • • •

An opening quotation from scripture; An interpretive paraphrase of the quotation to suggest a new understanding; An exegesis of each part of the quotation; On occasion, the inclusion of a hypothetical objection; A frequent inclusion of a subordinate secondary scriptural citation to enhance the argument; • A concluding paraphrase relating the original scripture to the interpretive paraphrase.

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In the traditional format all the elements come from the speaker. Von Wahlde observes that in John’s structure the homily has been “historicized,” converted into a dialogue between Jesus and the audience.47 In John’s presentation, the biblical quotation comes from the audience, Jesus responds with the paraphrase, and later the Jews provide the hypothetical objection instead of the speaker. In this section, I argue that Luke’s version of the Hometown Rejection story shares the same homiletic structure as John’s Discourse on Bread, establishing a literary connection between these two gospels. I am also going to argue that Mark knew the homiletic form of the story and heavily redacted it and, therefore, he couldn’t be the source of the literary format present in both Luke and John. This suggests a written version of the story circulated in Christian circles before Mark wrote his gospel. In Table 5.2, Comparison of John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life) to Luke 4:16–27 (The Hometown Rejection Story), Column 1 shows von Wahlde’s outline of the homiletic elements in John 6:31–50, and which verses he says belong to each element. Column 4 contains the text of those verses. Although John 6:42, the reference to Jesus’ father by name, would appear to be a direct link to the Hometown Rejection story, the general assumption appears to be that this is simply an isolated reference integrated into the independent dialogue. Yet, John 6:36—”But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.”—seems to clearly echo what Mark says in the course of his account. So, we start out with two elements in John’s Discourse on Bread that appear to be direct parallels for two of Mark’s six verses in the Hometown Rejection story. In Mark, the audience comments on Jesus’ deeds of power but at the end of the story we are told that the congregation lacked faith in Jesus. In Luke, the audience knows about Jesus’ deeds of power in Capernaum but still insists that he prove to them that he has God’s authority to act, and, ultimately, they reject his claim. Mark, Luke, and John all agree that the congregation in the synagogue had witnessed Jesus’ prior proof (deeds of power in Mark and Luke, teachings in John) but lacked faith in him. That John includes this theme in the same specially constructed literary unit as the reference to Jesus’ family suggests that the latter is not just an isolated throwback to the Hometown Rejection story. The problem is that the Discourse on Bread, on a narrative level, doesn’t look anything like the Hometown Rejection Story. This requires some comment and context setting. Mark, Luke and John would have all been offended by the underlying issue in the story, that Jesus failed to heal, and, as we reviewed Mark and Luke, we saw that the offending act had been removed from their accounts.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 213 Table 5.2:  Comparison of John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life) to Luke 4:16–27 (The Hometown Rejection Story). Source: Author von Wahlde Homily structure for John 6:31–50

Proposed Homily structure of underlying source

Setting (Hometown) Quotation Quotation of of scripture Scripture John 6:31 John 6:31 Luke 4:18–19

Luke

A synagogue in Nazareth. Luke 4:16–17 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Interpretive Interpretive [The missing “gracious paraphrase paraphrase of words” referenced of scripture scripture in Luke 4:22 would John 6:32 John 6:32 have appeared in this location.]

John A synagogue in Capernaum. John 6:59 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.” Exegesis of Exegesis of And he rolled up the “For the bread of God is “Bread from “Prophet scroll, gave it back to that which comes down Heaven” anointed the attendant, and sat from heaven and gives life John by God” down. The eyes of all in to the world.” They said 6:33–36 John 6:33–36 the synagogue were fixed to him, “Sir, give us this Luke on him. Then he began bread always.” Jesus said 4:20–22a to say to them, “Today to them, “I am the bread of this scripture has been life. Whoever comes to me fulfilled in your hearing.” will never be hungry, and All spoke well of him whoever believes in me will and were amazed at the never be thirsty. But I said to gracious words that came you that you have seen me and from his mouth. yet do not believe. Continued 

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Table 5.2:  Continued von Wahlde Homily structure for John 6:31–50

Proposed Homily structure of underlying source

Exegesis of “Father gives” John 6:37–40

[There was no second exegesis in the underlying source at this location.]

Objection to Thesis Re: Coming Down from Heaven John 6:41–44

Objection to Thesis that Jesus was sent by God. John 6:41–42 Luke 4:22b–23

Luke

John Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. This is indeed the will of my Father, that all who see the Son and believe in him may have eternal life; and I will raise them up on the last day.” Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” [Luke redacted out the request for a sign and failure to heal, which would have been in this location.]

They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? [John has the request for a sign earlier, at John 6:30 and declines to show one.]

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Proposed Homily structure of underlying source

Luke

He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” Jesus’ reaction And he said, “Truly I tell to the you, no prophet is accepted objection in the prophet’s hometown. John 6:43–44 Luke 4:24

John How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”

Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.” [I propose that John 6:36 would have originally followed the quotation about prophets without honor but that John relocated it to its present location as part of the editorial process that caused him to move the “prophets” quote to a different location.] Subordinate Subordinate But the truth is, there It is written in the prophets, Quotation quotation were many widows in ‘And they shall all be taught from from Israel in the time of by God.’ Everyone who has Scripture scripture Elijah, when the heaven heard and learned from the John proving that was shut up three years Father comes to me. Not 6:45–48 the prophet’s and six months, and that anyone has seen the ability to there was a severe famine Father except the one who act comes over all the land; yet is from God; he has seen the from God Elijah was sent to none of Father. Very truly, I tell you, John 6:45–48 them except to a widow whoever believes has eternal Luke 4:25–26 at Zarephath in Sidon. life. I am the bread of life. Continued 

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Table 5.2:  Continued von Wahlde Homily structure for John 6:31–50

Proposed Homily structure of underlying source

Exegesis of Subordinate “To Eat.” reference to John 6:49 scripture re the prophet’s failure to act John 6:49 Luke 4:27 Concluding Conclusion Paraphrase John 6:50 John 6:50 Implicit in Luke

Luke

John

There were also many Your ancestors ate the manna lepers in Israel in the in the wilderness, and they time of the prophet died. Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Implicit. This is the bread that comes [Therefore, I am the down from heaven, so that prophet anointed by God one may eat of it and not die. to alleviate suffering.]

John would also have found the original version of the story to have been highly offensive. It not only sets forth the premise that deeds of power prove that Jesus acts on God’s behalf, a principle that we saw in Chapter 3 that John disapproved of, but Jesus was unable to provide the sign the congregation wanted to see, another offensive act to John who considered Jesus to be perfect and incapable of failure. As we saw in Chapters 3 and 4, when John found other stories promoting themes he found theologically offensive he made significant changes to the story so that they would reflect his own alternative view. His primary approach was to change the original “good news” message about alleviating suffering in the here and now to one about granting eternal life in the future. Pursuant to that, he changed all references to deeds of power as proof of authority to ones in which Jesus’ words were proof of his authority. In addition, the analysis showed that sometimes he merged separate incidents into a single story and sometimes moved offensive passages into a less offensive setting. When we apply these editorial filters to the underlying Hometown Rejection Story as represented by Luke, we will see all these principles in action. We will also see that Luke has a parallel homiletic structure, indicating that the homiletic form was an element of the original underlying source story.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 217 Table 5.2 aligns all of Luke’s verses from the Hometown Rejection Story (except for Luke’s added ending about the attempt to kill Jesus) alongside what I will argue are parallel thematic verses in John. Both sets of verses follow the same order in both gospels. The subdivisions in John reflect von Wahlde’s breakdown of John’s homily. The subdivisions in Luke are my own. I follow the same homiletic formula as von Wahlde but, because his element titles reflect the language of the Discourse on Bread, I have retitled some of the elements to reflect my reconstruction of the original source, although I tried to do so in a neutral manner that would apply to both John and Luke. Column 2 contains my redefined element titles. While I follow the text sequentially in both gospels, I have frequently placed spaces between portions of the text within each element of the homily. This is so that I can show in a more visual way where the parallels in each gospel are focused. I have also made one change to von Wahlde’s structure that in no way changes his analysis or arrangement. I have subdivided his section on the “Objection to Thesis” into two parts, the voiced objection and Jesus’ reaction to the objection. Von Wahlde includes the two parts together as one element. I have subdivided it because in Luke Jesus objects to the criticism by saying that prophets are without honor in their hometown. In Luke, the context indicated that the congregation should have known he was a prophet because he has performed deeds of power in Capernaum. This context was offensive to John and he moved the verse to a separate location that severed the link between deeds of power and recognition of authority. If I am correct in proposing that Luke and John share a common homiletic infrastructure then John would have substituted a different reaction to the rejection, one which reflects his own theological position. John does indeed show Jesus reacting to the objection with a different response that does reflect his own theology and I will suggest that it also shares the same underlying principle behind the prophets without honor speech. Before I begin the comparison between John and Luke, it is first necessary to disclose a few problems within each gospel that affect the analysis. At the heart of the difficulties is that both gospels have eliminated the underlying fact that Jesus has failed to heal somebody. Luke dealt with this by redacting the story to eliminate any reference to the specific offense. As a result, Luke has a couple of gaps in his account that coincide with elements of the underlying homily. He has the following initial sequence of events, (a) reading from scripture, (b) a declaration that scripture has been fulfilled “in your hearing”, and (c) a statement from the congregation that Jesus uttered “gracious words.” The problem is that the “gracious words” are missing from the text.

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Jesus says that the scripture has been fulfilled “in your hearing” so the congregation must have heard something between the reading of scripture and the declaration of fulfillment that led them to describe Jesus’ words as gracious. Thematically, this must have been a statement of some sort that forms a verbal bridge between the scriptural reading and the declaration that Jesus has fulfilled the scripture in their hearing, which must have included some sort of reference to healing the sick. Since this would have been related to Jesus’ failure to heal, I believe that Luke redacted out the “gracious words.” Therefore, in my analysis of the homiletic structure in Luke, I place these missing “gracious words” between the reading of scripture and the declaration of fulfillment, and structurally align them with the “Interpretive Paraphrase of Scripture” at John 6:32. Luke has also eliminated the act of failed healing that serves as a trigger to the objection raised to his prophetic status. This must have happened before the objection was raised (Doctor, cure yourself ) and after the gracious words were spoken. The only logical locations for this event in the story structure are either just before or just after the reference to knowing Jesus’ family. I believe it came after the reference to Jesus’ gracious words because the reference to knowing his family seems to be part of the reaction to the “gracious words.” That is, the “gracious words” regarding his mission are inconsistent with what they know about his family. I have placed a note in Table 5.2, in the Luke Column across from the “Objection to Thesis element,” where I think the failed healing took place in Luke’s story. Luke also lacks a specific conclusion to his arguments. He cites several arguments in support of his claim to being a prophet but doesn’t give us a summary conclusion as to what the arguments prove. Since the conclusion should relate back to the claim made in the gracious words, which have been redacted out, I suspect that the concluding statement has also been redacted out. Despite the omissions, we will find that every part of Luke’s story has a corresponding parallel in the homiletic structure of John’ Discourse on Bread. But because of the omissions, John will have a larger collection of homily form elements than Luke. John, however, presents other problems. He starts off with a contrastingly different quote from scripture. Where Luke talked about Isaiah eliminating suffering in the here and now, John raises the issue of Moses saving the lives of the Israelites. Since part of the homily formula is an exegesis of each part of the “Interpretive Paraphrase” John will be offering exegesis based on saving lives and bread where Luke will be offering exegesis on prophets and the elimination of suffering. Because the scriptural passages are different, the number of exegeses needed to ex-

You Can’t Go Home Again | 219 plain terms within the paraphrase of the scripture might vary, so that one gospel could have more exegeses than the other. In this case, I believe John had to add one additional exegesis to the number in the underlying source. So, where Luke has two exegeses, John has three. I have indicated in Table 5.2 that I believe John’s second exegesis constitutes an addition to the underlying structure and that there is, therefore, no parallel in Luke. Nevertheless, it is possible that Luke also eliminated the corresponding exegesis because of its thematic connection to Jesus’ failure to heal. This raises a subsidiary issue. Does John 6:36—”But I said you have seen me and yet do not believe”—belong with the exegesis of Bread from Heaven, as Johannine scholars have it, or does it originally belong to the “Objection to Thesis” element. If we eliminate John’s second exegesis, the verse falls on the border between the first exegesis and the objection to the thesis. It is my view that it originally belonged after Jesus’ response to the objection. I believe he moved it from that location because in the underlying story the lack of faith was based on failure to heal and moving it to another location severed the link to that theme. However, since a resolution of that issue is not essential to my analysis, for the sake of argument I am leaving it in its current location. With all the above in mind, I will now proceed to examine the homiletic structure in both John and Luke, element by element. Table 5.2 contains the full text from each gospel for each element described. It is organized around von Wahlde’s outline of John’s composition.

The Story Setting This is not a direct part of the homily, but it is helpful in placing the story in context. As I argued above, Mark’s use of “Hometown” rather than a specific city name created several possible interpretive possibilities, both literal and figurative, and Mark made it hard to know which particular “hometown” he meant. Luke, on the other hand places the story in Nazareth,48 one possible and reasonable interpretation of Hometown. John, however, places this discourse in Capernaum,49 another reasonable interpretation of “hometown.”

Quotation of Scripture (John 6:31; Luke 4:18–19) The starting point of the homily is a quotation from scripture. Although the scriptural passage in John occurs in John 6:31, it is triggered by a request for a sign in John 6:30. The scriptural passage recited in John 6:31, is presented as an example of the type of sign the crowd was looking for in John 6:30. In my analysis of John

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6:30–59 in Chapter 2, I pointed out there must have been an undocumented shift in scene at the start of John 6:30, from the arrival on land to the presence in the synagogue, because the sign requested by the synagogue congregation was exactly the sort of sign Jesus had just performed for the witnesses to the miracle of the loaves, who were present in the preceding verse. This suggests that John 6:30, the request for a sign, is more tightly integrated into the homily then usually accepted. Von Wahlde notes that John has historicized the homily by turning it into a conversation between Jesus and the Jews. Although the speaker is the one who should provide the scriptural passage, in John it is the Jews, who first ask for a sign (outside of the homily structure) and then cite scripture as an example of the sort of sign they want to see. Luke, on the other hand, has Jesus directly cite the scriptural passage as would be expected from the homily formula. The choice of scripture sets the stage for John’s transformation of the underlying story. Luke begins with a quotation from Isaiah that says that God has anointed Isaiah to alleviate suffering in the here and now.50 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

John, in contrast, uses a scriptural passage related to saving life. Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

John’s scriptural passage is somewhat problematic. He reads it as a claim that Moses is the “He” who gave them manna. The passage seems to derive from Exodus 16:15, which clearly states that the “He” is God.51 Nevertheless, the passage serves as predicate to the idea that God sent Jesus to offer eternal life to those that believe he is the one sent by God. The manna in the wilderness saved the Israelites from immediate death but, per John’s later exposition, not from ultimate death.52 John will expand upon this understanding in his interpretive paraphrase of the scriptural passage.

Interpretive Paraphrase (John 6:32. Omitted in Luke) The next stage in a homily is an interpretive restatement of the scriptural passage. In John, Jesus says, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the

You Can’t Go Home Again | 221 bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven [emphasis added].” In this paraphrase John moves from God sending ordinary bread from heaven to sending “true” bread from heaven. What John did here was paraphrase the original scripture to mean that God can do something even greater than what the original scripture tells us. In other words, scripture tells us that God can provide “ordinary” bread to save lives for a short duration, but God can also send “true” bread that can do much more than that. But John doesn’t quite define what that “true” bread is at this point. He saves that for the exegesis. Luke is missing an interpretive paraphrase here. As I explained above, this location should include some “gracious words” leading to the conclusion that scripture has been fulfilled “in your hearing.” Because the gracious words have been omitted, we can only speculate about their content. It would have to have included some form of comment on the scripture just read. Such words would have been the equivalent of the “Interpretive Paraphrase.” It is not unlikely that Luke may have, in parallel fashion to John, stated something to the effect that just as God can send a prophet to eliminate suffering in the short term (“proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”) basis he can also send a prophet to do even greater things, eliminating suffering for the long term (perhaps for all time). The ability to heal would be a sign of the authority granted to the prophet.

First Exegesis (John 6:33–36; Luke 4:20–22a) In the homily format there needs to be an exegesis of the terms used in the paraphrase. John needs to explain, therefore, the terms used in the interpretive paraphrase. Von Wahlde says that John has three exegeses, on “Bread from Heaven,” “eating” and “Father gives.” Since Luke’s scriptural passage has nothing to do with any of these three Johannine terms, he and John should have very different exegetical analyses. If both present exegesis in the same narrative sequence, it would enhance the claim of a homiletic parallel for the two gospels. John begins with an Exegesis on Bread from Heaven. He uses that phrase as the subject of the exegesis. I refer to it as an Exegesis on “Prophet anointed by God” to reflect my understanding of what I believe to be the underlying story behind the homiletic structure. John says that this “true” bread comes down from heaven, gives life to the world, and that “I [Jesus] am the bread of life.” John’s exegesis of “true” bread says that God sent this bread to bring life and that Jesus is the bread that has been sent.

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At this same sequential point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus makes the claim the “this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The implication is that Jesus is the one sent by God to bring about whatever the gracious words indicated. Because Luke has omitted the specific words, the exegesis is somewhat truncated. But the clear message is that God sent Jesus to bring about the good news. Within the exegesis section we find a second parallel between John and Luke. In John, the congregation speaks approvingly of Jesus’ “Interpretive Paraphrase.” They say, “Sir, give us this bread always.” In my alignment, Luke’s congregation also speaks approvingly of Jesus’ implicit Interpretive Paraphrase. They “were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Both gospels show the congregation exhibiting a positive reaction to the First Exegesis. Above I have noted my concern over the presence of John 6:36 within this exegesis. So, I will just note that this is where the verse appears in John’s gospel, and that it very closely incorporates the underlying theme behind the Hometown Rejection Story. Witnesses to Jesus’ proof (deeds or teachings) do not believe in him as the one sent by God.

Second Exegesis (John 6:37–40; not in Luke) Von Wahlde’s second exegesis deals with an explanation for “Father gives.” As I suggested above, I believe this is a Johannine addition to the underlying source, necessitated by the need to maintain the homiletic formula for a scriptural passage requiring more exegesis than the original. Luke has no parallel to this exegesis. Von Wahlde also suggests that verses 6:38–39 were added onto John later and were not part of the original homily.53 I have indicated that by placing those verses in Table 5.2 in italics.

Objection to Thesis (John 6:41–44; Luke 4:22b–24) Von Wahlde places the “Objection to Thesis” within John 6:41–44. I have aligned it sequentially with Luke 4:22b–24. I have subdivided the Objection into two parts, not as criticism but for simplification of the discussion. In Luke, Jesus reacts with the quotation about prophets without honor. John has moved that reaction to a different part of his gospel. In its place, we find a different passage, which I will discuss in a moment. In my discussion, I place the objection proper at John 6:41–42 and Luke 4:22b–23. I place the reaction at John 6:43–44 and Luke 4:24.

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The Objection Proper (John 6:41–42; Luke 4:22b–23) It is at this point in both gospels that we find the reference to Jesus’ family. Both Luke and John mention Jesus’ father by name. In both gospels, the knowledge of Jesus’ father comes after each has claimed to be the one sent by God to deliver the good news. In Luke, the implication is that the congregation is surprised to hear that claim because what they know about his father makes it seem unlikely. This reaction is something of a speed bump in Jesus’ progression. They are not really rejecting him but questioning how this could be. It is my analytic view that at this point, to meet this concern, Jesus attempted to heal someone and failed to do so, leading to the actual objection to Jesus’ claim, where the congregation insists that he prove himself by doing here in Nazareth, what he is done in Capernaum. Luke’s unstated premise is that the failure to heal leads to an objection to the claim that Jesus has been sent by God and the congregation challenged him to heal somebody. John rejects the idea of proof through deeds of power and has made some modifications to the underlying source. He begins with an initial objection. The Jews began to complain about Jesus’ claim that he is the bread come down from heaven. Then John brings in the reference to the congregation knowing Jesus’ father and mother. Through this reference John brings out the main objection. Because the congregation knows who Jesus’ earthly parents are, they can’t accept that he was sent from heaven. If he was sent from heaven, how could Joseph be his father? Note the interesting shift here. In both gospels we start with an initial question about how Jesus can say what he says and then we move to an objection. In Luke, knowledge of Jesus’ family only leads to a minor objection. In John it leads to a major objection. This shift appears to be the result of transforming the underlying story from one about proving Jesus’ authority through deeds of power to one about Jesus’ authority coming from his words. In Luke, the family had problems with the words of Jesus, which is likely what the source said. This is followed by a failure to perform a deed of power. John dropped out the failure to heal and escalated the role of the congregation’s knowledge of who Jesus’ parents were to the major objection. In John, Jesus’ words failed to convince the congregation that he was sent from heaven because such words were inconsistent, in the congregation’s mind, with knowing who Jesus’ human father was. In Luke, Jesus failed to convince the congregation that he was sent by God because he failed to heal. In John the failure is in the words spoken by Jesus.

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One lesser point here is that in a true homily, it should be the teacher who voices the objection. In John the Jews voice the objection. This is part of his process of historicizing the homily. In Luke, Jesus, true to the format, voices the objection on behalf of the audience. “Doubtless, you will quote me the proverb . . . you will say. . .”

The Reaction to the Objection (John 6:43–44; Luke 4:24) In Luke, Jesus responds to the criticism by saying, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” In context, Jesus means “you know I am a prophet because of the deeds I have done in Capernaum, yet you reject me.” John objects to the formulation about deeds as proof and has moved the quotation to a distant location in his gospel where it is divorced from the idea that his status as a prophet stems from his deeds. However, if John continues to follow the proposed source outline, we would expect to have him substitute an alternative text that reflects his own theology and that is what we find. In reaction to the congregation’s rejection of his claim to being sent from heaven, John says, Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.

Since the primary way one is drawn to God is by accepting the words of God, Jesus is saying, in effect, “You fail to recognize me as the one sent by God because you don’t accept God’s teaching.” John has transformed Jesus’ failure to heal into the congregation’s failure to accept God’s instructions. In John, it wasn’t Jesus who failed; it was the congregation. In both Luke and John, the reaction to the congregation’s rejection of Jesus’ claim to being sent by God is that the congregation doesn’t accept the evidence before them. In Luke the evidence is the prior deeds of power. In John the evidence is the words of God (as he has interpreted them for the congregation).

Subordinate Quote from Scripture (John 6:45–48; Luke 4:25–26) Von Wahlde places this element within John 6:45–48. It consists of both a quotation from scripture and a commentary. John starts off with a slightly altered citation from Isaiah 54:13. Jesus says, “It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ ” The actual biblical passage is, “All your children shall be

You Can’t Go Home Again | 225 taught by the Lord [emphasis added].” Jesus then adds, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.” As it should be, this refers back to the Objection to Thesis and Jesus’ reaction to the Objection. As we saw above, when the congregation rejected Jesus’ teaching about being sent from heaven, he accused them of not recognizing who he was because they weren’t drawn to God. He now cites a scriptural passage that says God will teach them, and then argues that if they accept God’s teaching, they will recognize who he is. This is followed by John 6:46, which von Wahlde suggests is a later add on to John’s original text and which I pass over. He concludes the argument by saying, “whoever believes has eternal life.” Jesus then reiterates that he is the Bread of Life. John’s use of scripture acts to rebut the objection raised by the congregation. The congregation had failed to accept God, but God teaches them and if they understand God’s words, they know that what Jesus says is true. He has been sent down from heaven to offer eternal life to those who believe in him. Luke also follows the Objection to Thesis with a citation to scripture. He doesn’t cite a specific verse but references part of the story of Elijah from 1 Kings 17, in which the King of Israel was cursed for setting up idols to Baal. Elijah declared that God would cause a drought as punishment. According to Luke, there was a drought in the land and God didn’t send Elijah to alleviate the suffering “when the heaven was shut up three years and six months.” This citation serves as a response to the objection raised to Jesus’ claim to have been sent by God because of his (implicit) failure to heal. Jesus didn’t heal, according to this reference to Elijah, because God didn’t allow him to. In parallel to the Elijah story, we can read into this citation that God withheld Jesus’ power to heal because the congregation disobeyed God’s instructions. Just as Elijah didn’t heal because of God’s will, Jesus didn’t heal because of God’s will. This, to a large extent, makes the same claim that John does. John cites scripture to prove that the congregation didn’t recognize Jesus as the one sent by God because they have failed to take God’s words to heart. Luke cites scripture to show that God withheld from the congregation Jesus’ ability to heal because, like the king in the Elijah story, it didn’t take God’s words to heart. But Luke’s scripture reference also emphasizes that the prophet shows his authority through deeds of power and John rejects that thesis. Therefore, he substituted a different scripture that makes a similar point about accepting “God’s word” but has no connection to deeds of power. Both John and Luke follow up the Objection to Thesis, in which the congregation objected to the teaching that Jesus was sent by God to deliver the good news

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(with each gospel emphasizing different good news), with a scriptural teaching implying that if the congregation accepted the words of God, they would understand Jesus was sent by God. But if they don’t accept God’s words, refusing to recognize that Jesus came from God, then God will not allow the congregation to receive the good news. In Luke’s case that would mean Jesus can’t heal in the present. In John’s case it means that the congregation can’t receive eternal life in the future.

Third Exegesis (John 6:49; Luke 4:27) Von Wahlde describes the third exegesis as one explaining “To Eat.” This would be part of explaining what was meant in the Interpretive Paraphrase. I am not convinced that this element was originally an Exegesis as opposed to a second Subordinate Quotation from Scripture. It seems to me that logically the exegesis should precede the Objection, not follow after the rebuttal to the rejection. However, this is mostly a labeling issue, and doesn’t affect the analysis of a parallel structure. In both cases, the evangelists describe an event from scripture, although neither provides an exact quote. John simply says, “Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.” According to Numbers 14:29, 26:65 and 32:11, God prevented all adults over the age of twenty from crossing into the Promised Land (except for Joshua and Caleb) because the Israelites complained about God’s instructions. This is certainly good symbolism for John. The Israelites died in the desert because God only allowed Moses to provide manna, but not “true” bread that brought eternal life. They didn’t receive “true” bread because they rejected god’s teaching. If you don’t accept God’s words and recognize that Jesus was sent from God, you will not receive “true” bread, i.e., eternal life. You will not cross over to the Promised Land after death. Luke’s Jesus cites a story about the great prophet Elisha, Elijah’s disciple. “There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” Luke references 2 Kings 5:1–27. According to that story, a Syrian commander named Naaman suffered from leprosy. An Israelite woman advised him to seek help from the prophet in Samaria. Naaman’s king sent a letter to the king of Israel offering him a large sum of money if he cured the leprosy. The Israelite king became upset, ripped his clothes, complained that he can’t cure leprosy, and believed that this request was just an excuse to pick a fight. Elisha heard what happened and told the king not to be so upset. “Let him come to me that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel [emphasis added.]” Elisha cured the man of his leprosy.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 227 The passage stands for the idea that prophets are known by their ability to heal, the very argument Luke raises with the quote about prophets without honor. And, of course, this is antithetical to John’s theology. Therefore, John has replaced it with a different passage, one emphasizing temporary life versus eternal life. But Luke’s citation serves a slightly different purpose. His emphasis is on the idea that there was leprosy throughout Israel and a great prophet didn’t heal any of those cases. He only healed the Syrian Naaman. So, Luke’s position seems to be that just because a prophet doesn’t heal, doesn’t mean that he is not a prophet, since you know he can heal. This of course is a reference back to his quotation about prophets without honor. You know he healed in Capernaum, so you know he is a prophet. His failure to heal now doesn’t change his status. In both gospels, the scriptural citations offered here go back to the reaction by Jesus to the objection made by the congregation. In John, Jesus responded to the Objection by saying that they didn’t recognize his role because they didn’t follow God’s teaching; he now cites scripture to say that if you don’t follow God’s teaching you die in the wilderness without crossing over to the Promised Land (eternal life). In Luke, Jesus responded to the objection by saying that a prophet gets no respect in his hometown, implying that they failed to recognize his role even though they know he can heal elsewhere; he now cites scripture to the effect that even though a prophet doesn’t heal people suffering from disease when you want him to, you still know he is a prophet because he has healed others. John focuses on life in the future. Luke focuses on suffering in the present.

Concluding Paraphrase The conclusion is supposed to refer to the original paraphrase of scripture. In John, it is explicitly stated. “This [Jesus] is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.” In the earlier paraphrase he said only that there was “true” bread. The conclusion identifies him as the true bread. Luke, however, initially omitted the Interpretative Paraphrase (the gracious words) because it (implicitly) talked about his ability to heal as proof of his authority. Consequently, he has also omitted a specific conclusion that references the missing Interpretive Paraphrase. But his conclusion is implicit in his argument. I am the prophet anointed by God to alleviate suffering.

Summarizing the Homily Parallel in Luke and John Dividing Luke 4:16–27 into segments shows that each portion of Luke 4:16–27 corresponds in form to a homiletic element in John’s homily structure. Luke,

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however, is missing two of the formal elements necessary to complete the homiletic structure. These are the Interpretive Paraphrase and the Concluding Paraphrase, the latter of which should relate to the former.54 In that regard, I proposed that the “gracious words” referenced in Luke 4:22 were missing from Luke’s account and logically should have appeared in the precise location that would parallel John’s Interpretive Paraphrase. As I also showed above, Luke chose to eliminate any direct reference to Jesus’ failure to heal, which undermined his claim to be a prophet delivering the good news. In context, the missing “gracious words” would have encompassed the original claim that Jesus had been sent to eliminate suffering in the here and now and that his power to heal would prove his status. Therefore, Luke omitted the specific content of the “gracious words.” Since Luke eliminated the “gracious words,” i.e., the Interpretive Paraphrase, he also had to eliminate the Concluding Paraphrase that would have referenced the Interpretive Paraphrase. If I am right in this analysis, then we should account for the different content between Luke and John. As I showed above, the primary difference between Luke’s Hometown Rejection and John’s Bread of Life revolved around the underlying theological message. In Luke, and the underlying source, the theme was that Jesus had been sent to eliminate suffering in the here and now and that healing served as proof of Jesus’ authority. John opposed this thesis and substituted an alternative theology. Jesus was sent to offer eternal life to those who believed in him and his words served as proof of his authority. In each homiletic element, where Luke’s version promoted the Lukan view, John’s version promoted the Johannine alternative. This element for element substitution by John made it extremely difficult to recognize that the Bread of Life Discourse had been built up from the underlying homiletic structure of Luke’s source material. Table 5.3, Thematic Parallels Between Luke 4:16–27 (Hometown Rejection) and John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life), provides a stripped-down way of looking at the similarity between Luke and John. Again, I have aligned Luke with John according to the homiletic elements used by von Wahlde in his analysis of John. In Column Two, I provide a single thematic description of the text in both gospels as to each element in the homily. In Columns Three and Four I provide either a description or a textual extract from each of the gospels for that homiletic element. In Column Five I outline the theological differences between Luke and John as to each element. To this comparison we should add John 6:36—“But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe.”—which encapsulates the basic conflict in

You Can’t Go Home Again | 229 Mark and Luke that despite witnessing what Jesus has done (or said in John) the congregation failed to believe in him. Mark cites this claim directly when he says that Jesus “was amazed at their unbelief ” even though the congregation earlier acknowledges the deeds that he has done. Luke expresses it through his enhanced ending in which he claims that the congregation tried to kill Jesus even though they knew about his deeds in Capernaum. This raises the subsidiary question of how John and Luke both wound up with the homiletic structure. Since they couldn’t have both independently arrived at this unique arrangement by copying from Mark, who eliminated almost every element of the homily from his own version of the story, we are left with three possibilities. John copied from Luke; Luke copied from John; or John and Luke knew a common written source for their respective stories. Since Luke omitted two key elements from the homily structure, it is highly unlikely that John would have recognized Luke’s version as a homily. Therefore, it is highly unlikely that John would have built up a parallel homily by using Luke as a source. Given that Mark and Luke both seem to know the same story and that Mark lacks the homily format, it also seems highly unlikely that Luke would have had any reason to think he should reverse engineer John’s seemingly unrelated Discourse on Bread into a partial homily that supported Mark’s version of the story rather than John’s. Therefore, I would reject the idea that Luke could have derived his homiletic format from John’s Discourse on Bread. The only remaining option is that John and Luke each independently knew a full version of the underlying Hometown Rejection story that already had the homiletic format, and each made their own changes to it. Mark’s version, as explained above, is a heavily redacted version of Luke’s source story. So, we are left with all three evangelists independently knowing an underlying written source.

The Rejection I have argued that John 6:31–50 had been built up from the underlying homiletic structure in a written source. In the homily an objection is raised by the crowd to Jesus’ teaching that he is “the bread of life” and that leads to the reference to Jesus’ family. But that is not quite a rejection, and to complete the parallel between John’s Bread of Life Discourse and the Mark-Luke Hometown Rejection stories it would be helpful if John had an actual rejection of Jesus. He does. It occurs at John 6:51–58, the second half of the Bread of Life Discourse that falls outside of the homily structure that ends at John 6:50. Many scholars think the second half may be a later addition to the discourse. Whatever the case,

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though, we have a specific rejection of Jesus after he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”55 According to John, “When many of his disciples heard it, they said, ‘This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?’ ”56 I reviewed this “eats of this bread” passage in Chapter 2, pointing out that many scholars see a form of Eucharist teaching here. I noted that John’s version of this teaching is very different from the synoptic version and I will take up that discussion in Chapter 8. I want to emphasize that John appears to have moved his version of the Eucharist teaching from the Last Supper and attached it to the end of the homily. In John, therefore, Jesus is rejected by those who fail to understand the meaning of Jesus’ words, while in Luke (and implicitly Mark) Jesus is rejected by those who fail to understand the meaning of Jesus’ (earlier) deeds. This suggests that John has created the Discourse on Bread by merging a theologically appropriate version of the Eternal Life message that paralleled Mark 8:34–9:1 with the Hometown Rejection story and using the merged version as an overlay on the Homily template behind the Hometown Rejection story. I should also point out that John anchored the Discourse on Bread to a request from the Jews for a sign, which serves as the springboard for the scriptural citation that triggers the homily. This request for a sign, which had its parallel in Mark 8:11, differs from the one in the Hometown Rejection story. In the latter, Jesus attempted to provide a sign and failed. All three gospels omit this second request from their accounts. I suspect that John combined the two requests for a sign into a single incident to serve as a bridge to Bread of Life Discourse.

The Names of Jesus’ Parents There is another significant piece of evidence suggesting that Mark, Luke and John all knew the same independent written source for the rejection story. That has to do with the use of the names of Jesus’ family members. Once Jesus has started out on his mission and before he is crucified, this is the only story in all three gospels that gives us the names of any member of Jesus’ family. This seems to me to be at least as strong an indication of a common source as the inclusion of common verses in all three stories. One interesting point is that John and Luke seem to agree against Mark as to which family member was named. The two mention only the father by name, Joseph. Mark omits that name but gives the mother’s name and the brothers’

You Can’t Go Home Again | 231 Table 5.3:  Thematic parallels between Luke 4:16–27 (Hometown Rejection) and John 6:31–50 (Bread of Life). Source: Author Homily Proposed Elements per Thematic von Wahlde Description Cite to scripture

Interpretive paraphrase First Exegesis

Second exegesis Objection

A scriptural reading about a prophet who brings relief

Theological differences Substance of Substance of between Luke Luke’s Version John’s Version and John Isaiah anointed to eliminate suffering

Moses provided Luke: To manna to delay eliminate death suffering John: For temporary life A prophet will Omitted “True” bread Luke: omitted be sent to bring “gracious words” better than John: Eternal good news manna Life Jesus is the “Today this “I am the bread Luke: Jesus prophet that scripture has of life” can heal has been sent to been fulfilled in John: Jesus can bring the good your hearing” bring eternal life news [Added in by John] The “Is this not “Is not this Luke: Minor congregation Joseph’s son?” Jesus, the son problem knows the of Joseph, John: Major family whose father problem and mother we know?” The “Doctor, cure “How can he Luke: Jesus isn’t congregation yourself!” say ‘I have a healer objects come down John: Jesus isn’t from heaven’?” from heaven Jesus says the “No prophet “No one can Luke: Deeds congregation is accepted in come to me should convince doesn’t recognize the prophet’s unless drawn you I am a him as God’s hometown.” by the father.” prophet. anointed one John: God’s words should convince you I am a prophet. Continued 

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Table 5.3:  Continued Homily Proposed Elements per Thematic von Wahlde Description

Theological differences Substance of Substance of between Luke Luke’s Version John’s Version and John

Subordinate The prophet’s Quotation recognition from Scripture comes from God.

“heaven was shut up three years and six months.”

Everyone who has heard and learned from the father comes to me.

Luke: God provides power to heal. John: God taught you and you didn’t listen. Third Exegesis Prophets don’t “There were also “Your ancestors Luke: Elisha or Second always deliver many lepers ate manna in didn’t heal. Subordinate the greater good. in Israel at the the wilderness, John: Moses Quotation time of the and they died.” didn’t bring from Scripture prophet Elisha.” eternal life. Concluding Jesus is the one [Comment “This is the Luke: Jesus is the Paraphrase sent by God on “gracious bread that one sent to heal. words” omitted. comes down John: Jesus is the Implied from heaven, one sent to bring conclusion, “I so that one eternal life. am the prophet may eat of it sent by God.”] and not die”

names. In fact, he never mentions anywhere in his gospel that Jesus had a human father. And, outside of this one story, Mark never mentions the name of Jesus’ mother while Jesus is alive. His only other apparent references to her name come in oblique remarks after the crucifixion. These Mary references identify her as “Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses,”57 “Mary the mother of Joses,”58 and “Mary the mother of James.”59 None of these titles specifically connects her to Jesus, and Mark never specifically says that any of these Mary references are to the mother of Jesus. Outside of the rejection story, Mark tells us of two other people named James, both of whom were among the twelve disciples in Jesus’ inner circle, James the son of Zebedee and James the son of Alphaeus.60 Mary, in theory, could be the mother of either of these other James. The only reason we can connect her to Jesus is that Mark’s rejection story tells us that both James and Joses were Jesus’ brothers and this is the only Joses mentioned anywhere prior to the crucifixion.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 233 John, by contrast, never mentions the mother of Jesus by name. Outside of this rejection story the only other time John mentions Joseph by name is at the beginning of the mission, when Philip, one of the first disciples to join with Jesus in John’s gospel, mentions the existence of “Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”61 This event occurs at the very beginning of Jesus’ mission, while he is recruiting his first few disciples after the witnessing of John the Baptist. Once the mission begins, John never mentions Joseph again, except for the rejection story. In Luke, Mary is mentioned by name several times in the birth story of Jesus, but she virtually disappears after that as a named character in Luke. The only other apparent mention of her by name is at Luke 24:10, after the death of Jesus, where he uses the same odd phrase as Mark, “Mary the mother of James.” Presumably he has copied it from Mark. However, he has never identified James anywhere in his gospel as the brother of Jesus and, based solely on Luke’s text, we can’t be sure, that this Mary is the mother of Jesus as opposed to the mother of one of the two apostles named James, both of whom are mentioned in Luke’s gospel.62 As to Joseph, Luke also mentions his name in the birth story, but outside of the birth stories and the rejection story, the only other mention of Joseph comes at Luke 3:23, which says that Jesus was thirty years old when he began his work and he was “the son as was thought of Joseph, the son of Heli [emphasis added].” Luke positions this reference immediately after the witnessing of John the Baptist and before the recruitment of the first disciples. In chronological terms, John and Luke place this earlier mention of Joseph at about the same point of time, prior to the onset of the mission and after the witnessing of John the Baptist. It is also worth noting that this earlier reference appears in the same genealogical format, “Jesus, son of Joseph.” (Luke uses this occasion to present an expanded genealogy.) The narrative parallel between John and Luke as to the use of Joseph’s name in two separate settings in similar contexts hints at the existence of a lengthy common source known to both. Luke’s omission of the mother from the rejection story is particularly puzzling. He has no problem mentioning her by name in his birth story (assuming the birth story was appended to the gospel before he wrote the rejection story,63) so why would he have a problem now? My suspicion is that the original story, which Luke altered, contained a negative reaction to the family, mentioning both the mother and father, and Luke chose to protect the mother against any negative fallout by omitting her from this story. To summarize: in all three gospels, Mark, Luke and John, after the mission begins and before Jesus dies, the hometown rejection story is the only episode that names a member of Jesus’ family. Additionally, both John and Luke each

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use Joseph’s name on two different occasions in comparative settings, once in the hometown rejection story and once in the beginning of the mission. These are certainly striking coincidences and strongly suggesting the existence of a common source for all three evangelists as regards this story. While it is possible that multiple versions of this story circulated with different family rosters, the likelihood is that agreement between John and Luke suggests that in the original story the crowd said they knew Jesus’ father, and gave his name as Joseph. Mark’s obvious antipathy towards mentioning even the existence of a human father suggests that he altered the text to eliminate the reference to the father completely.

In What Town Was Jesus Rejected? Mark places the rejection story in Jesus’ “hometown” but doesn’t tell us the name of the place or what sense of the word he means. Matthew followed Mark’s usage of “hometown”, but Luke dropped it. He opted instead to place the incident specifically in Nazareth, which he identifies as “the place where [Jesus] had been brought up” as opposed to Bethlehem, where he says Jesus was born. Luke’s choice is reasonable but may reflect only an interpretation of the wording in Mark. John places the incident in Capernaum, the city where, according to Mark and Matthew, Jesus established his home during his mission. For the reasons set forth above, I hold to the view that Mark, Luke and John all adapted their rejection stories from a common written source for this story. Mark’s vagueness as to the town’s identity suggests to me that the earlier source used “hometown” without defining it, although the original narrative context may have made the location easier to identify. If that is the case, each of the evangelists adapted the terminology according to their own best understanding. Nevertheless, I think we can identify the intended location as Capernaum. The first problem we should look at is whether Mark knew where Jesus’ hometown was. It is not clear that he does. He knows that Jesus was known as “Jesus of Nazareth”64 but at Mark 1:9 he says, “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.” The phrase “in those days” seems to suggest only that Mark associates Jesus with Nazareth at about the time he was baptized by John, at the beginning of his mission; at other times in the past, per Mark’s phrasing, he may have been from somewhere else. It is not evident that Mark knows much about Jesus prior to this time. He has no stories about the life of Jesus prior to his baptism by John and his reference to Nazareth is somewhat circumscribed.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 235 Shortly after Jesus’ baptism and immediately after the recruitment of the first four disciples, Mark says that Jesus went to Capernaum, where he performed his first public demonstration of special powers.65 Shortly thereafter Mark says that Jesus returned to Capernaum and appears to already have had a home there.66 For Mark’s audience the only apparent references to a hometown in his gospel would be either Nazareth or Capernaum. Mark has almost nothing to say about Nazareth and does not even explain why Jesus is known as “Jesus of Nazareth.” But he does indicate the Jesus lived in Capernaum and had a home there. Matthew is more direct. He says that Jesus left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum.67 He, too, places this at the very start of the mission, right after the arrest of John the Baptist. But he also adds that Jesus went to Capernaum in fulfillment of a prophecy by Isaiah, and attributes great theological significance to Jesus’ taking up residence there.68 Luke, as we saw, moved the rejection story to the beginning of Jesus’ mission but indicates that Jesus was already well-known for performing great deeds at Capernaum. At Mark 3:19 Jesus returns to his “home,” which Mark has previously established as Capernaum, and his family appears to be living there with him.69 In the course of his return we are told that his family tried to restrain him because people thought he was mad. Almost immediately after that, while still in his hometown, a second incident involves Jesus’ family.70 His mother and brothers sent a message that they wanted to speak with him, but he rejected their request and seemed to belittle them by describing only his followers as “my mother and my brothers!”71 These two consecutive incidents show that Jesus’ family was known in Capernaum, where Jesus had his home, and that he had a problematic relationship with his family, which provides a basis for Jesus to accuse his family of not giving him his due as a prophet. John clearly places his rejection story in Capernaum but downplays Jesus’ connection to that city. To begin with, he places almost all of Jesus’ activities in Jerusalem or Judea and, outside of John 6, Jesus does almost nothing at all in Galilee. On the other hand, John has Jesus heal a royal official’s son who is ill in Capernaum, and he also performs two (or three, depending on how you count,) miracles very close to Capernaum. One involves the miracle of the loaves, which takes place on the shore of the Sea of Galilee near Capernaum and the other involves walking on the water while his disciples are sailing to Capernaum. He also causes the disciples boat to jump from the middle of the water to the shore at Capernaum. However, on no occasion does John’s Jesus perform any miracles while he is present in Capernaum. This downplays the role of Capernaum as the place where Jesus was known to perform deeds of power.

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John also has one odd reference to Jesus going to Capernaum. At the very point in time when Mark says Jesus went to Capernaum for the first time,72 right after the recruitment of the first four disciples, John, at that same chronological point, also says that Jesus and his family went to Capernaum.73 In addition, while John has no direct mention of where Jesus lived during his mission, he does indicate that while in Galilee Jesus had problems with his family members. “For not even his brothers believed in him.”74 This corroborates Mark’s report that while in Capernaum, Jesus’s family thought him mad and tried to restrain him and that Jesus spoke disparagingly about his relatives. In addition, we have the Q source, where we find an interesting passage about which cities rejected Jesus. Then he began to reproach the cities in which most of his deeds of power had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades. For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that on the day of judgment it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom than for you.”75

Worse than Sodom! Wow! That’s harsh. The other two cities mentioned in the Q passage that come under attack are only compared unfavorably to the inhabitants of pagan cities. But Capernaum, mission central for Jesus, is compared to the most sinful city in all Jewish scripture. With the possible exception of Jerusalem, which the Q source identifies as the place where prophets are killed,76 no other city in the Gospels comes under such opprobrium as Capernaum does here. Something really bad must have happened there to get the Q author so fired up. For all practical purposes Q says Jesus performed great deeds in Capernaum and the people there rejected him. Sound familiar? Yet, throughout Mark, Capernaum receives no direct criticism. The only Galilee location in Mark where the townsfolk know about Jesus’ great deeds of power and reject him and where Jesus is amazed at the lack of faith is referred to only as “hometown.” This suggests that Mark’s “hometown” should be Capernaum. In support of Capernaum as the place where Jesus was rejected, we have the following pieces of evidence.

• Q virulently attacks Capernaum as the worst city in Galilee for rejecting Jesus after he performed great deeds, worse even than Sodom.

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• Mark has no direct criticism of Capernaum but the only city he depicts as knowing about Jesus’ deeds of power and rejecting him anyway is “hometown.” • John places his rejection story in Capernaum. • Matthew says that at the beginning of his mission Jesus made his home in Capernaum. • Mark and John show Jesus going to Capernaum at the beginning of his mission, at the same chronological point in time, after the recruitment of the first four named disciples. • Mark says Jesus had a home in Capernaum and that his family lived there with him. • John says that Jesus took his family with him to Capernaum. • Mark says that while in Capernaum Jesus had conflicts with his family. John corroborates that claim about family conflict, but only places the incident in Galilee and doesn’t identify the city where this happened. • Luke shows that early on Jesus had a reputation for doing great deeds in Capernaum. • Luke’s identification of Nazareth as the city may have just been a result of his attempt to identify the un-named “hometown.”

Capernaum is the place where Jesus established himself, the place where he had his family, the place where he was known for doing great deeds, and the place that was denounced for rejecting Jesus after witnessing his deeds. I submit that Capernaum is the city that best fits as the “hometown” location where Jesus was rejected.

Determining the Sequential Location of the Story It remains to determine where in the sequence of stories the underlying hometown rejection belongs. All three gospels—Mark, Luke and John—have contextual problems. Luke has clearly moved the story from whatever original position it held to an earlier location in his narrative. John has distributed parts of the story into different locations and merged the main portion with other scenes from John 6. Mark has heavily redacted the story and placed it in a location that raises questions. The problem with Mark is this. He places the Hometown Rejection story well after the Mark-B 3:1–19 Prelude but a little before what may be a duplicate version of the Prelude in Mark-A 6:32–34. In either case, though, it appears before Mark’s first multiplication of the loaves. In John, however, the reworked version appears after the multiplication of the loaves.

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John’s placement raises some red flags. The Discourse on Bread, which I identified with the Mark 8:34–9:1 eternal life speech, was the only scene in my John 6/Mark parallel structure that exhibited an unresolved chronological disagreement between the two gospels. Mark had it after Peter’s confession and John had it prior. At the same time, we saw that the Discourse was built up from the Hometown Rejection story and incorporated a version of Mark’s Eternal Life speech, but John anchored it to the Mark 8:11/John 6:30 request for a sign. Placing the Hometown Rejection story, with its failed request for a sign, immediately after the scene where Jesus rejects the request for a sign in a hostile manner (per Mark 8:12) seems to make no narrative sense. For this reason, I think John moved the eternal life speech from its original order, after Peter’s confession, attached it to his revised version of the Hometown Rejection story from a different location, and anchored the merged account to this rejected request for a sign. If Mark-A 6:32–34 is a duplicate Prelude, it has been heavily redacted, so we don’t know all that has been cut out. Our analysis of the John 6:1–4 Prelude showed that there was a chronological gap between Scenes 1c and 1d that allowed for the existence of additional stories that might have been moved out of that location. We also saw evidence that John deleted material from stories in John 6:1– 3. For the above reasons, I am inclined to follow the Markan arrangement that places the Hometown Rejection story (Mark 6:1–6) between the Mark-B Prelude (Mark 3:1–19) and the first multiplication of the loaves (Mark-A 6:35–44). In this location, very little appears between Mark’s hometown rejection story and the Markan scenes that correspond to John 6. Following Mark’s hometown rejection, Jesus sends the disciples out on a healing mission involving exorcisms.77 John would obviously have eliminated that scene if it was in the source. This is followed by the scene in which Herod speculates about the identity of Jesus.78 This is a likely doublet for Mark 8:27–30, both of which parallel John 6:14–15a. Mark also attaches a lengthy out of sequence account of the death of John the Baptist at Herod’s hand to the Herod-Jesus identity scene. This in turn leads into the possible doublet of the Mark-B Prelude and the start of the multiplication of the loaves.79 Dropping the out-of- sequence account of John the Baptist’s death, the only scene separating Mark’s hometown rejection story from the other parallels between Mark and John is the exorcism mission by the disciples. This means that Mark’s Hometown Rejection story is in very close narrative proximity to the miracle of the loaves. To be clear: I believe the Hometown Rejection story originally appeared after Jesus went up on the mountain and designated his disciples and before the mul-

You Can’t Go Home Again | 239 tiplication of the loaves. However, we saw in Chapter 4 that Mark followed up the Prelude with the “True Kindred” segment, which John moved into the story of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. Therefore, I am placing the Hometown Rejection story after Mark’s True Kindred segment and before his account of the miracle of the loaves. In John, this would be just before the Passover announcement.80

Why Is This Story in the Gospels? The Hometown Rejection story, in its homiletic source form, would seem to be doubly-embarrassing to the gospel authors. It not only shows Jesus failing to perform a miracle, but it also has Jesus comparing himself to other ancient prophets such as Isaiah, Elijah and Elisha rather than as someone more elevated than they are. John, in addition, opposed the idea of deeds as proof of authority. Given that the story elements undermine the dominant theological principles of the evangelists, why did they each include it in their histories of Jesus? In New Testament scholarship there is an effort to distinguish the actual words or actions of Jesus from what may be oral traditions from the early church and from what may be redactions or elaborations by the four evangelists.81 To aid in this task scholars have developed a few tools to help analyze these materials. One such practice is known as the “Criterion of Embarrassment.”82 The idea is that the early church is unlikely to have created material that would be embarrassing to Jesus or helpful to opponents. One would expect the evangelists to change or modify the material. If elements of such offensive concepts can be found in or teased out of the texts, then perhaps it goes back to the original sayings or actions of Jesus. This criterion is not a hard and fast rule and needs to be used judiciously and cautiously. There could be several other reasons why the text appears as it does. One example that Meier develops is that what seems embarrassing to us now may not have been so then.83 Meier also notes that since only a few such examples of such evidence exist they are insufficient to draw a full picture of Jesus.84 To this I would add my own additional caution. The origin of the embarrassing material may be from a written source and there is no way to know if the source was reliable. But the presence of such material would suggest that the evangelist relying on the written source may have thought the story sufficiently well-known that it needed to be included in the story of Jesus but modified in a way to minimize the negative image. That is what I think happened with respect to the Hometown Rejection story.

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The homiletic form of the story is clearly defensive of Jesus. This means that it is responding to prior accusations that Jesus failed to heal somebody. Implicitly, the very existence of the Hometown Rejection story in Christian sources, including a rebuttal that acknowledges that Jesus failed to heal someone, strongly suggests that some early (first generation?) Christians accepted that the original charge about the failure to heal was true. That the story would appear in three different gospels, each presenting a different version, suggests that the accusation had wide circulation and that the charge against Jesus was being successfully used to counter Christian proselytism. Thus, the need for a defensive story that says that even if the charge was true it didn’t matter. The author of the underlying homily prepared a defense to counter these successful anti-Christian charges, and this, too, must have had wide circulation. But each of the evangelists found the defense flawed and each made their own changes, making sure to delete the initial failure to heal from their respective accounts. What was important, however, was to make sure that Christians could continue to refute this allegation by showing that it was irrelevant. Jesus didn’t fail to heal. His opponents failed to understand God’s will as expressed through scripture.

Summary The evidence above shows that prior to the gospels there existed a story written in the form of a first century Jewish homily. In this story, Jesus went into a synagogue and read a passage from scripture, which he interpreted to mean that Jesus was a prophet anointed by God to eliminate suffering in the here and now. The audience challenged him to prove this claim by having him try to heal someone. Jesus failed and the audience rejected his claim to being God’s anointed. In response, Jesus made arguments appealing to scripture that defended his prophetic status even though he couldn’t heal. Mark, Luke and John all knew this written story and made changes. Mark heavily redacted the story leaving it almost unrecognizable except for two key passages that showed up in an alternate form in Luke and John. One spoke about prophets without honor in their hometown and among their own families. The other mentioned that the congregation knew members of Jesus’ family by name. This is the only story in all three gospels, after the start of the mission and before the crucifixion, where a member of Jesus’ family is named in the gospels. Mark also left in the surprising notice that Jesus lost his powers.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 241 Luke and John both retained the underlying homiletic format and Luke appears to represent a close version of the underlying story. He did dance around the issue of Jesus’ failure to heal but the arguments made in the story, together with Mark’s claim about a loss of power, showed that in Luke’s source Jesus failed to heal. Luke moved the story from its original narrative location to an earlier point in his gospel and attached a not very credible claim that the Jews tried to kill Jesus after they rejected him. John also retained the homiletic structure but rejected the underlying theological themes that emphasized a gospel of healing in the here and now and that relied on deeds of power as proof of authority. John took the underlying story and for each element of the homiletic form that disagreed with his theological agenda he offered an alternative set of arguments. He substituted a gospel of eternal life in the future for the underlying gospel about eliminating suffering in the here and now. And he replaced arguments relating to deeds of power as proof of authority with arguments that derived Jesus’ authority from his words and teachings. Despite the changes, which resulted in a wholesale replacement of the underlying text, the two sets of gospel texts showed a very similar thematic structure in the way the passages unfolded. John created his changes by merging parts of the hometown rejection story with other stories that had Markan parallels, including the request for a sign, a teaching about eternal life, and the nature of the Eucharist. John brought all these features together to turn the underlying homily into a teaching about the Bread of Life. John also moved pieces of the story elsewhere. He separated the proverb about prophets without honor from its original context about deeds of power and placed it elsewhere in his gospel where it had no connection to deeds of power. He also moved the audience reaction about the source of Jesus’ teaching, which originally had a connection to his deeds of power, and moved that passage to form a bridge to his criticism of the Jews for not understanding Moses’ teachings about Sabbath and circumcision. He also dropped out the reference to deeds of power. Chronologically, the story appears to fall after the True Kindred segment in Mark and before the miracle of the loaves. (In John this would be just before the Passover announcement.) An important point of this chapter is to show how gospel authors relying on a common source can radically alter their source material, often into unrecognizable forms, in order to advance a theological agenda. Although John retained pieces of the hometown rejection story in his Bread of Life discourse, but for the underlying homiletic structure it might have been near impossible to show that

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John’s discourse, textually unlike anything in Luke and Mark, relied on the same common source material they did for their hometown rejection stories. We should also consider how substantially Mark also changed the source material such that it, too, was largely unrecognizable. Lastly, we should consider the strange symbiosis between Luke and John despite Luke’s use of Mark as a primary source.

Notes 1. (Brown, The Gospel According to John I-XII 1966), 287. 2. Mark 6:2, 6. 3. See, for example, (Wahlde 2010), 301–3; (Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John 2003), 139; (Meier 1994), 1025, n. 270. All are strongly influenced in this regard by (Borgen 1965). 4. (Aland 1985), 127–29. 5. Mark never says that the hometown was Nazareth. I will address this issue further on in this chapter, at which time I will argue that the town was Capernaum. 6. Mark 1:9. 7. Mark 1:24, 10:47, 14:67, and 16:6. 8. Mark 14:67. 9. Mark 1:21, 2:1, 9:33. Corroborated by Matthew 4:13: “He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea.” 10. Mark  6:4. 11. Mark  3:6. 12. Matthew 13:54–58. 13. (Hurtado 2011), 89. 14. (Hurtado 2011), 90. 15. (Hurtado 2011), 90. 16. (Metzger 1994), 75–76. 17. John  7:5. 18. Earlier, at Mark 4:35–41, Jesus calms a stormy sea but the only witnesses to this power over nature are the twelve disciples. 19. Luke  4:31. 20. Compare Luke 4:31 to Mark 1:21. 21. Luke  4:16. 22. Luke  4:24. 23. Luke 4:18–19. 24. Luke  4:21. 25. Luke  4:22. 26. Luke  4:23.

You Can’t Go Home Again | 243 27. Luke  4:24. 28. Luke 4:25–26. 29. Luke  4:27. 30. Luke  4:30. 31. Compare Mark 3:20–22 to Matthew 12:22–24. 32. Luke  3:23. 33. (Aland 1985), 127–29. 34. Mark  6:2–3. 35. John 1:45–46, 7:41, 7:52, 18:5, 18:7. 19:19. 36. If we read the Samarian sojourn as an editorial intrusion into the story, then “that place” would refer to Judea rather than Samaria. 37. I exclude the Jews of Samaria from this claim as they rejected Jerusalem as the Jewish capitol. 38. Matt 23:37; see also Luke 13:34. 39. John 4:46–54. 40. John 6:35–58. 41. Jn. 6:41–43, emphasis added. 42. John 7:15–18. 43. Mark  6:2. 44. John 7:16–17. 45. See, for example, (Wahlde 2010), 301–3; (Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John 2003), 139; (Meier 1994), 1025, n. 270. All are strongly influenced in this regard by (Borgen 1965). 46. (Wahlde 2010), 301–3. 47. (Wahlde 2010), 303. 48. Luke 4:16–17. 49. John  6:59. 50. Luke 4:18–19. Luke’s citation seems to be a mixture of Isaiah 61:1–2 and 58:6. 51. “When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat (Exodus 16:15).’ ” Exodus 16:4 says that the bread came down from heaven. 52. John 6:49–50. 53. (Wahlde 2010), 310–11. 54. (Wahlde 2010), 303. 55. John  6:51. 56. John  6:60. 57. Mark  15:40. 58. Mark  15:47. 59. Mark  16:1. 60. Mark. 3:17–18. 61. John.  1:45.

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62. Luke 6:14–16. Luke also mentions a “Judas, son of James” but it is unclear if that James is one of the two James among the disciples or a third James. 63. It is worth noting that some scholars have suggested that the birth stories in Matthew and Luke may have been written after the rest of their gospels had been already written and they were simply appended to the exiting texts. In some cases, it has been argued that the reference to Jesus’ family in the Hometown Rejection story suggests that no one who knew Jesus’ family thought there was anything unusual about him or his birth prior to this incident. If this were the case, then Luke’s prior references to Mary by name disappear from his text at the time the rejection story was written. 64. Mark 1:24, 10:47, 14:67, 16:6. 65. Mark  1:22. 66. “When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home (Mark 2:1).” 67. Matthew  4:13. 68. Matthew 4:14–17. 69. Mark  3:21. 70. Mark  3:31. 71. Mark  3:34. 72. Mark  1:21. 73. John actually places the event three days after he recruited his first disciples, interrupting the journey with the story of the wedding at Cana. See John 2:1–12. 74. John  7:5. 75. Matthew 11:20–24; See also Luke 10:13–15. 76. Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34. 77. Mark 6:7–13. 78. Mark 6:14–16. 79. Mark 6:30–44. 80. John  6:4. 81. (Meier, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus 1991), 167. 82. (Meier, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus 1991), 168. 83. (Meier, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus 1991), 170. 84. (Meier, A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus 1991), 170.

Bibliography Aland, K. (1985). Synopsis of the Four Gospels (English Edition, Revised printing ed.). New York: American Bible Society. Borgen, P. (1965). Bread From Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Conception of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writing of Philo. NovTSup (10).

You Can’t Go Home Again | 245 Brown, R. E. (1966). The Gospel According to John I–XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Brown, R. E. (2003). An Introduction to the Gospel of John (F. J. Maloney, Ed.). New York: ARBL/ Doubleday. Hurtado, L. W. (2011). Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Meier, J. P. (1991). A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Vols. One, The Roots of the Problem and the Person). New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Meier, J. P. (1994). A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Vols. Two: Mentor, Message, and Miracles). New York: Doubleday. Metzger, B. M. (1994). A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.). London; New York: United Bible Societies. Wahlde, U. C. (2010). The Gospel and Letters of John (Vol. 2). Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

6

The Mission Begins

In Chapters 2 and 3 I have attempted to show that John 5–6 contains a long sequence of discrete story units and that each one has a parallel in Mark that unfolds, with only trivial exceptions, in the same sequential order as John. A key difference between the two gospel sequences is that John presents the events as contiguous while Mark has several breaks in the narrative where other stories intrude. The start of Mark’s parallel agreement with John 5–6 begins with the healing of the paralytic on the mat at Mark 2:1. In this chapter I will examine those portions of Mark, John and Luke that precede the healing of the paralytic. This material encompasses all of Mark 1, John 1–4 and Luke 3:1–5:16 (omitting Luke’s infancy and childhood narratives). On a schematic level, these gospel portions can be divided into two major story lines, 1) the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist and 2) the early stages of Jesus’ missionary activity, culminating in the first acts that bring him wide-scale public attention. On the surface, John 1–4 looks nothing much like Mark 1. Still, we can find a few touch points, such as the Isaiah quotation, similarities in the proclamation of John the Baptist, variations on the baptism of Jesus, and a sequence of two stories in which Jesus encounters two sets of named disciples (although the story settings and some of the disciple names are very different). There is also a major red flag in

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John’s early use of the story of Jesus chasing the money-changers from the Temple, which incident Mark places during the Passion Week. Several stories in John 1–4 appear to have no counterpart in Mark. At the same time, Mark 1 includes several exorcisms, the sort of incidents that John excludes from his gospel. Nevertheless, I will argue below that virtually all of Mark 1 and almost all of John 1–4 are structured around the same narrative framework, derived from a common source known to both John and Mark. The evidence will show that John had significant theological objections to much of the common source material and has taken several liberties with the source material that makes the parallels between Mark and John extremely difficult to see. Mark had much less theological difficulty and made significantly fewer changes, although he did omit a few elements. Luke on occasion appears to either side with John against Mark or try to strike a balance between stories in Mark and parallels in John. A comparison of the chronological order and thematic structure of the various stories in Mark, John, and Luke will allow us to trace back the editorial path that caused the gospels to diverge from the source material and enable us to recover the underlying storylines and original sequence of events. I began by breaking Mark 1 into twenty-two discrete scenes. I then divided John 1–4 into twenty-six discrete scenes (after omitting portions of John 1:1–18 and all of 4:4–42, which material is unique to John) and added four scenes from John 21:1–7 to the mix (for reasons to be explained below) for a total of thirty scenes. I then divided Luke 3:1–5:16 into twenty-three scenes (after omitting Luke 4:16–30, his out-of-sequence version of the Hometown Rejection story discussed in Chapter 5) and added in Luke 1:11–17 and 1:32 (also for reasons explained below) for a total of twenty-five scenes in all. In addition, there is some material in Acts 1:21 that has some bearing on our analysis. By comparing the content of each of those scenes in all three gospels I have identified a minimum of at least twenty-seven distinct scenes that can be traced to a common source. I have identified these scenes with the labels CS1 through CS27. There may be additional scenes from a common source in one or more of the gospels but they lack sufficient corroboration from the other gospels for inclusion in the proposed listing at this time. Table 6.1, Scenes breakdown in Mark 1; John 1–4; Luke 3:1–5:16, shows my separation of the gospel texts into scenes and my identification of which scenes belong to the proposed common source. The “Scene Description” column contains a list of all the scenes from each of the three gospels (except for the above-indicated portions of John and Luke that have been omitted). In some instances, the scene descriptions accurately reflect the story theme but the content of the stories in the

The Mission Begins | 249 Table 6.1:  Scenes breakdown in Mark 1, John 1–4, Luke 3:1–5:16. Source: Author Scene Description

CS# Mark

John

Jesus is the Son of God [John 1:1–5 presents an enhanced definition of the meaning of Son of God.] John the Baptist is ordained before birth to be the messenger from God according to Malachi’s prophecies. [Mark omits a specific reference to John being ordained before birth. Mark and John rely here on Malachi 3:1. Luke relies upon Malachi 4:5–6.] Appearance of John the Baptist. Quotation from Isaiah 40:3 about the voice in the wilderness. John the Baptist preaches to the crowd. Crowd asks John the Baptist if he is the Messiah. Proclamation by John the Baptist about the one who is to come. John baptizes Jesus. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove. A voice from heaven says that Jesus is the son of God. [In John, the voice is that of John the Baptist.] Jesus tempted in the wilderness by Satan. Andrew is a disciple of John the Baptist.

CS1 1:1

1:1–5, 1:32 14, 18.

CS2 1:2

1:6–7

1:11–17

CS3 1:4–6 CS4 1:3

1:19 1:23

3:1–3 3:4–6

CS5

3:7–14 1:20–22 3:15

CS6 1:7–8

1:24–28 3:16–18

CS7 1:9 CS8 1:10

1:29–31 3:21 1:32 3:22

CS9 1:11

1:34

1:12–13 CS10

1:40

Jesus is known as “Jesus, the son of Joseph.” CS11

1:45

Luke

3:22

4:1–13 Possible corroboration from Luke 5:9–10. 3:23

Continued 

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Table 6.1:  Continued Scene Description

CS# Mark

Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew CS12 meet Jesus. [Luke omits the scene but implies its existence in Acts 1:21. Mark sets the scene at the Sea of Galilee. John places it in the camp of John the Baptist. Luke 4:38 also indicates that Jesus and Peter knew each other before Peter became a disciple.] Two more named future disciples meet Jesus. CS13 [John and James in Mark; Philip and Nathanael in John. Luke omits the scene but implies its existence in Acts 1:21.] Jesus begins his first missionary tour. CS14 [Luke separated the issue of John’s arrest from the notice of the first missionary tour.] The arrest status of John the Baptist is CS15 mentioned. Wedding at Cana/ Jesus turns water into wine. [John uses this scene as a partial substitution for Jesus’ first miracle. See “first widelynoticed public act” at CS13.] Jesus goes to Capernaum. CS16 Jesus performs first widely-noticed CS17 public act. [In Mark, Jesus expels an “unclean spirit” from a man’s body. In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple of corrupt influences.] Jesus receives first public acclaim in Galilee. CS18 Jesus’ second sign–healing a fever in CS19 Capernaum. [In Mark, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law. In John, he heals a royal official’s son.] Jesus receives second public acclaim for his CS20 “signs”

John

Luke

1:16–18 1:41–42 See Acts 1:21. Also see Luke 4:38.

1:19–20 1:43–51 See Acts 1:21

1:14–15 3:22–23 4:14–15

1:14

3:24

3:19–20

2:1–11

1:21 2:12 4:31 1:22–26 2:13–22 4:32–35

1:27–28 4:43–45 4:36–37 1:29–31 4:46–54 4:38–39

1:32–34 2:23–25 4:40–41

The Mission Begins | 251 Table 6.1:  Continued Scene Description

CS# Mark

Jesus proclaims the gospel (second missionary tour) [In Mark: Jesus proclaims message in Galilee, conducts exorcisms. In John: Jesus teaches the message to Nicodemus.] Jesus helps Peter, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John catch an abundance of fish. [John places event in post-resurrection period.] Peter recognizes Jesus as the Lord. Jesus says, “Follow me.” Peter, James and John (but not Andrew) become followers of Jesus.

CS21 1:35–39 3:1–21 4:42–44

John the Baptist and a Jew discuss purification. John the Baptist compares Jesus to a Bridegroom

CS22

John

21:1–6 5:1–7

CS23 21:7 CS24 1:17 21:9. CS25 Mark and John merge this scene with CS12 and CS13 See 3:25 Mark 7:1–5 See 3:29–30 Mark 2:18–22 3:31–36 CS26 1:41–42 4:1

John the Baptist describes Jesus Jesus heals a leper. [John substitutes baptisms for the healing of the leper.] Jesus ‘actions make him popular and he CS27 1:45 leaves the area. [In Mark, it is due to his healing a leper. In John, it is due to the success of his baptism mission.]

Luke

4:1–3

5:8 5:11

See Luke 11:37–38

5:12–13

5:15–16

Bracketed text in Scene Description column is commentary. CS# column indicates which scenes belong to the proposed common source and what order those scenes should appear in. Blank cells in that column indicate that the scene is not included in the proposed common source. The columns labeled with Mark, John, and Luke indicate which verses in those gospels include the indicated scenes. Blank cells indicate that the scene is missing in that gospel. Highlighted cells indicate that the scene in that gospel is out of sequence with the order of the scenes in the proposed common source.

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various gospels may differ and I have added some occasional comments in brackets to clarify matters. The “CS#” column indicates which of those scenes belong to my proposed common source. Blank cells in the “CS#” column indicate that I have not included that incident in my list of scenes from the proposed common source. The Mark, John, and Luke columns give the citations for each scene in each gospel. Blank cells in the Mark, John, and Luke columns indicate that the scene doesn’t appear in the indicated gospel. Highlighted cells in the Mark, John, and Luke columns indicate that with respect to that scene, the gospel’s narrative sequence differs from my proposed chronological order for the common source. My analysis, as set forth below, will show that Mark has omitted five of the proposed twenty-seven common scenes (CS5, 10, 11, 22, and 23) and merged one scene (CS25) with two other scenes (CS12 and 13). Altogether, of Mark’s total of twenty-two scenes I have identified twenty-one as having parallels in John’s narrative. The analysis will also show that John has replaced two exorcism scenes (CS17 and CS19) with material that appears later in Mark’s gospel and this has caused some slight disruption to the sequential parallels between the two gospels. The parallels will show that these replacements were the result of a deliberate editorial decision by John to eliminate the original exorcism scenes. John has also moved three of the original scenes (CS22–24) from their original location in the beginning of Jesus’ mission to the post-resurrection narrative in John 21. In addition, John has followed Mark in merging CS25 with CS12 and CS13. Luke has twenty-three direct parallels in John’s narrative, and corroborative material in support of three other scenes in John. He is missing only CS24 from the correlations (a scene present in Mark and John). Contrary to Mark and John, Luke has retained CS25. Before moving to the analytic portion of this chapter I think it would be helpful to touch on a few of the major problem areas that need to be dealt with. These include:

• • • •

The use of the prophet Malachi in connection with John the Baptist; The Problem of John’s Redactor and the Baptist Cycle; The Four Disciples Problem; The Two Signs Problem.

Malachi and John the Baptist After telling us that Jesus is the son of God,1 Mark begins his gospel with the story of John the Baptist as an adult and introduces him with a quote from Malachi

The Mission Begins | 253 3:1.2 Luke, at a later point in time and citing the Q source in connection with the Baptist in a different context, also references Malachi 3:1.3 Luke begins his gospel with the story of the birth of John the Baptist and expressly links the birth to a prophecy from Malachi 4:5–6.4 Mark implicitly cites the same passage in connection with John the Baptist later in his gospel.5 Although Luke used Mark as a source he and Mark disagree as to the order in which these two prophecies appear and which one belongs to the beginning of the Baptist story. John doesn’t explicitly cite either of those texts, but below we will see that he implicitly references both Malachi passages in connection with John the Baptist. It is necessary, therefore, to take a closer look at these passages from Malachi in order to see how they play out in the story of John the Baptist. Malachi is the last of the so-called Minor Prophets. It is a short work describing a series of oracles that depict God as unhappy with various entities in Israel and prophesizes what will come as a result. In Jewish scripture, the prophetic books are gathered together as a single collection and placed in the middle of the Jewish bible. Malachi appears at the end of the prophetic section. In Christian Bibles, Malachi is listed as the last of the Jewish scriptures. This is probably due to its importance in the opening portions of the gospel stories of John the Baptist. I’ll begin with a look at Malachi 3:1. It begins with “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me.” It is unclear from context who this messenger is. It is often thought that it might be a divine figure, such as an angel.6 As noted above, Mark uses this verse to introduce the story of John the Baptist, and Luke cites it later, also in connection with the Baptist. Both, however, leave out the rest of the verse, which reads, “and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple [emphasis added].” And this is what happens when the Lord arrives. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Lord in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.7

Malachi says here that a messenger from God will appear but doesn’t tell us who or what the messenger is. When the messenger arrives, suddenly the Lord will appear at the Temple in Jerusalem and begin a process of purifying the priesthood (i.e., descendants of Levi) until they act in righteousness. Mark and Luke have

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identified John the Baptist with that messenger but have truncated the rest of the prophecy that explains what the messenger will signify. John doesn’t specifically cite Malachi 3:1 but he seems to have the second part of the prophecy well in mind. Almost immediately after the interaction between John the Baptist and Jesus, and having already associated Jesus with the son of God, the very first popular public act of Jesus in John’s gospel is to go to the Temple in Jerusalem and denounce the corruption within. “He told those who were selling the doves ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’ ”8 Mark, on the other hand, locates his version of this incident towards the end of Jesus’ life, during the Passion narrative. John’s placement of the story clearly associates the Baptist with the unidentified messenger in Malachi 3.1 and Jesus with the Lord suddenly arriving at the Temple and aggressively purifying the priesthood. This doesn’t necessarily mean that John has the more accurate placement of the story vis-à-vis Mark, but it does suggest that, like Mark, John associated the Baptist with the messenger in Malachi 3.1. Further below, I will offer evidence showing that John has moved this Temple story into this location from elsewhere in the source material not only for its relationship to the Malachi prophecy but also because he wanted to replace an existing story that described an exorcism as Jesus’ first popular public act. The second Malachi passage in issue is Malachi 4:5–6, the final verses of the book. Lo, I will send you the prophet Elijah before the “great and terrible day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents, so that I will not come and strike the land with a curse [emphasis added].”

It is this passage that is responsible for the Jewish tradition that Elijah would come to herald the arrival of the messiah. Luke directly cites this passage in the birth narrative of John the Baptist. The angel Gabriel tells John’s father about the son that will be born to him. “With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”9 Mark directly references this passage when Peter asks, “Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?”10 Jesus responds in part, “But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written about him.” The reference here is to John the Baptist as Elijah, who had been arrested by Herod and beheaded. And what is this great and terrible day?

The Mission Begins | 255 See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings. You shall go out leaping like calves from the stall. And you shall tread down the wicked, for they will be ashes under the soles of your feet, on the day when I act, says the Lord of hosts.11

This is an apocalyptic warning of the end days. All the wicked shall be destroyed in fire and only the righteous will be saved. It is presumably the time of the messiah, who will be God’s designated king over the remnant. While Mark and Luke both treat the Baptist as an Elijah figure, they don’t quite say that he is Elijah himself. Luke uses the phrase “with the spirit and power of Elijah,” which falls just short of an identification. In Mark, the interchange between Peter and Jesus takes place after Peter had just witnessed the real Elijah and Jesus meeting on a mountainside.12 This suggests that Jesus’ identification of John with Elijah was more symbolic than actual. Mark and Luke both see the Baptist as the messenger in Malachi 3.1 and the Elijah-figure of Malachi 4:4–6 but they have reversed the order of the identifications. This may be due to Luke’s identification of Jesus with the Davidic messiah. In Luke’s story of Jesus’ birth, the angel Gabriel says that “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.”13 Consequently, Luke used Malachi’s Elijah prophecy to introduce John the Baptist who will herald the arrival of the Davidic messiah. John, however, presents a more complicated picture. He has two different story arcs about the Baptist, and they present alternative visions as to his identity. In one version, to be examined more closely later, John says that the Baptist was sent to be a witness to the “light” and specifically says that the Baptist is not Elijah.14 That version of the story is heavily influenced by John’s Redactor and results from subsequent alterations to the original gospel. There the Redactor portrays Jesus as one with God rather than the messiah, who would only be God’s designated ruler.15 This identification can be considered consistent with Malachi 3:1, in which the appearance of the messenger (John the Baptist) signifies the arrival of God (Jesus) himself rather than the messiah. In John’s second Baptist arc, separated from the first by several intervening events, when John’s disciples complain about Jesus’ growing popularity at John’s expense, the Baptist says in part, “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I

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am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ ” Here it is clear that John more closely conforms to the Malachi 4:5–6 Elijah model. Where the first arc has him implicitly as a witness to the arrival of God, the second has him appear prior to the messiah. In all three gospels we see that John the Baptist has been associated with the unidentified messenger of Malachi 3:1, who signals the appearance of God’s arrival, but where Mark and Luke truncate the prophecy, John integrates the full prophecy into the story by having Jesus suddenly appear at the Temple for purification purposes. We also see that all three gospels assign John to an Elijah-like role in connection with the coming of the messiah but never fully identify him as Elijah. One open issue to be explored below is whether the Baptist ever made a specific identification of Jesus as the one to come. In Malachi 4:5–6, Elijah will come to signify that the great and terrible day is coming and prepare the way. But there is no claim that he will identify any specific individual as the messiah. In Mark, John makes no identification. This would be consistent with Mark’s thesis that no human truly knew who Jesus was until after his death. Therefore, he couldn’t have John know Jesus’ true nature. So, if such identification were in the source Mark would have motive to remove it. John on the other hand, in both Baptist arcs, has the Baptist publicly identify Jesus as the one sent by God. Luke seems to fall in between the two views. He does imply in the birth stories of John and Jesus that while both were still in the womb John signified that Jesus was the Lord.16 So, to some extent, John has identified Jesus, but not publicly in any forum. Later in the gospel, Luke, citing the Q source, indicates that John did not know if Jesus was the one.17 Luke appears to be navigating between Mark and John without coming out definitively one way or the other. We’ll have more to say about these issues further below.

John’s Prologue and the Baptist Cycle John’s gospel has two separate story arcs about John the Baptist and scholars find a few problems with both. The first runs from John 1:6 through John 1:40. The second arc runs from John 3:22 to about John 4:3. One major concern is that John 1:1–18, commonly called the Prologue, is widely thought to have been added on by the Redactor. There is reason to believe that it overlaid and perhaps altered existing material in the original version of John’s gospel. A second problem concerns the matter of doublets. There are several places in the first story arc where phrases are repeated twice and possibly some

The Mission Begins | 257 additional duplication between the first story arc and the second. Additionally, there appears to be some inconsistency between the first story arc and the second.

The Prologue John 1:1–18 consists mostly of a poetic or hymnal account of Jesus’ nature. Many scholars believe it was originally an independent poem (or hymn) about Jesus that was appended to the gospel by the Redactor.18 It appears to be composed of two separate strands. The dominant branch consists of a poetic statement about the nature of Jesus; the lesser portion consists of prose comments about John the Baptist. The latter is broken up into segments and mixed in with the poetic material. Some scholars believe that at least some of the Baptist material was original to the Gospel and that the poetic portion was overlaid onto it.19 The opening portion of the prologue presents a unique view of Jesus unlike anything in the other gospels. It describes him as being one with God and responsible for the creation of the universe. 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. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.20

Unpacking this passage, we find that Jesus is one with God and that he brought into existence “life.” The Redactor describes the “life” as “the light of the people.” This passage needs to be considered in the context of what follows next, a description of John the Baptist. (The italicized portion is John 1:6–7.) There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. [emphasis added]21

This tells us that John the Baptist was predestined to witness the “light” (i.e., the power to create life) and testify to it. Implicit is that the “light” was coming to mingle with the people. Oddly, the evangelist feels it necessary to say that the Baptist was not the “light” but only a witness. This suggests that in the time of the Redactor there may have been some disciples of John the Baptist that challenged the Johannine view of Jesus by asserting that John, not Jesus, was the one sent by God.

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The relation between the two passages tells us that “God” (i.e., the “Word,” the “light,” Jesus) was coming to visit among the people and that John was to be the one to signal his arrival. This appears to me to be a disguised version of the prophecy of Malachi 3:1. God was coming to purify the Temple and that John was being sent as the messenger to let the people know. As I suggested above, the prophecy was completed when Jesus, just a few days after his encounter with John, suddenly appeared at the Temple to purify the corrupt priesthood. This relationship has some corollaries. If Jesus is God then he is not the messiah; if Jesus is not the messiah, then John is not Elijah. This is not conjecture. Immediately after the Prologue, the Baptist testifies that he is not the messiah, not Elijah, and not the Prophet (i.e., the one like Moses).22 It is unnecessary for any of those three figures to appear, according to the Redactor’s theology, because God himself has come and John is his witness. The italicized portion in the passage about John from the Prologue encompasses John 1:6–7 and a number of scholars believe that those verses were the original opening of John’s gospel before the Redactor edited it.23 Brown says that if that is the case, then those verses make for a good fit with the verses appearing immediately after the Prologue.24 It’s my view, to be argued below that John’s original gospel opened with some sort of statement about Jesus being the son of God and the Redactor’s opening is intended to enhance the meaning of “son of God.” In fact, the Prologue ends with the claim that Jesus is “God the only son,”25 which brings the Redactor’s elevated language into line with what was the earlier wide-spread Christian view of Jesus’ status in relation to God. The balance of the Prologue describes what happened as a result of Jesus’ appearance. Some didn’t know him. Some didn’t accept him. But others received him and came to be reborn, not of flesh but of God. In the course of this history the evangelist tells us the “word” became “flesh,” alluding to the birth of Jesus through human parents.26 The Prologue then incorporates a quote from John the Baptist, attributing to him the following words. “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”27 This statement by John incorporates the idea of Jesus’ pre-existence before his fleshly birth.

The Doublet Problem I mentioned above a quote from John the Baptist in the Prologue. A little later, after the Prologue but during the first Baptist arc, the evangelist has John say, “This

The Mission Begins | 259 is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ ”28 This is virtually identical to the phrase cited in the Prologue. Interestingly, in both cases, although it quotes John as saying he previously said it, John’s gospel doesn’t show the Baptist saying that on a prior occasion. In the second Baptist arc, however, the gospel quotes John as saying, “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Messiah, but I have been sent ahead of him.’ ” This appears to be a variation of the earlier quote but once again, John’s gospel doesn’t show the Baptist ever saying this on an earlier occasion. The earlier forms of the quote do have John say that someone was going to come after him, and the gospel also quotes John as saying he himself is not the messiah, but the context of those quotes was that John is not Elijah because Jesus was not the messiah; he was God. In the context of the second arc, the Baptist conspicuously refers to Jesus as the messiah. This brings John’s gospel within the context of Malachi 4:5–6, which portrays the coming Judgment day to be heralded by Elijah and the coming of the messiah. Putting aside the duplicate version of the Baptist quote from the Prologue, we have a secondary version of the quote that appears in a conflicting context. Where John earlier denied being Elijah, he now identifies himself in the Elijah role. This suggests that there has been some sort of tampering with the original version of the gospel. Since the conflict arises out of the Redactor’s insertion of the anti-Elijah theme in the Prologue, it is likely that this secondary quote in the second Baptist arc more accurately reflects what was in John’s original gospel than what is in the first arc. This is not the only example of doublet problems in John’s Gospel account of the Baptist. He has two different versions of John’s proclamation describing the one who will come after him, each of which varies from the Synoptic versions of the proclamation. He also twice uses the expression about Jesus, “Look, here is the lamb of God.”29 The problem of doublets has been the subject of some discussion among Johannine scholars.30 Brown believes that in the history of the gospel composition there were at least two accounts of the Baptist’s testimony that somehow came to be joined.31 One of the problems with doublets, as we saw with Mark in Chapter 2, is that they introduce a degree of disruption to the chronological order of events in the source material. The editorial rearrangements of textual material to allow for the insertion of multiple versions of the same event cause the editor to move some incidents around to accommodate the duplications. This is one problem we will have in reconstructing the chronological agreements between Mark and John.

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Inconsistencies Between the Two Baptist Arcs Above, I pointed out a conflict between John’s testimonies in the two Baptist arcs. That is not the only important inconsistency. There is also a clash between what the Evangelist says happened regarding John identifying Jesus as the one to come and what happens in the second arc. In the first arc, John specifically says that the purpose of his baptism with water was to reveal “a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.”32 The strategy worked and as a result John learned that Jesus was the son of God and testified to what he learned.33 At this point, taking the Gospel of John on its own terms, one would think that John’s mission has been accomplished. He had been sent by God to testify to the “light” that was Jesus. Baptism was done to enable him to discover who that person was. There was no longer a need to baptize. One would expect John and his disciples to fall into line as disciples of Jesus and work together with him. But that isn’t the case. In the second arc, we not only find John still baptizing, but Jesus also baptizing, with no explanation for why either is so engaged.34 Not only that, the very disciples of John who heard his explanation for baptizing and his witness to Jesus as the son of God complain because Jesus is attracting more people to baptism than John is.35 This certainly seems strange and it has troubled many Johannine scholars. Raymond Brown says that the sequence of the scene “is poor and, internally, the logic of the story is unclear.”36 Some scholars, such as Wellhausen, see the baptizing section portion of the second Baptist arc as a doublet to the baptism scenes in the first arc.37 Others, such as Brown, believe that the second arc originally belonged to the first arc and for some reason was moved, and the inconsistencies were the result of editing changes made by the Redactor.38 Brown proposes that John 3:22–30 (the main portion of the second Baptist arc) originally preceded the first but did not originally include the passages in which 1) the disciples say that the Baptist had previously testified about Jesus and 2) John says that he denied being the messiah.39 Those passages, he says, were later inserted by the Redactor when he split the second arc out of its initial position as an introduction to the first arc.40

Observations The two Baptist arcs appear to be related to an original single Baptist sequence that produced confused images of Jesus as both the Son of God and the messiah,

The Mission Begins | 261 reflecting two separate prophecies from Malachi both of which referenced the appearance of a messenger. John became identified with both messengers in each of the gospels. The Redactor, in order to implement the Prologue theme of Jesus as the Word and John as the witness divided the source material into separate theological tracks and placed the second packet in a later chronological location. This necessitated some chronological dislocation to the original sequential narrative causing a few scenes to be moved around in order to minimize the appearance of chronological disorder. This is something we saw earlier in Chapter 2 regarding doublets in Mark. Nevertheless, we will be able to reconstruct the original narrative sequence behind both Mark and John.

The Four Disciples Problem Mark and John each have a sequence of two stories in which Jesus first meets Peter and his brother Andrew and then meets two more named disciples (CS12 and CS13). Both sets of scenes appear at just about the same chronological point in both gospels, but they have significant differences in the details, not the least of which is that Mark and John name two different disciples in the second scene. Both gospels give the impression that all four disciples immediately became followers of Jesus but there is very little detail given to explain why they would do so at this point. Luke, despite using Mark as a source, has a very different version of these scenes. Not only does he place it later in the narrative, he names only three disciples, omitting Andrew; he collapses the two meetings into one; and adds a miracle story in which Jesus enables the disciples to catch an abundance of fish and that leads them to follow Jesus. Mark has no such miracle in his gospel, but John has a similar story with some different details. John’s story, however, takes place in the post-resurrection period and Luke’s version occurs during this early missionary phase of Jesus’ career. I will examine these issues in detail further below. At that time, I will argue that there were originally at least six separate scenes. The first two separated from the last four by intervening events, and all three evangelists made alterations to the material. The thrust of the analysis will be that each of the authors had problems with the proposed common source indicating that Peter and the other disciples didn’t become followers at the time of the first meeting.

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The Two Signs Problem Mark and John each describe Jesus’ first two acts that bring him wide-spread fame in Galilee but they disagree as to what these two acts were. In Mark, the first act was the miraculous exorcism of an unclean spirit in a Capernaum synagogue. In John it was the chasing of the moneychangers from the Temple in Jerusalem. In Mark, the second act was the miraculous removal of a fever from Peter’s mother-in-law. Luke portrays this event as an exorcism. In John, the second popular act was the removal of a fever from the very sick child of a royal official. Neither of John’s first two popular acts looks like Mark’s first two popular acts. Mark’s first two popular acts were also the first two miracles he attributes to Jesus. Obviously, the association of both miracles with exorcisms would not sit well with John. In his gospel the first two miracles were the turning of water into wine at a private wedding ceremony, which almost nobody was aware of, and the aforementioned healing of the royal official’s son. In Mark the two miracles follow one after the other. In John they are separated by several intervening incidents. The primary chronological disagreement between Mark and John as to the sequential agreements in this chapter revolves mostly around the arrangement of the two scenes that led to Jesus’ notoriety in Galilee. When analyzing this material in Mark and John I will show that John was fully aware of the two miracle scenes that appeared in Mark but had several theological objections to the stories as they were depicted in the common source. As a result, I will show that he deliberately deleted Mark’s two miracles and replaced them with alternative stories. Additionally, John used the “water into wine” miracle and the Temple cleansing as a combined replacement for the exorcism of the “unclean” spirit, and used the healing of the royal official’s son as replacement for the healing/exorcism of Peter’s mother-in-law. As I noted above, the Temple cleansing, in addition to replacing the exorcism story in Mark, also functioned as a fulfillment of Malachi 3.1.

The Coming of John the Baptist (CS1–CS5) In this section we will look at the first five scenes in my proposed source material. They depict the following incidents. There is some variation in the gospels as to the content and order of the scenes but it will be clear that all derive from the fundamental structure described below. We will look at how Mark, John, and Luke each handle this material and draw conclusions from the ways in which they agree or disagree with each other. The five scenes are as follows.

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• CS1 declaration of Jesus’ relationship to God; • CS2 reference to Malachi 3:1 about the sending of a messenger before God’s appearance; • CS3 The appearance of John the Baptist in the wilderness; • CS4 A quotation from Isaiah about “a voice in the wilderness” preparing the way for God’s appearance; • CS5 The crowd asks John if he is the Messiah.

The Opening Sequence in Mark Mark’s gospel begins with the declaration, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”41 This constitutes what I identify as CS1, the opening scene in my proposed common source. In this declaration Mark identified Jesus as the “Son of God.” Immediately following this declaration, Mark cites what he claims to be a prophecy from Isaiah. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’ [emphasis added].”42

Although Mark says that this is a quote from Isaiah the italicized portion is not from Isaiah. It is from Malachi 3:1. The balance is from Isaiah 40:3. Immediately following this combined quote Mark describes the appearance of John the Baptist. He says, “John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”43 John drew people from the Judean countryside and Jerusalem to the area of the Jordan where he preached.44 Mark adds a comment about John’s strange garb and diet45 and follows it with John’s pronouncement about the one to come. We will consider the pronouncement separately from its preceding material. Mark’s sequence of events has the following arrangement: CS1, CS2, CS4 and CS3. He omits CS5, the questioning of John about whether he was the messiah. While Mark places the appearance of John after the Isaiah quote, John and Luke, as we shall see below, both place the appearance of the Baptist before the Isaiah quote and both include the CS5 scene about John’s relationship to the messiah. Even Matthew places the appearance of John before the Isaiah quote, although he does place the rest of Mark’s description after the Isaiah quote.46 Because John and Luke (and even Matthew) agree against Mark as to the order of the Isaiah quote, I have adopted their chronology as the original source order of events.

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This means that Mark has a slight variation from the chronological order of the source material. If Mark moved the appearance of John out of sequence that would help explain how Mark erroneously combined two quotes from different prophets as if they were a single passage. Mark’s transposal may have been induced by nothing more than an attempt at editorial smoothness. Both quotes refer to a messenger “preparing the way” and Mark may have thought that they worked better as a combination. The similarity of language and lack of a specific citation to Malachi 3:1 may have even led him to believe that both passages were in fact from Isaiah. (All three of the other gospels omit Mark’s Malachi verse from their versions of the Isaiah quote.) The Isaiah quote, with its reference to a voice in the wilderness, may also have struck Mark as a better springboard for introducing John’s appearance in the wilderness than the Malachi verse. A key difference between Mark and John that we will discuss further below concerns the purpose of baptism. John, as we saw above, baptized in order to reveal the one who was to come after him; Mark says it was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The Opening Sequence in John As shown above, John 1:1–5 describes Jesus as the Word, one with God, who created life, which was the “light” of the people, and John 1:6–7 says that John was sent by God to be a witness to the light. As I suggested then, this relationship constituted an implicit citation to Malachi 3.1. In this formulation, Jesus was the “lord” who would come to earth to cleanse the Temple and John was the messenger who would herald the “lord’s” appearance. The relationship of the two passages to Malachi 3:1 is confirmed by the “sudden” appearance of Jesus at the Temple to confront the corrupted priesthood. At the end of the Prologue the gospel refers to Jesus as the Son of God.47 John’s Prologue about Jesus would originally have been a single narrative about Jesus into which the John 1:6–7 reference to God sending the Baptist to testify would have been inserted. In that formulation, both the description of Jesus as the Word/Light and as the Son of God should both be considered together, prior to the use of Malachi 3.1 to describe the Baptist’s role. I strongly suspect that the entire Prologue about Jesus was substituted for an original statement about Jesus being the Son of God, just as Mark has it. But in either case, John’s gospel begins with a statement about Jesus’ relationship to God and follows it with a description of John the Baptist as the fulfillment of Malachi 3.1.

The Mission Begins | 265 Immediately following the Prologue John appears on the scene (CS3).48 Upon his appearance the crowd questions him about whether he is the messiah, Elijah, or the prophet, and the Baptist denies being any of these individuals.49 The crowd then asks John who he claims to be.50 I have identified the conversation between John and the crowd about the Baptist’s identity as CS5. John’s placement is slightly out of order from my proposed chronological sequence. Luke and John disagree on the sequential arrangement and Mark has omitted this scene. When I review Luke’s storyline I will explain why I follow Luke instead of John. However, the disagreement is trivial as there is no significance as to which came first, CS4 or CS5. In response to the crowd’s question, the Baptist cites Isaiah 40:3, the same passage that Mark cites, minus the Malachi portion. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”51 after which the evangelist adds, “as the Prophet Isaiah said.”52 John’s narrative unfolds in the following order: CS1, CS2, CS3, CS5, and CS4. John and Luke, as we shall see, disagree on the order of CS4 and CS5 and I am following Luke’s order for the purpose of reconstruction. Mark has dropped CS5 altogether. That scene has the crowd ask John if he is the messiah.

The Opening Sequence in Luke Luke begins his gospel in a different manner than either Mark or John. He begins with a notice that a lot of things have been written and said about “the events that have been fulfilled among us”53 and that he has undertaken to investigate matters and prepare an orderly account of affairs.54 He begins with an account of the events leading up to the birth of John the Baptist and follows with an account leading up to the birth of Jesus. Mark and John have no birth stories about either individual although both acknowledge that Jesus had a human birth mother. In this regard Luke does not follow the narrative structure of either Mark or John and does not start out with a pronouncement about the relationship between Jesus and God. He also has another significant variation from John and Mark. In the course of telling us about the birth of John he says that the angel Gabriel told John’s father that a son will be born to him and “even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”55

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Luke here quotes from Malachi, but it is from 4:5–6, not 3:1. Like John, he says that the Baptist was preordained to be a messenger from God, but Luke shifts from the Malachi 3:1 messenger heralding the appearance of God to the Malachi 4:5–6 messenger who will herald the appearance of the messiah. Luke also departs from Mark here. As I pointed out earlier, Luke has reversed the order of Mark’s Malachi references.56 This may be due to Luke’s identification of Jesus with the Davidic messiah. In the story of Jesus’ birth, the angel Gabriel says that “the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.”57 Luke also traces Jesus’ ancestry back through David.58 Consequently, Luke used Malachi’s Elijah prophecy rather than the Malachi 3.1 prophecy to introduce John the Baptist, who according to Luke, will herald the arrival of the Davidic messiah. Although Luke doesn’t begin his gospel with a statement about Jesus’ relationship to God, he does state in the infancy narratives that Jesus will be “Son of the Most High.”59 This means that Luke has variations on the first two scenes in the proposed common source but he presents them in reverse order. He places the Malachi prophecy first and the “Son of God” declaration after. After Luke completes his accounts of the early years of John and Jesus he turns his attention to the start of their adult careers by announcing that in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius (when certain other political events also took place) the word of God came to John in the wilderness and he went around the region, “proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”60 Luke directly connects this activity to the Isaiah quote by saying that John’s action are “as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah” and follows with his version of the Isaiah quote.61 Luke’s version is slightly longer than Mark’s, adding on Isaiah 40:4–5 to Mark’s Isaiah 40:3, and ends with, “and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” This ending is a slightly altered reading of Isaiah 40:5 and extends the promise of salvation to all people, not just the Israelites. This is consistent with Luke’s gospel theme that Jesus brought his message to the gentiles as well as the Jews. Luke also removed the Malachi 3:1 quote that Mark said was from Isaiah. What we see in Luke is that he took a redacted version of Mark’s description of the initial appearance of John in the wilderness, omitting the oddities of dress and diet, and placed it in front of the Isaiah quote instead of after. Luke, therefore, agrees with John against Mark in placing the appearance of John the Baptist before the Isaiah quote. Both John and Luke place the appearance of the Baptist (CS2) before the Isaiah quote (CS3) and I follow that arrangement here.

The Mission Begins | 267 Even Matthew seems to agree with Luke’s arrangement. He too begins with the appearance of John the Baptist in the wilderness urging everyone to repent.62 But Matthew, at this point, doesn’t mention anything about baptizing. He then says that John the Baptist, “is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’ ”63 But, where Luke omitted the special information about John’s odd dress and strange diet, Matthew kept it in but followed Mark by placing it after the Isaiah quote.64 He also follows Mark in placing the people coming out for baptism and confessing sins after the Isaiah quote.65 Following the Isaiah quote Luke and Matthew both add some additional material not present in Mark. First, immediately after the Isaiah speech both Luke and Matthew have John verbally attack the crowd as a “Brood of vipers” along with other choice criticisms.66 This speech, not present in Mark, is widely accepted as being from the Q source.67 Luke follows this with some instructions from John about how the well-todo, tax collectors, and soldiers should behave towards others.68 This is material unique to Luke (although it could have been additional Q material omitted by Matthew). At this point Luke inserts a passage that parallels the interrogation scene in John’s gospel (CS5). The crowd asks John if he is the messiah.69 The Baptist neither directly denies nor confirms but instead launches into the proclamation about the one to come (CS6). Luke’s omission is somewhat odd considering what he says in Acts 13:25. In that passage Luke quotes from a speech attributed to Paul in which the apostle says that God sent Jesus as a descendant of David to be the savior of Israel and quotes John the Baptist. “What do you suppose that I am? I am not he. No, but one is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of the sandals on his feet.” So, Luke knows that John the Baptist specifically denied being the messiah but left that denial out of his gospel account. If John accurately reflects what the original interrogation consisted of, with the Baptist denying that he is any of the characters mentioned, Luke may have been uncomfortable with the details. Luke (and Paul) place Jesus in the Davidic messianic tradition. Had Luke put in John’s denial of being the messiah, the audience might have expected there to be a follow-up question about whether John was Elijah. If the Baptist denied being Elijah, that would undermine the Davidic tradition. Luke appears to have skirted the issue by breaking off the discussion to emphasize the proclamation about the one to come. For this reason, I suspect that John may have come closer to the original version of the interrogation than Luke.

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But absent corroboration, the most we can say at this point is only that the crowd asked if John was the messiah. While Luke has a parallel to John’s interrogation of the Baptist, the two evangelists disagree on the order of the scenes. John puts it before the Isaiah quote; Luke places it after. It is my sense that the interrogation of John makes more sense after the Isaiah quote than before. The quote raises an issue as to John’s identity that needs to be answered. I suspect that John has manipulated the data somewhat in order to place the quote in the Baptist’s mouth. Therefore, I am inclined to follow Luke’s order over John’s. Luke’s gospel has the five proposed scenes in the following order: CS2, CS1, CS3, CS4, and CS5.

Conclusions re the coming of John the Baptist Table 6.2, The First Five Scenes in Mark, John, and Luke (CS1–CS5), shows how the five scenes unfold in each of the three gospels. Mark and John agree against Luke as to the order of the first two scenes, Jesus’ relationship to God and the Malachi 3.1 prophecy in connection with John the Baptist. Since Luke has consciously departed from Mark’s order, I am inclined to accept Mark and John as having the correct order for CS1 and CS2. Luke also somewhat disagrees as to which Malachi quote should be used to predict that the Baptist was sent by God as a messenger of some sort. Luke’s alterations appear to be due to his desire to depict Jesus as a Davidic messiah. Luke and John agree against Mark as to order of CS3 and CS4. Luke and John place the Isaiah quote after the appearance of John the Baptist and Mark places it before. Mark’s arrangement appears to create an anomaly in that it causes the Malachi 3.1 quote to be combined with the Isaiah 40:3 quote. Given that Luke and John agree against Mark and that avoids Mark’s anomaly, I am inclined to accept the order in Luke and John. Table 6.2:  The first five scenes in Mark, John, and Luke (CS1–CS5). Source: Author Mark

John

Luke

CS1 CS2 CS4 CS3 omitted

CS1 CS2 CS3 CS5 CS4

CS2 CS1 CS3 CS4 CS5

The Mission Begins | 269 The other chronological disagreement concerns the placement of CS5, the questioning of John by the crowd as to whether he was the messiah. Luke places it after the Isaiah quote and John places it in front of the Isaiah quote. Mark has omitted it. Because Luke and John both agree that the crowd made this inquiry, I am inclined to include it among the original source scenes. Mark’s omission may have been due to his concern that John should not appear to know the true identity of Jesus. Luke seems to have the better order as to the sequence. It seems to make more narrative sense for the question to come after the quote from Isaiah about the voice in the wilderness, as Luke has it, than before, as John has it. Also, John seems motivated by a desire to have the Baptist specifically identify himself as the person who will reveal the one to come, complementing the earlier claim in the Prologue that John was sent by God to testify to the light. So, I think the Redactor has manipulated the text. For these reasons I follow Luke’s sequential arrangement of the scene.

The Proclamation About the One to Come (CS6) The next scene in all three gospels depicts John the Baptist making a proclamation about the one who is to come (CS6). While all three seem to know a version of the same scene, there are differences in all three as to what took place.

The Proclamation in Mark Mark moves from a description of John the Baptist in the wilderness to the proclamation about the one to come. Mark presents no specific context for this statement. Implicitly it is made to some of the many people who came to be baptized. The proclamation contains four parts in the following order.70

1. 2. 3. 4.

The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals; I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

The Proclamation in Luke Luke and Matthew touch all the same bases71 but they have replaced Mark’s version of the proclamation with one attributed by scholars to the Q source and there

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are some differences.72 Both gospels have a slight change in Mark’s ordering of the proclamation. They begin with “I baptize you with water” and Mathew adds “for repentance.”73 Since this is from Q, we don’t know if Matthew added the phrase or Luke omitted it. In Mark, this is the third element in his sequence. The remaining three elements appear in the same order as Mark but with slight variations in detail. In Mark, John is not worthy to “stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals [emphasis added].”74 Both Luke and Matthew omit “stoop down” but Matthew changes “untie the thong of his sandals” to “carry his sandals”.75 Both also amend Mark’s “baptize you with the Holy Spirit”76 by adding to the end “and fire.”77 Both Matthew and Luke, continuing with the Q source, end the proclamation by adding “His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”78 Mark has nothing like this in his version. Interestingly, this Q version sounds a lot like the Malachi 4:1–5 description of what the end days will be like when God sends out Elijah. “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch.”79

The Proclamation in John John has two versions of the proclamation that differ from each other and both vary from Mark. One seems to agree more closely with Luke against Mark and the other appears to agree more closely with Mark against Luke. But neither version is in full agreement with Mark or Luke. John’s initial version stands as an independent literary unit. The second version is tightly integrated into a variation of Mark’s next event, the baptism of Jesus (CS7). For purposes of sequential arrangement, I have labeled John’s initial version CS6 and have included the second version within CS7. But I will review both versions in this section. John’s first version seems to hint at duplication. When the Baptist first appears in the gospel, it says Jews sent priests and Levites to ask who John was. The Baptist issues his negative confessions and quotes Isaiah. Without any break in the narrative, we are next told that “they” had been sent by the Pharisees and asked why he baptized if he was not the messiah, Elijah, or the prophet.80 This second “sent” group, Pharisees, is responding to the answer given to the first “sent” group, priests and Levites. Were there two different delegations sent to interrogate John,

The Mission Begins | 271 or was there one large group of questioners sent by either “priests and Levites” and/or by “Pharisees”? This dual group of interrogators may reflect the earlier note that some scholars believe that John wrote two different openings and that parts of both found their way into the gospel. The introduction of the second group of interrogators suggests a literary seam, a break with the scene before it. In any event, John responds to the question by stating, I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.81

Placing baptism first aligns this version of John with Q against Mark, as to the order of John’s proclamation. John also agrees with Luke against Mark and Matthew when he has the Baptist say that he is unworthy “to untie the thong.”82 This suggests that if Mark, Luke and John made use of a common source, Mark is the one that modified the passage by adding in “stoop down.” John’s initial version has also altered the passage about the one who is coming. He says, “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.”83 This is obviously a very different statement from that in Mark, Luke, Matthew and Q. The key element in the other versions is the claim that one who is coming is “more powerful than I [emphasis added].” John’s alteration appears to be another instance of his editing out all claims about Jesus’ power as an indication of his authority. The likelihood is that John has deliberately altered the source material. Sequentially, John lists only three of the four items in Mark and Q. He is missing the claim about the one to come baptizing with the Holy Spirit but that appears in the second version. • Baptize with water; • One to come; • Unworthy.

Note here that the Baptist says that the crowd doesn’t know the one who is to come but doesn’t say to the crowd whether he (the Baptist) knows the identity of the one to come. This is an issue that spills over into John’s second version of the proclamation. The second version in John begins on the next day after the initial proclamation.84 John sees Jesus coming toward him and says, Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’85

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This passage has the earmarks of the Redactor’s editing. In the earlier proclamation the Baptist spoke only of the one coming after him. In this statement he talks about the one to come ranking ahead of him because he was before him. The phrase about “before him” seems like a direct reference to the Prologue’s claim that Jesus was the Word of God who created life. The phrase “Lamb of God” is unique to John among the gospels. This suggests that the Redactor’s hand is behind the splitting off of this proclamation from the first proclamation. Another clue that manipulation has occurred here is the phrase “This is he of whom I said.” In John’s gospel the Baptist never made that statement previously, but the phrase is repeated in the Prologue. The closest we get to a prior version of this second description of the one who is to come is in the first proclamation scene. But there John only refers to the one coming after him but says nothing about that person having come before him. That having been said, let’s look more closely at the second proclamation. Notice here that John now knows (“This is he”) who the one coming after him is. Immediately after that statement John adds, “I myself did not know him.”86 Contrast this with the earlier version where John says the crowd doesn’t know who the one to come is but doesn’t say whether he himself knew. As the following verses reveal John learned the identity through baptizing with water but we don’t know if that event took place prior to the first proclamation or after. John’s language is vague enough to allow for either possibility. In any event, after telling us he didn’t previously know the identity John says, “but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.”87 John integrates this proclamation with news about the baptism of Jesus. In the course of describing the baptism (see below) John says that Jesus “baptizes with the Holy Spirit.”88 Taking this segment of John as a whole, the evangelist presents the following elements of the second version of the proclamation in the following order.

a) Proclamation about the one to come; b) John baptizes with water; c) The one to come will baptize with the Holy Spirit.

These are three of the four elements in Mark’s list, and they follow the same order as Mark does. In the first version of the proclamation, John began with “baptize with water”, matching the Q version. In the second version, he follows Mark’s original order. The only thing missing in this second version is the claim to be

The Mission Begins | 273 unworthy to until the sandals of the one to come. Since it was already mentioned in the first version, there was no editorial reason to repeat it in the second version. While John carves out an editorial path that allows for the duplication it seems apparent that he is playing around with two versions of the proclamation. As I mentioned above, the appearance of duplication in this early portion of John is a problematic issue that elicits substantial debate among Johannine scholars. Brown suggests that “at some time in the composition of the Gospel, two Johannine accounts of John the Baptist’s testimony to Jesus were put together into what we now have is perfectly plausible, although we cannot be certain that the joining was the work of the final redactor.”89 Because we have two versions of the proclamation in John we can’t be certain whether Mark has the correct sequence of four elements or not. One version of John agrees with Q as to the order; the other agrees with Mark but neither version contains all four of Mark’s elements. Since Luke’s version is from Q and not the original source, his agreement with John as to the order does not resolve the issue of which evangelist has the correct source version. I am inclined to accept Mark as closest to the original source, with John struggling editorially to figure out a way to change the focus from the one to come being “powerful” to the one “who takes away sin.” As we have seen continuously John rejects the idea that people should follow Jesus because of his power. He wants people to follow Jesus because of his words about eternal life. Taking away sin better reflects John’s gospel than does “one more powerful.”

The Baptism of Jesus (CS7–CS9) The baptism of Jesus consists of two literary strands. The first indicates that John baptized Jesus (CS7). The second tells of the aftermath, in which God sends the Holy Spirit down to him in the form of a dove (CS8) and then declares Jesus to be his son (CS9). The act of baptizing Jesus, the perfect man without sin, seems to have been a controversial matter in early Christian circles. While all four gospels agree that John baptized Jesus they differ as to how they portray the event. Matthew best captures the theological tension. Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented.90

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The Baptism in Mark Immediately after John’s proclamation about the one to come, Mark says that Jesus came from Nazareth to the Jordan and was baptized by John.91 Jesus, therefore, wasn’t present at the pronouncement and John hadn’t yet identified Jesus as the one to come. When Jesus came out of the water “he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”92 Next, a voice from heaven declared, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”93 Mark does not say if anyone was present for the baptism other than Jesus and John. He uses the phrases “He saw” and “You are,” which suggests that no one, not even John the Baptist, witnessed what Jesus saw and heard after the baptism. This frames the story in terms of Mark’s agenda, that no human knew the true nature of Jesus while he was alive, not even John the Baptist.

The Baptism in John As I indicated above, John has two versions of the Baptist’s proclamation, one after the other, and integrates the second version with an account of the baptism. After telling us that John baptized to reveal the one who was to come, the gospel says, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God [emphasis added].94

John and Mark depict the timing of the baptism differently. Mark shows the baptism happening in sequential order after the proclamation. John positions the notice of the baptism at the same point in time that Mark tells of the baptism, but John says that it happened earlier. How much earlier we don’t know. Obviously, it had to have happened before the second version of John’s proclamation. It could have been the day after he made the first proclamation; it could have been still earlier. John quotes the Baptist as saying he didn’t know who the one to come was until he performed the baptism, but doesn’t tell us if the Baptist knew who the one to come was at the time he made the first proclamation. At the earlier occasion he says only that the people he was addressing didn’t know who was to come. If we accept that the second Proclamation in John is an artificial creation of the Redactor (or perhaps the Evangelist) then we can sequentially place the bap-

The Mission Begins | 275 tism after the first Proclamation, which brings it in line with Mark’s chronological arrangement. More importantly, here, contra Mark, the Baptist is the direct witness to what happened. He saw the dove descend. God, the one who sent him, spoke directly to him and told him that whoever the dove lands on is the one “who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.” This reinforces John’s earlier claim that the Baptist was sent by God to be a witness to the light. Further contra to Mark, it is the Baptist who testifies that Jesus is the son of God, not the voice from heaven. Finally, there is no opening of the heaven in John’s version. An important element of John’s version is that John baptized for the purpose of discovering who the one to come was. This contrasts significantly with Mark who says that John’s baptism was one “of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”95 John’s variation serves to isolate Jesus from the concern that the man without sin went through a baptism of repentance. He expands upon this view by having John describe Jesus as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”96 That is, Jesus, not John (through a baptism of repentance,) takes away sin.

The Baptism in Luke Luke’s version differs from both Mark and John and introduces some ambiguity. Right after John’s proclamation, he says that John went about proclaiming the good news, which, presumably, from the context, is the announcement about the one who is to come.97 He then appends a notice to this saying that the Baptist had problems with Herod and that Herod placed the Baptist in prison.98 Luke’s addendum is a heavily redacted version of Mark’s much later story about the conflict between Herod and the Baptist.99 The issue of when John was arrested becomes a matter of interest when we discuss the start of Jesus’ first mission and we will return to Luke’s notice at that time. For now, our concern is that this notice is unclear as to when in the scheme of things John was arrested and creates a potential chronological break between the baptism of Jesus and the events that followed. After telling us of John’s arrest, Luke tells of the baptism and aftermath. Like John, he tells of the event as happening in the past, obviously before the arrest of John. But, like Mark, he structures the account so that Jesus appears to be the only witness to the descent of the dove and the voice from heaven. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon

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him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”100

Where Mark says Jesus witnessed these events as he came out of the water, Luke places the witnessing sometime after the baptism, when Jesus was praying, but how much after is unclear. Was it shortly after he came out of the water? Was it days later when he was praying? Was it after the arrest of John the Baptist, as announced just a couple of verses earlier? Whatever the answer, the setting suggests, contra Mark and John, that Jesus was off by himself and that the Baptist was not around when the dove descended and the voice from heaven spoke. Nevertheless, Luke has an earlier instance in which John implicitly identifies Jesus as a representative of God in some manner. In the infancy narratives, while John and Jesus are both in the womb, the two mothers get together and John leaps in the womb.101 At that moment John’s mother is filled with the Holy Spirit and says that Mary is the “mother of my Lord.”102 She attributes her recognition to the child John jumping for joy in her womb.103

Comparisons Mark and John completely disagree about what John witnessed after the baptism of Jesus. If either account was in the source version, the other evangelist would have had substantial motive to alter it, so it is difficult to determine which version comes closer. But certain clues suggest that John comes closer to the original than Mark. In Mark’s version of the proclamation, John doesn’t specifically identify Jesus as the one to come. In his telling Jesus doesn’t come to the Jordan to be baptized until after the proclamation is made. John and Luke, however, each referencing a prophecy from Malachi, indicate that the Baptist was to play a key role in specifically identifying Jesus as someone God favored. Both also agree that at some point John specifically identified Jesus as someone special to God. Mark seems to know this because in his Passion account he appears to raise this specific issue. When Jewish leaders asked by what authority Jesus did the things he did, Jesus challenges them by asking them if John’s baptism came from heaven or was it of human origin.104 The authorities felt trapped by the question. In analyzing it they say that if they answer “heaven” that Jesus would respond, “Why then did you not believe him?”105 This clearly implies that John must have made some public declaration about Jesus’ authority from God. Otherwise, what would it be that they didn’t believe?

The Mission Begins | 277 That this appears in Mark’s gospel suggests to me that Mark knew of an instance in which John directly testified in public about Jesus in some manner. The only location where this makes sense is either during the proclamation scene or in the baptism scene. But Mark has edited both scenes to exclude John as witness. Luke and John agree that at some point in time the Baptist identified Jesus as the one to come but they differ on the circumstances. Luke’s version takes place in an isolated non-public context in the infancy narrative. If the version known to either Luke or John appeared in the underlying source, then at least one of them altered the story. If Luke made the change then it would suggest that he tried to strike a compromise between Mark and the source. If John made the change then it suggests that Luke was trying to conform the source tradition to his theological agenda about the Baptist’s role. Militating against John having altered the version known to Luke is that neither John nor Mark exhibits any evidence of an infancy narrative in their source material. John and Luke both portray the baptism story as something that happened in the past and neither portrays the actual baptism. But Luke, contra Mark and John, places some space between the baptism and the revelation. Mark places the baptism in the present so he can describe Jesus as the only witness. Luke again seems to be treading a narrow line between John’s version of events and Mark’s, relying on ambiguity where possible. John disagrees with Mark and Luke as to what the voice from heaven said. In Mark and Luke, the voice declares Jesus to be God’s son. In John, the voice only says, that the one on whom the spirit lands will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The voice doesn’t say anything about Jesus being the son of God. It is only the Baptist’s conclusion that this is the relationship. It is difficult to determine what the precise scenario behind the baptism of Jesus was. At a minimum, the source must have had at least a claim that the baptism occurred, a dove/spirit descended upon Jesus, and a voice came from heaven. I’m not sure we can decide between Mark and John as to what the voice said. We also can’t be sure whether any witnesses saw or heard what occurred.

Jesus, the Son of Joseph (CS11) The sequential location of this scene is somewhat speculative as John and Luke disagree on the precise location and Mark omits it. In Luke, immediately after the voice from heaven declares Jesus the son of God, Luke says, “Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of

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Joseph son of Heli.”106 This is followed by a lengthy list of Jesus’ ancestors going back to Adam.107 Notice here that Luke has added a gloss to the genealogy, saying that people only “thought” Jesus was the son of Joseph. Implicit is that Jesus is the son of God, not Joseph, who implicitly played no role in bringing about the birth of Jesus. After the genealogy, Luke tells us the story of Jesus in the wilderness, which I’ll discuss in a moment, and then announces the beginning of Jesus’ first missionary activities. John also has an early mention of Jesus as the son of Joseph.108 He too places it very shortly after Jesus is declared the son of God (by John the Baptist rather than the voice from heaven). In his chronology it occurs two days after John declared Jesus to be the son of God. This is almost precisely the same narrative point in John’s gospel that Luke introduces the reference to Joseph in his gospel, almost immediately after the declaration that Jesus is the son of God. But John doesn’t have Luke’s follow-up story of Jesus in the wilderness and he doesn’t yet announce the beginning of Jesus’ first mission, which announcement John delays for a while. In John the reference to Jesus being the son of Joseph comes during the meeting between Jesus and the second set of future disciples, Philip and Nathanael. The former approaches the latter and says, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” In both gospels, then, almost immediately after John’s baptism of Jesus and before Jesus begins his mission, Jesus is described as the son of Joseph. Luke, however, has wrapped it into a genealogy and throws in a theological gloss to undermine Joseph’s lineal connection. Luke’s inclusion of a genealogy seems out of place. He has given us a narrative of Jesus’ birth and this genealogy should be part of the infancy narrative. This suggests to me that Luke moved the genealogy from a written location in an infancy source narrative and attached it here to undermine the reference to Jesus being the son of Joseph. But even if that is not the case, the similar placement of the “Joseph” reference seems more than coincidental. As I pointed out in Chapter 5, there are only two places in Luke and John (none in Mark) where the name of Jesus’ father is given, during the synagogue rejection story and here. Under these circumstances I believe the proposed common source included some sort of reference to Jesus being the son of Joseph and it occurred before Jesus began his mission. In my reconstruction of the original scene order for the proposed common source (see below) I placed the reference to Joseph (CS11) just before the first meeting of Jesus with Peter and Andrew (CS12).

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The Temptation in the Wilderness Immediately after the Baptism scene, Mark has a brief account of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by Satan.109 Luke and Matthew have a much longer Q version that details the several temptations that Jesus faced.110 Because John’s Jesus is one with God, he couldn’t be tempted by offers from Satan because Satan has no powers greater than God. If this story were in a common source known to John, he would have deliberately omitted it. I have not included this scene within the CS1–CS27 sequence because I have no indication that John knew the story. I have seen suggestions that the scene in John 6:15, where the crowd seeks to force Jesus to become king might be based on the temptation in the wilderness. But, if that were the case, the parallel would be to the Q source and not Mark. In the Q source, among other temptations, Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world.111 But Mark has no such offer in his version.

Beginning of the Galilean Ministry (CS14) Mark follows the Temptation scene with his version of the first missionary tour (CS14). John places the first mission slightly later in the order of events than Mark does. Mark has it before the call of the first four disciples while John has it after. The feature that seems to connect Mark and John to the same underlying account of Jesus’ first mission is that each includes a chronological reference to the start of the tour vis-à-vis the arrest of John the Baptist, but they disagree with each other as to which came first, the tour or the arrest. Mark says, “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news [emphasis added].’ ”112 An interesting aspect of Mark’s version of the first missionary tour is the absence of healings and exorcisms. This is unusual for Mark who routinely makes exorcisms and healings a regular part of Jesus’ practice. John says, “After this Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized—John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.”113 As if to emphasize this point, John follows this scene with the Baptist still out in the field baptizing.114

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According to Mark, Jesus didn’t start his missionary activities until after John was arrested by Herod. John, in contradiction, says that the Baptist had not yet been arrested. It’s interesting that both gospels tie the question of John’s arrest to the start of the first mission. This suggests that the common source referred to the arrest of John in connection with the start of Jesus’ first ministry and that one of the two evangelists is directly challenging the underlying source regarding the arrest chronology. But which one? The most likely explanation seems to be that John made the change. In his gospel the first missionary tour takes place approximately two years earlier than it does in Mark. John places it before three Passovers have occurred; Mark before one Passover has occurred. Assuming Mark didn’t drop any Passovers out of his gospel (or perhaps dropped only one Passover) we can probably say that in John’s chronological setting John the Baptist was still alive while at the start of Jesus’ mission and in Mark’s chronological setting John had already been executed. John’s claim that “John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison [emphasis added]” seems to be directly acknowledging the perception that the Baptist had died at about the time Jesus began his mission. Regardless of when John was arrested, I will eventually argue that Mark and John both slightly altered the chronology of Jesus’ first mission because of theological and editorial issues that arose in connection with other events in the narrative sequence. Before we resolve that issue, we should look at several other incidents in John and Mark that place the issue in narrative context. Luke has eliminated the reference to John’s arrest in his version of the first mission.115 But, as I observed above, Luke has also moved the notice of the arrest of John the Baptist earlier and created an ambiguity as to when that happened. Another difference between Mark and John is that John says Jesus was baptizing during this mission and Mark has no such claim. Mark, however, says that Jesus went around asking people to repent. Since Mark has described John’s baptism as a means for “repentance,” it’s not unreasonable to conclude that baptism may also have been part of Jesus’ practice when asking people to repent. That Jesus personally baptized people, however, may have been a controversial concern in Christian circles and Mark may have deliberately omitted that fact. In support of that proposition consider this oddity in John. Having just told us that Jesus baptized, only a few verses later John backtracks and writes, Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized [emphasis added].116

The Mission Begins | 281 If John wasn’t copying from a source, why would he introduce an error that he himself could correct? He would have simply said that the disciples were out baptizing. This suggests to me that the original missionary tour in the source document included baptisms by Jesus. Mark omitted them and John initially retained them but also threw in a gloss to deflect from what the source had just said.

Call of the First Four Disciples (CS10, CS12, CS13, CS22–25) Mark and John both describe an initial meeting between Jesus and the soon-to-be disciples Peter and Andrew, who are brothers (CS12). Peter at this early stage is known by his given name of Simon. Subsequently, Jesus changes the name from Simon to Peter, but Mark and John disagree on how and when this happened. In John, the initial meeting between Jesus and the two brothers takes place one or two days after the baptism of Jesus while all are at the camp of John the Baptist.117 Mark has two intervening events between the baptism and the meeting between Jesus and Peter and Andrew. First is the Temptation by Satan scene, which lasts forty days;118 second is the first missionary tour (CS14) in Galilee, which also would have taken a good deal of time. So, Mark places a much longer time gap between the two events than John does. John places the first missionary tour at a later point in time than Mark does. So, one or the other or both may have moved the story from its original sequential location. I will resolve the chronological issue later but for now I just mention that I will place the start of the first mission later than Mark has it and after the initial meeting with Peter and Andrew. I will also place it earlier than John has it. We also have the problem that if the Temptation of Jesus by Satan was in the source material John would have almost certainly omitted it from his gospel. We don’t know if that scene appeared in the source document but John’s shortening of the time frame between the baptism of Jesus and the meeting with Peter and Andrew to two days may reflect his deliberate omission of the forty-day temptation scene. It may also be that Mark inserted the scene at this location from either a later location in the source or took it from a separate source. Putting aside the question for now of who moved the start of the first missionary tour out of its original sequential order, Mark and John agree that after the meeting with Peter and Andrew, Jesus met with two more named disciples (CS13), but the two evangelists disagree as to who these two disciples were and what took place during this encounter. In Mark, the second set of two disciples

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consists of the brothers James and John, the sons of Zebedee. In John, they are Philip and Nathanael. We can establish one more chronological boundary in this sequence. Mark says that after the meeting with the second set of disciples, the next event began with a trip to Capernaum, but doesn’t say how much time elapsed between the meetings with the disciples and the Capernaum trip.119 John also says that but for a one-day delay to attend a wedding Jesus next went to Capernaum.120 Mark lacks the wedding scene in his gospel. We don’t know if the wedding scene was in the original source but Mark’s narrative structure allows time for Jesus to have attended the event before arriving in Capernaum. This leaves us with the following sequential framework in both Mark and John.

• • • • • • •

baptism of Jesus; [possible temptation in the wilderness, omitted by John] [Possible missionary tour, Mark and John disagree on order of event]; Jesus meets with Peter and Andrew; Jesus meets with two more named disciples; [possible one-day delay for a wedding, omitted by Mark]; Journey to Capernaum.

The narratively close sequence of baptism, a meeting with Peter and Andrew, a second meeting with two named disciples and a trip to Capernaum strongly suggests that despite differences in narrative details the two evangelists were working from a common narrative framework. Greatly complicating the discussion (but providing several important clues as to how to resolve the many differences at issue) is Luke’s version of the same incident. His take is very different from both Mark and John. The most significant departure from the other two is that he has integrated the call of the disciples with a miracle involving the catch of an abundance of fish. Mark has no such miracle story in his gospel but John has one that is very similar to Luke’s. John, however, places it into the post-resurrection narrative. So, we will need to also look at John’s miracle story in order to sort things out. Luke’s version also raises some other intriguing issues. For one, he only names three disciples, Peter, James and John, omitting Andrew. He also compresses the two separate encounters into a single event. And he raises a chronological concern. While Luke follows Mark’s narrative sequence regarding the temptation by Satan and the start of the first missionary tour, he moves the meetings between Jesus and the disciples to a later point in time. Where Mark and John place the

The Mission Begins | 283 meetings with the disciples prior to the trip to Capernaum, Luke places it after the events in Capernaum. In the place where Mark and John have the meetings with the disciples, Luke inserts his version of the Rejection at Nazareth. I’ll start with Mark’s versions of the two events and then look at John’s. Next, I’ll look at Luke’s fish miracle story and John’s similar story. The comparisons will show how theological agendas and editorial biases have led to deletions and alterations in all three gospels. Ultimately I will argue that when we account for these evangelistic points of view, we will see that the source originally contained at least six separate scenes, one involving a meeting between Jesus, Andrew and Peter at the baptism of Jesus (CS12), one involving a meeting between Jesus and two named disciples on the way back to the Sea of Galilee (CS13), scenes involving a miraculous catch of fish (CS22–24), and, lastly, the call of Peter, John and James (but not Andrew) and others at the Sea of Galilee (CS25). I will also place the first missionary tour (CS14) after the meeting with the second set of named disciples.

Mark’s Call of the Disciples Mark, as usual, tends to have a terse and simple account of events. Jesus was by the Sea of Galilee where he saw Simon (i.e., Peter before the name change) and Andrew casting fish nets into the water.121 Jesus said, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.”122 “Immediately,” they left their nets and followed him.123 That’s it. Not even a “Hi! Catch anything?” or secret handshake. Just “Follow me” and off they go. At this point in Mark’s gospel, Peter and Andrew had no idea who Jesus was. Why did they follow him? What did they know about him? What else did he say or do? No details are given. The story has the sense of redaction, that some underlying events may have been omitted. As they all walk further along the shore, they encounter the sons of Zebedee, James and John, who were on a boat mending their nets.124 Jesus called them and they left their father in the boat with the hired hands and followed him.125 In Mark’s gospel, after Peter, John and James appear to be the ones closest to Jesus.126 Again, we have no details about what Jesus said or did to get them to come along. We do learn, though, that the Zebedee family may have been a prosperous family with a commercial fishing business, successful enough to require hired help.

John’s Call of the Disciples John’s accounts of the meetings between Jesus and the disciples are much longer and differ significantly from Mark’s. In his telling, the Baptist stood with two of

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his disciples the day after he testified about the baptism of Jesus. The names of the Baptist’s disciples aren’t given at this time. We are obviously at the same location as earlier, Bethany by the Jordan, nowhere near the Sea of Galilee.127 As Jesus walks by, John declares him the Lamb of God (for the second time).128 The two so-far unnamed disciples heard this and followed after Jesus.129 They spend some time hanging out with him and for the first time we learn that one of the two disciples was Andrew, Peter’s brother.130 We are never given the identity of the other. Andrew was excited by this encounter and “first found his bother Simon [emphasis added]” and told him that “we [i.e., Andrew and the unnamed disciple of John] have found the messiah [emphasis added],” which, the Evangelist tells the reader, means “anointed.”131 (In Mark’s gospel only Peter identified Jesus as the messiah, but at a later time after the bread miracle.) Andrew brings Peter to meet this messiah and Jesus says to him, “ ‘you are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’ (which is translated Peter).”132 Thus ends the first encounter. John records no actual response by Peter to this meeting with Jesus. And, having told us what Andrew did “first”, he fails to tell us what Andrew did “second,” suggesting that John has left out some information here. John doesn’t say Peter became a follower at this time, although it is implied. However, Peter doesn’t appear again in John, by name, until John 6:68. At that later point he is clearly a member of the entourage. John also doesn’t tell us about what happened with the second disciple of the Baptist who participated with Andrew in talking with Jesus, although Andrew’s statement that “we have found the messiah” suggests that John’s second disciple also became a believer in at least some version of Jesus’ role. One issue that concerns me is the content of the meeting between Jesus and Peter. It basically consists of a single sentence indicating that Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter. The problem is that Mark has a similar scene but it takes place much later, when Jesus summons the twelve disciples up the mountain and makes them apostles.133 As you may recall, when we discussed that scene in Chapter 2 the evidence showed that John had a parallel scene in which he omitted the part where Jesus identifies the twelve apostles. This suggests to me that John has transferred the renaming of Peter from the later scene to the present location, and this raises an issue as to what took place at this meeting, if in fact there was such a meeting. We also see John shifting Mark’s identification of Jesus as the messiah from Peter to his brother Andrew. We saw in Chapter 2 how John changed Peter’s in-

The Mission Begins | 285 correct identification to a more theologically correct one. This seems to be a continuation of John’s reworking of Mark’s original scene. Luke, however, does seem to have some corroboration for John’s account of Jesus’ meeting with Peter at about the time of the baptism, but it is not in his gospel; it is in Acts 1:21–22. According to that account, when the apostles were considering who should replace Judas among the Twelve, Luke quotes Peter as saying, So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when he was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to his resurrection [emphasis added].134

Luke certainly seems to suggest that Peter (and perhaps other disciples) was present when John baptized Jesus. He also implies that the twelve disciples may have become followers of, or at least believers in, Jesus at that time, but he makes no such mention of that fact in his gospel. In fact, as we shall see, Luke’s gospel indicates that Peter did not become a follower of Jesus at the time of the baptism, although it is possible he was at least a believer in some elevated role for Jesus. Nevertheless, we find that both John and Luke (in Acts) claim that Peter was present at the time of Jesus’ baptism. This raises a question as to why Luke omitted that fact from the gospel. We’ll examine possible explanations below. Aside from the issue of Peter’s presence at the baptism, John’s account differs significantly from Mark’s. First, and very importantly, the scene settings are geographically far apart. Mark’s story takes place by the Sea of Galilee, after the missionary tour that followed the baptism of Jesus, while John places it by the Jordan one or two days after the baptism. Mark identifies Peter and Andrew as fisherman and John makes no such claim. Mark has Jesus offer to make the disciples fishers of people and that is missing in John. And, importantly, there is no indication in John that Peter and Andrew became followers of Jesus at this time, although they may have believed in him as a messiah figure or at least as a teacher of some merit. At the same time, John says that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist and Mark lacks any such claim. John also implies that at least one other future disciple may have been present, the unnamed second disciple of the Baptist, and Luke claims in Acts that, at a minimum, other future disciples were around when Jesus was baptized. He is mute, though, as to whether any of them had first been disciples of John. One issue that has generated some discussion among scholars has been the identity of the Baptist’s unnamed second disciple in this scene. Some have spec-

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ulated that it was Philip, who appears in the next scene and who, John says, came from the same town as Andrew and Peter.135 Others, to harmonize John and Mark, suggest that it might have been one of the Zebedee brothers, the second set of two disciples recruited according to Mark. In support of this idea scholars note John’s claim that Andrew “first found his brother.” Some read the phrase as indicating that the two disciples first found Andrew’s brother, and then, implicitly, next found the brother of the unnamed disciple. John also has Andrew tell Peter that “we have found the messiah.” indicating that both of John’s disciples had become followers or believers in Jesus. This suggests to some scholars that a second set of brothers became disciples of Jesus at this time, and the only other disciples known to be brothers are John and James. That conclusion, however, ignores a potential third set of brothers connected to the disciples. Thomas is known as “the Twin,”136 so the unnamed disciple could have been either Thomas or his twin. The other would have been the second brother to be sought out. Since Thomas is also noted for his skepticism,137 it would not be surprising if as the missing second brother he had not yet come to accept Jesus at this time. The speculation about missing brothers raises an interesting problem vis-àvis the brothers Zebedee in John’s gospel. In Mark’s gospel they are the two most important disciples after Peter.138 In Mark’s call of the Twelve, John and James are listed after Peter and before Andrew.139 Interestingly, Philip appears right after Andrew in Mark’s roster.140 In Paul’s letter to the Galatians we learn that John became one of the three pillars of the church, along with Peter and James the brother of Jesus.141 The gospel of John, on the other hand, never mentions these brothers by name until the last chapter of the gospel, and even then the evangelist only calls them the “sons of Zebedee,” omitting their actual names or even saying how many sons Zebedee had.142 Furthermore, the last chapter of John is generally thought to have been added on to the gospel by the redactor and may not have been part of the original gospel. One might conclude from John’s omission, that his community might have had a major gripe against the brothers Zebedee and the missing names are intended as a deliberate insult. The omission of the brothers Zebedee becomes more apparent in John’s second recruitment scene, which differs even more radically from Mark than does John’s first scene with Peter and Andrew. For starters, the two named disciples are not the brothers Zebedee. They are Philip and Nathanael. The latter does not appear on any of the disciple rosters in any of the synoptic gospels, but in the same

The Mission Begins | 287 scene where John mentions the sons of Zebedee, he also mentions Nathanael as being among Jesus’ named disciples.143 In that scene he is known as “Nathanael of Cana in Galilee.” It is interesting, therefore, that immediately after this scene with Nathanael, Jesus attends a wedding at Cana. Here I would like to interject a theory about Nathanael’s identity. If we take Mark’s roster of the twelve apostles and assume some sort of importance to the sequence of the names, the first six in order are: Simon (Peter), James, John, Andrew, Philip, and Bartholomew.144 The last name in the list translates as “son of Tolmai”145 so it is not unlikely that Bartholomew may not be the actual name of that disciple. I suggest that Nathanael may be Bartholomew, i.e., Nathanael the son of Tolmai, just as James is known as “James the son of Zebedee.” Such a reading would harmonize John and the synoptic gospels regarding the names of the twelve apostles. If we accept this thesis, John’s first four named disciples— Peter, Andrew, Philip and Nathanael (Bar-Tolmai?)—represent four of the six most prominent disciples, and the two missing ones are the brothers Zebedee, with whom John seems to have a problem. In John’s second recruitment story Jesus crosses the Jordan and travels through Galilee.146 We should note that there is no direct evidence that either Peter or Andrew is present with him on this journey. On the way, Jesus first encounters Philip, who, we are told, comes from Bethsaida, the same town as Peter and Andrew.147 Upon meeting Philip, Jesus says “Follow me.”148 The presence of the “follow me” request in this scene seems to highlight the absence of any such request in the previous scene with Peter and Andrew. The request here, however, is only to Philip and not to Nathanael. After this meeting Philip seeks out Nathanael and tells him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”149 What led Philip to this observation isn’t apparent from the text. This is one reason why some scholars believe that Philip may have been the second unnamed disciple who was with Andrew earlier. That Andrew and Philip came from the same city is another. Nathanael responds, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”150 At this point in time Jesus has yet to perform any miracles. So, while it is possible that Philip became a follower of Jesus pursuant to the “follow me” request there is no direct claim that Philip actually joined Jesus at this time. While Philip identified Jesus as the one Moses wrote about, that places him in a position similar to that of Andrew, who identified Jesus as the messiah. The use of these various descriptions of Jesus at this early stage is something that some scholars have found troubling.151 If Andrew didn’t become a follower at this point (as I will propose

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below) then it is not unreasonable that Philip didn’t either (as I will also propose below). Geographically, this scene appears to be in the vicinity of the Sea of Galilee. Bethsaida, Philip’s hometown is on the shore of the Sea, not far from Capernaum, which is also on the shore of the Sea. Cana, Nathanael’s hometown, is near Capernaum. So, the setting is somewhere in the general vicinity of the Sea of Galilee, but not necessarily at the shore. Since the next scene places Jesus at a wedding in Cana, that is likely the location where Jesus meets Philip and Nathanael, although John never explicitly says so. He also omits mentioning, at this point in his gospel, that Nathanael is from Cana while emphasizing, at the same time, that Philip is from Bethsaida, the town of Peter and Andrew. Coincidentally, by cross reference to Mark and Luke, we know that John and James are also from the same town as Peter and Andrew. So, it is very possible that the story takes place in Bethsaida by the shore of the Sea and John omits that fact. If that were the case, John’s second recruitment scene takes place at approximately the same location as the recruitment of John and James in Mark’s gospel. Given what appears to be a distinct prejudice against the brothers Zebedee in John’s gospel, I think a case could be made that the evangelist substituted stories about Philip and Nathanael for John and James. Since neither of John’s two named disciples appears to be a fisherman in this scene, there is no reference here to boats or fishing. But we will shortly see that at least Nathanael appears to be a fisherman who worked with John and James and Peter. Because none of the conversations between Jesus and Philip and Nathanael appear in Mark’s gospel I won’t review them here.

Luke’s Call of the Disciples Luke presents a very different take on the recruitment from John and Mark. To begin with, he moves it out of order from the one agreed upon in Mark and John, placing it shortly after the trip to Capernaum (CS16).152 In his version of the recruitment story we find Jesus standing by Lake Gennesaret, an alternative name for the Sea of Galilee.153 While preaching “the word of God” Jesus saw two boats by the shore where the fishing crew worked to clean their nets.154 One of the boats belonged to Simon (i.e., Peter) and Jesus went on board to use it as a platform to teach to the large crowds that had gathered to hear him.155 When he finished speaking he told Peter to pull out into the deeper waters and let out his nets.156 Simon said that they had already worked all night and caught nothing but since Jesus asked him to do it he agreed.157 When the crew did

The Mission Begins | 289 so, they suddenly caught so many fish that the nets threatened to break, so they called their partners in the other boat to come help.158 But the fish came in such numbers that both boats threatened to sink.159 When Simon saw what happened he fell down at Jesus’ knees and cried out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”160 Everyone was amazed, including John and James, sons of Zebedee, “who were partners with Peter.”161 Jesus said to Simon, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.”162 When the boat returned to shore, “they left everything and followed him.”163 Luke’s story shares some broad details with Mark but has some variations. Luke agrees with Mark in placing the scene at the Sea of Galilee among a group of fishermen. But in Mark they are casting the nets and in Luke they are washing the nets. Mark puts the brothers Zebedee in close proximity to Peter and Andrew but places their calling in a separate scene. Luke places John and James in the same scene but places them on separate boats. Both agree that the brothers Zebedee had a commercial fishing business that hired other people, but Luke adds that Peter was a partner with them in the fishing enterprise. Luke also follows Mark in having Jesus say that he will make the disciples fishers of people, although his phrasing differs from Mark. For the most part these variations are trivial, especially since we know that Luke used Mark as a source. On the other hand, Luke also departs from Mark in significant ways. Quite surprising, given Luke’s dependence on Mark, is the absence of Andrew from this scene. Luke only names Peter, John and James. Where is Andrew? I’ll explore that question below. The other major departure is the fish miracle. Mark has no such story but in Luke it provides a basis (missing in Mark) for the disciples to come to believe in Jesus and follow him. In Luke, Peter calls Jesus “lord” and confesses to being a sinner, elements also missing from Mark’s account. Luke’s story contains two features that would have been problematic for both Mark and John. First, in Luke’s story the fish miracle serves as a revelation into Jesus’ identity. Second, Peter declares himself a sinner. In Mark’s gospel no human knows Jesus’ true nature until after he dies, and while Jesus is alive Jesus is never directly identified by others as “Lord,” So Peter’s recognition of Jesus as Lord would have contravened Mark’s theme and he would have had incentive to eliminate such a scene. John, as we have seen, objects to the use of miracles as proof of Jesus’ identity and continuously rewrites such stories to eliminate such claims. When we look at John’s fish miracle we will see such editing come into play. Both Mark and John would have probably also have been offended by Peter’s claim that he was a sinner. Peter was the “rock” of the church and such a decla-

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ration might have undermined his authority. John, as I pointed out previously, eliminated any passages about Peter that portrayed him in anything but a positive manner and sometimes added material to contradict the negative image. Consistent with my thesis that Jesus and Peter had met prior to the disciple’s recruitment but that the latter did not yet become a follower, Luke places the recruitment scene after an indication that Jesus and Peter knew each other earlier. Luke’s account of the recruitment begins at Luke 5:1 but at Luke 4:38 we find Jesus going on a social visit to Peter’s house. From Luke’s perspective, Jesus knew Peter before he became a follower. This contradicts Mark’s arrangement, which has no prior connection between Jesus and Peter prior to the call of his first two disciples.

John’s Fish Story John’s version of the fish miracle occurs at John 21:1–14. It is widely accepted among New Testament scholars that John 21, the final chapter of John, was a later add-on to the original gospel. This is primarily because the final verses of John 20 appear to be a natural ending point. If that is the case, then this story was either moved from an earlier position in the gospel or derived from some external source. Contextually, the story takes place after the resurrection of Jesus, who has already made two post-crucifixion appearances to the disciples.164 Yet, at the start of this incident, the disciples don’t recognize Jesus when he appears.165 J. L. Mays, in his commentary on this episode, says, “The story has all the marks of an initial appearance to these disciples.”166 To me, this raises the question of whether this is an initial post-resurrection appearance or an initial pre-crucifixion appearance. The story takes place at the Sea of Tiberius, yet another name for the Sea of Galilee. At this appearance only seven disciples are present: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other unnamed disciples.167 Also present is the unnamed Beloved Disciple of John’s gospel, but oddly, he is only mentioned later in the story.168 Prior to Jesus’ appearance, Simon Peter said that he was going fishing and the other disciples present said they would join him. They spent the night at sea but caught nothing.169 Just after daybreak Jesus appeared on the beach but none of the disciples knew that this was Jesus.170 After a conversation between Jesus and the disciples about the lack of a catch, Jesus tells them to cast the net on the right side of the boat and that they would catch some fish. They did so and the haul was so large they couldn’t bring it in. At this point the Beloved Disciple, not pre-

The Mission Begins | 291 viously mentioned in the story, turns to Peter and says, “It is the Lord!”171 When Simon Peter, who had been working naked, heard that, he put on some clothes and jumped into the sea.172 Presumably he did so to go ashore and greet Jesus, but what he did immediately after jumping into the water isn’t reported. The other disciples remained on the boat and dragged the net to shore. The story continues with a second scene. After the disciples come ashore, they saw a grill with fish and some bread. Where it came from isn’t explained. Jesus told them to bring some of the fish. So, Peter went back on board and hauled the net ashore. It had 153 large fish.173 (How Peter hauled the net ashore by himself when it took the entire crew to drag it in isn’t mentioned.) Jesus invited them to breakfast. None of the disciples, John says, dared ask who Jesus was because they knew it was the Lord.174 John doesn’t say why they would want to ask if they already knew who he was. In any event, Jesus gave them bread and fish. This mysterious appearance of bread and an abundance of fish hints at a parallel to the larger feeding of the 5000 with bread and fish. The story ends with the meal and John tells us that this was the third appearance of Jesus to the disciples “after he was raised from the dead.”175 Interestingly, Luke also has a post-resurrection scene in which in which Jesus eats fish with the disciples but it is connected to a scene that has parallels with John’s first two post-resurrection appearances.176 In both gospels Jesus initially appears before the disciples, shows off his body, and encourages them to touch him. In Luke this is followed by a scene in which Jesus eats fish with the disciples. In John the fish eating is postponed until after the later fish miracle. This suggests that that John has made some editorial revisions, attaching Luke’s post resurrection fish-eating scene to what may have originally been a pre-crucifixion fish miracle. In Mark, Jesus specifically asks the first four disciples to follow him. Luke eliminates the specific request, but Peter and the others become followers. In John’s version of the fish miracle, Jesus doesn’t call Peter and the others to follow him because they already have, and that story is now placed in the post-crucifixion setting. But John does have a specific call to Peter to follow him just a few verses later, set in a different context. Right after the bread and fish meal Jesus has a dialogue with Peter in which Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him.177 At the conclusion of the conversation Jesus tells Peter that he will be arrested and put to death.178 At this point he says to Peter, “Follow me.”179

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What appears to have occurred is that in the original story, after the fish miracle, Jesus asked Peter and the others to follow him. Since John set the scene after the resurrection, it was no longer relevant to recruit Peter to be a disciple, so John altered the story by placing the “Follow me” request in a different setting that raised a much more difficult challenge for Peter. Following Jesus now meant being put to death for his actions. I’ll have further discussion of John’s account of the fish miracle in Chapter 14.

John and Luke Compared In both Luke and John, Peter and the brothers Zebedee are present, but Andrew is not (at least by name). Neither is Philip (at least by name). Furthermore, in both gospels Peter and the brothers Zebedee appear to be partners in the fishing enterprise. This seems like more than just a coincidence. John lists some additional disciples present as part of the fishing crew and Luke mentions that there were other people present besides Peter, John and James, but doesn’t say one way or the other if the others included future disciples. In both John and Luke, the fishing crew had been out all night but caught no fish. Luke reports this after the fact. John shows it taking place. The difference results from an editorial decision as to the best way to tell a story. In both gospels Jesus tells the disciples to cast their nets out and when they do they catch an enormous number of fish that couldn’t be easily hauled in, but there are some minor differences in the details. Luke has two boats, John one; Luke has Jesus tell them to ship out to deeper water; John has Jesus say they should toss the nets over the side; the specific words exchanged between Jesus and the disciples differ but lead to the same instruction and result. Again, these are small differences that don’t undermine the commonality of the two stories. In both John and Luke Peter comes to recognize Jesus as “the Lord” and takes an action as a result, but the two Gospels differ significantly as to the nature of the recognition and the action taken. Here we come to one of the most crucial distinctions between John and Luke and we need to look at this contrast more closely. In Luke, as a result of the fish catch, Peter sees a miraculous action that gives him an insight into the true nature of Jesus. He falls to his knees and says, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” As we have seen in John, the evangelist consistently rewrites stories in which miracles reveal the nature of Jesus. In John, Jesus’ authority comes not from deeds of power but from his words glorifying God. So, in John, the fish miracle provides

The Mission Begins | 293 no proof of authority. John has positioned the story after the resurrection and after two prior post-resurrection meetings between Jesus and the disciples. The disciples know all about Jesus and his authority prior to the fish miracle. The miraculous catch is a surprise to them but adds nothing to their understanding of Jesus. Also, we have seen that John always reworks stories that cast Peter in a bad light so that no negativity can be imputed to the most important disciple. So, where Luke has Peter claim to be a sinful man, that statement disappears in John’s telling. Since John eliminates the claim that Peter is a sinner, he also eliminates Peter falling to his knees and, instead, has him jump into the water to go greet Jesus. It isn’t even Peter who makes the initial recognition; it is the Beloved Disciple who recognizes “the Lord.” As I noted above, the Beloved Disciple isn’t mentioned as being among the disciples present at the start of the story. He doesn’t appear until this moment when he, and not Peter, recognizes Jesus, and Peter acts on the Beloved Disciple’s recognition. The passage is ambiguous though. Did the Beloved Disciple recognize Jesus because of the fish miracle or because he had seen him on two prior occasions and suddenly recognized who he was looking at? John doesn’t say. To some extent, the insertion of the Beloved Disciple into this scene serves as a deux ex machina to isolate Peter from the recognition that leads him to declare himself a sinner. Lastly, we see that John knew that this was a recruitment scene because he retains Mark’s “Follow me.” But he has disassociated it from the original context and placed it in a new setting that is just a few verses away from the fish miracle. If we can accept that John had motive to eliminate the fish miracle as a basis for Peter’s understanding of who Jesus was and, also, to eliminate Peter’s declaration that he was a sinner, then for all practical purposes we can see that John and Luke are both working from the same story. This leaves one large question. What was the sequential location of this story? Was it pre-resurrection or postresurrection? It is my view that the fish miracle was the original recruitment story and that John and Mark both edited it. Let’s examine this issue further.

Reconstructing the Original Recruitment Scenes Luke and John both know variations on the fish miracle. Mark has no such story. Luke presents the story as the first recruitment of the disciples. John places it after the resurrection but it has clear indications that it has been moved from another location.

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John’s story also appears in the final chapter, which is widely recognized as a probable add-on to the original version. As noted above, despite being described as the third post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples it has the earmarks of a first meeting. I also noted above that John has appended a fish-eating scene to the miracle, but that Luke also has a post-resurrection fish-eating scene with the disciples that is attached to his first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples, and that scene in Luke has similarities to John’s earlier post-resurrection meetings with the disciples (minus the fish-eating episode.) Additionally, John retains the request to” follow me” in close proximity to the fish miracle. All this suggests that John has moved the fish miracle from another location and attached to it the earlier fish-eating episode from the first meeting with the disciples to this fish miracle story. I have also pointed out the chief differences between Luke and John regarding the fish miracle—miracle as proof of authority and Peter’s declaration of sinning—can be explained away by John’s editorial biases. This would suggest that for all practical purposes, Luke and John knew the same basic story about a meeting between Jesus and Peter and other disciples that led to these disciples becoming followers of Jesus. Mark has a stripped-down version of Luke’s story that omits the revelatory fish miracle and Peter’s declaration. Mark too had motives to eliminate these elements from his account. The miracle as revelation violated his theme that no human knew who Jesus really was while Jesus was alive. It is also highly probable that he would not want to see the “rock” of the church portrayed as a sinner. Working from the assumption that Luke has the closest version of the original recruitment story and with its parallels to John, we note an important difference from Mark. Both Luke and John omit Andrew from the roster of disciples present at the fishing boats. All three gospels, however, place Peter, James and John at the scene, although John does so grudgingly. This is John’s only direct reference to John and James, and he describes them only as the “sons of Zebedee” without mentioning their names or even saying how many sons of Zebedee were present. Luke mentions the presence of only these three disciples; John mentions the presence of seven disciples, two of whom are unidentified, and the Beloved Disciple (who is never identified by name). Luke, however, indicates that Peter was involved in a large fishing operation and had a large crew for two boats. That crew could have included other disciples that Luke omitted to mention. Perhaps he was attempting some harmonization between the source and Mark, who also omits all the additional disciples.

The Mission Begins | 295 This leaves us with some questions. Where is Andrew? Why do John and Mark both have an initial pairing of Peter and Andrew with Jesus and Luke doesn’t? Why do John and Mark have consecutive pairings of future disciples and Luke doesn’t? I take as my starting point John’s striking observation that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist and that Peter was in the vicinity of John’s Jordan River location when Jesus was baptized. Since Andrew, according to John, tells Peter that “we have found the messiah,” John implies that Peter was not a direct witness to the Baptist’s proclamation. Luke in Acts, but not in his gospel, also claims that Peter and other disciples were around at the time of Jesus’ baptism. Andrew’s use of “we” suggests that the second unnamed disciple of John also accepted Jesus as a messiah and may have eventually become one of the disciples. There is some reason to believe that the Baptist’s second disciple may have been Philip. While John has Andrew and Peter meet with Jesus, he does not specifically depict them as becoming followers of Jesus at that point. Jesus appears to have departed John’s camp and headed into Galilee without any followers, leaving Peter and Andrew behind. Therefore, I suggest that Andrew and the unnamed second disciple of the Baptist had remained behind with John and continued to work in the Baptist’s missionary crusade, probably not joining up with Peter and the other disciples until sometime after John was arrested. (John continued to have disciples following him even while he was in custody.180) I suspect that Mark and John were both disturbed by Jesus’ future disciples, especially Peter, meeting with Jesus but not yet joining his mission, and both dropped that scene from their gospels. John kept the scene in but in an ambiguous manner. Luke, however, does imply at Luke 4:38 that Jesus and Peter knew each other prior to Peter becoming a disciple of Jesus. John wanted to disguise the fact that Peter did not become an immediate follower of Jesus, so he transferred the later story about Jesus changing Simon’s name to Peter to this earlier scene, giving the misleading impression that Peter was on board. But Peter says and does nothing at all during this encounter, one way or the other. The source document would have described some of Jesus’ future disciples, including Peter, as being present at John’s camp. After all, John was drawing large crowds from all over and so it seems plausible that Peter might have been there, especially if his brother was one of John’s disciples. Peter, himself, might have been one of John’s disciples. The source document would have further described Andrew and Peter meeting Jesus and talking with him, perhaps impressed with him, but not yet ready to become followers.

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When Jesus left John’s camp to go back to Galilee there was probably a second encounter with other future disciples, probably John and James, or, less likely, Philip and Nathanael. While Philip may have joined up at this time, it is not clear that Nathanael did. I suspect that neither of the two men did. This is reinforced by John’s version of the fish miracle story which places Nathanael among the disciples present who would have subsequently become followers of Jesus if John hadn’t moved the story out of sequence. At the same time, Philip is not mentioned among those who would have been recruited after the fish miracle. I should point out here, given Luke’s use of the fish miracle, that in these first two disciple encounters in Mark and John, Jesus has not yet performed any miracles that might have drawn followers to him. We have only John’s proclamation and even the Baptist continued as an independent operative who did not actually become a follower of Jesus. Luke goes so far as to later show John sending messengers to Jesus to ask if Jesus is “the one.”181 While Luke’s encounter includes a miracle scene, he places it after Jesus has already performed miracles and developed a public reputation as a miracle worker. So, his recruitment scene takes place in a different cultural milieu than that in either Mark or John. I should also note that John’s gospel fills these two encounters with the first four disciples with numerous variations of descriptive titles for Jesus. The Baptist calls him the son of God and the Lamb of God; Andrew calls him the messiah; Philip says he is the one Moses and the prophets wrote about;182Nathanael calls him “Rabbi”, “Son of God” and “King of Israel;”183 and Jesus for the first time refers to himself as the “Son of Man.”184 Raymond Brown sees this title sequence as part of a theological re-ordering intended to create “a conspectus of Christian vocation”185 He adds that it is unlikely that the disciples had attained such insight as implied by the titles in the two or three days at the beginning of the ministry.186 In all likelihood, the original encounters were far more mundane; probably little more than a brief discussion about God’s glory. The string of titles suggests substantial reworking of the underlying material. I see, therefore, an original sequence of two encounters by Jesus, one with Peter and Andrew and one with two other named future disciples, the latter two being either James and John or Philip and Nathanael, but in neither case did any of the four become followers until the fish miracle incident. At that time, Andrew remained with the Baptist and probably joined up at some later time, after John’s arrest. Also absent from John’s fish miracle scene is Philip. If we can measure significance by the number of times a disciple is mentioned by name, then in John’s gospel, after Peter and disregarding Judas, Philip is the most important disciple,

The Mission Begins | 297 being mentioned in four separate events. Andrew runs a close second, mentioned in three separate events. Interestingly, in all three of Andrew’s appearances, he is linked to Philip. Not only are they from the same city, they appear consecutively in the two disciple scenes and later they are mentioned together in two other scenes, the multiplication of the loaves and in an incident where some Greeks ask to meet with Jesus.187 Thomas and Nathanael are the only other disciples to be mentioned more than once. This suggests a core group for John of Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael and Thomas. The close connection and prominence of Andrew and Philip suggests to me that Philip, too, remained behind as a disciple of John the Baptist and that is why he is not listed among the disciples present in John’s fish miracle scene. Mark rejected the notion that these future disciples would not hop aboard the caravan at this initial encounter so merged the events with his heavily redacted fish miracle encounter, bringing Andrew in as one of the first two disciples. Luke, for the same reason, simply omitted the first two encounters and hewed close to the original story. If Mark merged the redacted fish-miracle story with the first two encounters with disciples, as I propose, then we must make some corrections to Mark’s proposed order of events. If the first encounter with Peter and Andrew took place at the camp of John the Baptist then the first missionary tour must have happened sometime after that encounter. Since Mark and John agree on the sequence of two encounters with two sets of named disciples, then the first missionary tour must have taken place after the meeting between the two sets of disciples. Since Mark conspicuously omits any healings or exorcisms from this first missionary tour, we should assume that it took place prior to Jesus performing any miracles. In Mark and John, the first miracle story occurs immediately after the encounter with the two sets of disciples but they depict different miracles. In Mark it is an exorcism in Capernaum; in John it is the transformation of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, after which Jesus goes to Capernaum. I will have much more to say about the relationship between these two miracles and the trip to Capernaum below. If we wish to place the first missionary tour after the encounter with the two sets of disciples and before the first miracle then it must fall immediately after the meeting with the second set of disciples while Jesus is in Galilee, and that is where I have placed it. John has placed it at a later point but in order to place it in its proper context we need to first look at several other incidents in John’s gospel. My reconstruction proposes that these two sets of disciples didn’t become followers of Jesus at the time of the initial meeting. Luke has omitted these two

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encounters and replaced them with the story of the Rejection at Nazareth. I suspect that Luke did this because he wanted to replace the failure of the future disciples to follow Jesus with a story about the failure of those close to him to become followers. By correcting for Mark and John’s scene relocations, we can be reasonably certain about the following sequence of events in the underlying source.



• John baptized Jesus (CS7–CS9); • Jesus met with Andrew and Peter at the camp of John the Baptist, but they did not yet follow Jesus (CS12); • Jesus met with two more named disciples, both of whom were among his most important disciples; either James and John in Mark or Philip and Nathanael in John. (CS13); • Jesus went on his first missionary tour and there was some reference to the arrest of John the Baptist. (CS14–15); • Jesus went to Capernaum (CS16); • [narrative sequence continues.] • Jesus miraculously produced an abundance of fish in front of his future disciples (CS22); • Jesus recruited a hardcore group of disciples from among those who witnessed the miracle of the fish (CS23–25).

Jesus’ First Public Acclaim (CS16–18) In Mark, after the recruitment story of the four disciples and the first missionary tour, the gospel says Jesus and his disciples went to Capernaum and Jesus taught at its synagogue.188 He doesn’t say how much time passed between the two events, but he places them one after the other. While in the synagogue, Jesus encountered a man plagued by an “unclean spirit.”189 The term “unclean” here is usually understood to mean ritually unclean, “that which must be abstained from according to the levitical law.”190 However, in Mark’s “True Kindred” segment, Jesus accused his opponents of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit because they said he had an “unclean spirit.” The reference there is to his alleged association with Satan. Since demons are by definition bad, the idea that the spirit is “unclean” doesn’t seem to suggest a “purity” issue. It seems to indicate that the possessed is given to forms of malevolent behavior. The unclean spirit recognized Jesus and confronted him, probably, but not necessarily, through the voice of the possessed individual, “What have you to do

The Mission Begins | 299 with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”191 The demon’s use of “us” may indicate more than one demonic spirit in the body. Jesus ordered the demon to be silent and to come out of the man’s body. The possessed body convulsed and the demon left.192 The congregation was amazed at Jesus’ actions. “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him”193 In Luke’s version, he commands with “authority and power [emphasis added].”194 In Mark, this is the first display of Jesus’ miraculous power, and his reputation goes viral. “At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.”195 Rarely mentioned in discussing this account is that this exorcism occurred on a Sabbath and nobody in the story raises any sort of issue about a Sabbath violation. Matthew, however, was apparently sufficiently disturbed by this Sabbath story that he omitted it from his gospel. Immediately after, Jesus performed a second public healing miracle when he cured Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. That led to the second spurt of public recognition as that evening many sick people gathered outside of Peter’s house. Jesus then conducted several healings and exorcisms. This is followed a by a second missionary tour, this one featuring healings and exorcisms. We will consider all these events in due course. For now, we will focus on the fact that on one day in Capernaum Jesus performed many public signs and for the first time received wide public acclaim. If this sequence of events appeared in a common source document known to John, the evangelist would have had at least two major problems. First, John doesn’t show exorcisms in his gospel. Second, Mark’s initial story about the exorcism of an unclean spirit indicates that initial admiration for Jesus flowed from his display of power. John, as we have seen, objects to any stories that show Jesus’ exercise of power as proof of his authority. John might have also been concerned with the Sabbath aspect of this scene. He deals with Sabbath issues in John 5 and may not have wanted to deal with them here. At the same time, since this initial exorcism accounts for how Jesus first achieved wide-spread fame, it would have an important place in the story of Jesus. So, if John wanted to include a variation of the story about how Jesus first acquired fame, he would want to make a few changes to the source version of events. That is what we find when we look at what I believe to be John’s parallel account. In order to retrace John’s editorial trail, I have divided Mark’s story into three separate scenes, a trip to Capernaum (CS16), a display of power that generates recognition of Jesus’ authority (CS17), and widespread fame in Galilee for Jesus

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based on this act (CS18). The evidence will show that John knew this story, kept variations on the opening and closing scenes, and substituted an entirely different non-miracle story for the exorcism of the unclean spirit to explain how Jesus first acquired great public acclaim. The story that John substituted for the exorcism of an unclean spirit was the cleansing of the Temple by chasing out the money-changers. John’s placement of the money-changers story is one of those issues that pop up from time to time when examining the differences between John and Mark. In Mark, the incident takes place during the Passion Week. In John it occurs at least two years earlier.196 I have already noted above that one motive for John’s placement of this scene at this location was to show the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy about the messenger appearing prior to God’s sudden appearance at the Temple to purify the priesthood. There are also some subtle but important differences in detail between John’s version of the story and Mark’s. I will also show that John combined the money-changers story with two other separate and distinct events also appearing in Mark’s Passion account. In John, the day after Jesus meets with Philip and Nathanael, he attended a wedding at Cana.197 Jesus and his mother “and his disciples” were there.198 John doesn’t name which disciples were present or whether they were among the Twelve. John tends to sometimes use “disciples” in a larger sense than just the Twelve.199 Since there is no indication that Peter and Andrew left with Jesus when he departed the Baptist’s camp, the most likely reference to disciples here would be to Philip and Nathanael, the latter also being from Cana. During the course of the wedding Jesus transformed water into wine, although almost no one at the reception knew that Jesus was responsible for the wine’s presence.200 John tells us, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him [emphasis added].”201 This disclosure of glory was only to whatever small band of followers he had at this point in time. What we see here is that immediately after the meetings with the first four disciples, in both Mark and John, Jesus for the first time, in Galilee, exhibits his miraculous powers, but John has changed the miracle from a fame-inducing exorcism to a barely noticed transformation of water into wine. The disclosure of Jesus’ glory is only to those who already believe in him, so it is not responsible for drawing followers. I suggest that the function of the wedding scene is part of John’s effort to downplay a tradition that the “first miracle” by Jesus, depicted in Mark, was the exercise of power over an unclean demon.

The Mission Begins | 301 Right after the wedding, according to John, Jesus “went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.”202 But for the intervening wedding scene, both John and Mark portray a trip to Capernaum by Jesus and his family right after the first meetings with his disciples. But John has slightly altered some details. He places Jesus’ first display of miraculous power (a barely noticed transformation of water into wine) just before arriving in Capernaum and Mark places the first display of miraculous powers (a widely hailed exorcism of an unclean spirit) just after the arrival in Capernaum. As you will recall from Chapter 5, Capernaum is where Jesus established his home base and where he became famous for his healing powers. In John, however, the evangelist says that Jesus went to Capernaum only for a few days with family and disciples but tells us nothing about what happened there when Jesus arrived. Instead, right after telling us Jesus went to Capernaum, he says that Passover was near and Jesus went to Jerusalem.203 The next thing we know, we are in the Temple with Jesus, just as Malachi prophesied. Why does John bother telling us that Jesus went to Capernaum? What purpose does this serve? Nothing happens during this trip and it doesn’t advance the narrative in any way. This suggests a literary seam leading into a story that John has omitted. I submit that John was working from a common source known to Mark and that he left in as much of the underlying story as he could without undermining his own theological perspective. At the same time, he also downplays Capernaum as the place where Jesus was known for his healing powers, and where the exorcism of the “unclean spirit” led to Jesus’ fame. In support of this idea let me jump ahead for the moment to what happened after the intervening event in both Mark and John. In Mark, Jesus gained widespread fame because of his power over the demon. In John, after the cleansing of the Temple scene, we have this passage. When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone [emphasis added].204

Later, when Jesus returns to Galilee from Jerusalem, John says, When he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the festival; for they too had gone to the festival [emphasis added].205

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Despite John’s order, I will argue that the Galilee passage is the original follow-up to Mark’s exorcism of the unclean spirit and the Jerusalem passage is the follow-up to Mark’s second miracle story. Implicit here is that John has moved scenes CS18 (The first public recognition) and CS19 (the second sign) out of sequence into a later location. This will be discussed further below. An important issue that we must note here is that the first passage refers to “signs” (plural) that Jesus had done in Jerusalem. This is a well-recognized problem in Johannine studies. What “signs” could the Jerusalem crowd be talking about? Jesus didn’t do any “signs” in Jerusalem. His “first sign” was the almost unknown transformation of water into wine while in Cana of Galilee. The only event described in Jerusalem so far is the non-miraculous chasing of the moneychangers. According to John, Jesus’ “second sign” didn’t occur until after he left Jerusalem and returned to Cana, at which time he healed the son of a royal official.206 Implicitly, John shouldn’t be talking about “signs (plural)” until after the second sign, healing the royal official’s son. John has something out of order here. We will review that in more detail further below. The second passage, however, focuses directly on the recognition Jesus received in Galilee after the Temple cleansing. We have this sequence of events in Mark and John.

• Jesus goes to Capernaum; • Jesus performs his first public act; • This act leads to widespread recognition in Galilee.

The obvious difficulty here is that Mark and John describe two different acts giving rise to this recognition. Mark says it was an exorcism in Capernaum; John says a Temple cleansing in Jerusalem. In Mark, Jesus provides several signs on that one day in Capernaum. There was the exorcism of the unclean spirit, the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, and numerous public healings and exorcisms. So, this first recognition passage in John, about individuals in Jerusalem, must incorporate some reference point after which Jesus has committed at least two signs. Despite the admiration from the Jerusalem witnesses, Jesus rejects those who believed in him because he didn’t trust them. Why? The context suggests that Jesus rejected their admiration because they came to him because of his (nonexistent) signs. What John is doing here is dismissing the idea that people should follow Jesus because of his signs. It is a direct critique of the Markan sequence of several miracles leading to Jesus’ fame because of the signs Jesus did in Capernaum.

The Mission Begins | 303 The second reference, to the Galilean witnesses, makes no mention of “signs.” It ambiguously says they were impressed with all they had seen in Jerusalem, which in John’s gospel could only be the Temple cleansing scene. The lack of a reference to signs suggests that this later passage is the natural continuation of the Temple cleansing scene. However, John cagily doesn’t say what they saw in Jerusalem, although the earlier passage indicates that there were signs performed. So, John’s gospel frames the Temple cleansing with a trip to Capernaum and fame in Galilee for what witnesses saw Jesus do. He also leaves in clues that “signs” were somehow involved and criticizes those who would follow Jesus because of signs rather than teachings. The frame leaves John’s Jesus cleansing the Temple in Jerusalem and Mark’s Jesus exorcising an unclean spirit in a Capernaum synagogue. Turn now to the Temple cleansing scene itself. John’s story consists of two parts, the confrontation with the moneychangers and an argument over Jesus’ authority to do the things that he does. In Mark and Luke these events take place on separate days during the Passion narrative.207 John combines them into one confrontation and has other variations from the synoptic versions. As to the first part, all the gospels show Jesus upset with the money-changers and the commercial activities going on in the Temple. We need to recall that this activity was related to the buying and selling of animals, mostly pigeons, for the purpose of sacrifice at the Temple. Money or goods had to be converted into an acceptable form of coinage for use in the Temple. At the same time, a very large number of lambs would have been gathered there for the ritualistic Passover slaughter. There may well have been more than a million people there who needed properly prepared lamb for the Passover meal. Think thousands of cattle in the general vicinity. Ensconced within a welter of narrow streets and passages, the Temple would have been one of the only places spacious enough to handle such a large volume of activity. In the course of confronting the money-changers, Mark’s Jesus says, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”208 Mark references Isaiah 56:7. John, however, has Jesus say, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” Mark attacked the money-changers as criminals. John saw them as persons corrupting the house of God with commerce. Where Mark describes unlawful activity, John describes an insult to the Father. John’s words glorify the Father as per his theme. John may have had another reason for changing Jesus’ words. If we go to Mark’s Isaiah passage and read it more fully, it says,

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these [i.e., those “who join themselves to the Lord” and “keep the Sabbath”] I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples [emphasis added].209

To some extent, Isaiah’s call for sacrifices and burnt offerings could be seen as endorsing the very events that Jesus is criticizing. It also calls for keeping the Sabbath and, as we saw in Chapter 3, John’s Jesus did not need to keep to Sabbath norms because he was doing the Father’s work. John may not have wanted his readers to look too closely at Isaiah’s full text. In Mark and Luke, the priests become angry with Jesus over these actions and seek to kill him, but they can’t act because of the enthralled crowds.210 The next day, the priests ask Jesus what his authority is. Jesus says that he will respond if they answer a question. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.”211 The priests realize that whichever answer they give will trap them, so they claim not to know, and Jesus says that he won’t answer either.212 In John, following his criticism, the priests ask Jesus for a sign to show his authority.213 This looks like a parallel to Mark’s unclean spirit asking Jesus why he wants to chase it out of the possessed man’s body. John’s Jesus, of course, doesn’t do signs as proof of authority so, he responded by saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” a sign that cannot be shown to the interrogators at this point in time.214 John adds in a gloss. “But he was speaking of the temple of his body.”215 John uses “Temple” as a symbolic description of Jesus’ body. The marketplace atmosphere corrupts the “body” and needs to be driven out. Jesus drives corruption out of the body/Temple. In Mark, an “unclean” spirit corrupts a body and Jesus cleanses the body by driving the corruption out. In both cases, the opposing forces ask Jesus why he is interfering with them. John’s use of the Temple rebuilding scene touches upon a third incident from Mark’s Passion story that doesn’t appear in John’s Passion account but does appear here. In Mark, after Jesus’ arrest and during his trial before the Jewish council, the gospel says, Some stood up and gave false testimony against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’ ” But even on this point their testimony did not agree.216

The Mission Begins | 305 Mark quotes witnesses as saying that Jesus claimed that he would destroy the Temple made with human hands and rebuild it in three days, but the witnesses couldn’t agree on what he said. Mark adds that the charge was untrue. But Mark has no scene where Jesus made any statements about rebuilding the Temple, so we can’t compare the testimony to something Jesus may have said earlier. John has no such trial scene in his gospel, and, interestingly, Luke omits this testimony from his version of the trial story. John, however, depicts Jesus making virtually the identical claim, but says the crowd misunderstood what he meant. Parsing out Jesus’ statement in John, it differs only slightly from what Mark says was a statement that took different forms from different witnesses. Compare the statement by Jesus in John to the testimony in Mark. Mark: [I will] destroy this temple [that is made with hands,] and in three days I will build another, [not made with hands.] John: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

The bracketed portions in Mark’s statement identify what is substantively missing in John’s statement. If we remove the bracketed portions, the thematic declaration is virtually identical to that in John. If there were some basis for believing Jesus made some such statement on an earlier occasion, then at least one or, perhaps, both gospel authors may have made some alterations to the underlying statement. Both statements talk about the Temple being destroyed and the Temple somehow being rebuilt in three days. So, if such a statement has a presence in the Jesus tradition prior to the gospels, those two elements should be considered as part of the statement. This creates a significant public relations problem for the gospel authors. It is widely accepted that both Mark and John were written after the destruction of the Jewish Temple. If that were the case and Jesus had said that the Temple would be miraculously rebuilt if it were torn down, people at the time of the destruction might want to know why Jesus didn’t miraculously rebuild the Temple in three days, as he promised, especially if some believed him to have been resurrected. Obviously, theological apologetics could explain this after the fact, particularly regarding Jewish rejection of Jesus and his opposition to Temple sacrifices. I think, though, both Mark and John acted to eliminate what would be an embarrassing promise that Jesus failed to keep. John explained away the problem by adding a gloss to Jesus’ statement, saying that Jesus wasn’t referring to the physical Temple being rebuilt but that “he was speaking of the temple of his body.”217

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Mark addressed the problem by presenting what would be an erroneous version of the statement and declaring it false. But was there an earlier tradition that Jesus had made some such statement? I think there was. John clearly indicates that Jesus said something like Mark’s testimony. Mark implies that witnesses may have heard Jesus say something similar, but Mark doesn’t tell us precisely what Jesus said. With that in mind, let’s look at a passage in Mark that presented an earlier occasion on which Jesus made a statement about the Temple being destroyed (but not about rebuilding it). After Jesus’ final confrontations at the Temple, Mark shows Jesus walking with his disciples and commenting, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”218 Although Mark doesn’t specifically say any of the buildings in question was the Temple, Luke does.219 Herod’s rebuilt Temple, in its time, was considered one of the most beautiful buildings to have ever been built. The Babylonian Talmud says, “He who has not seen the Temple of Herod, has never seen a beautiful building.”220 Mark shows Jesus making a statement about the Temple being torn down but does it in a setting that doesn’t have Jesus promise to rebuild it. Because of the post-Temple destruction, Mark may have redacted out the part about rebuilding. Nevertheless, what Mark attributes to Jesus doesn’t seem to be very far away from what John’s Jesus and Mark’s witnesses claim Jesus said. Both Mark and John agree that Jesus said something about the Temple being destroyed. Going back to the statement as presented by Mark, it is my view that Mark added in the opening phrase (i.e., “I will”) so that he could declare the full statement false. This idea is reinforced by the fact that in John’s version of the statement and in Mark’s early Temple destruction statement, Jesus refers to persons other than himself tearing down the Temple. As to the second (“that is made with hands”) and third (“not made with hands”) bracketed statements in Mark’s version, I suspect that they belonged to the original underlying statement attributed to Jesus and that John removed them for theological reasons. If the Temple symbolized Jesus’ body, as John alleges, then Jesus, as the son of God who pre-existed creation (per John,221) wouldn’t have been made by “human” hands, so that portion of the statement would have to be removed. The third bracketed statement is meant to refer to the rebuilding of a physical Temple, not Jesus’ body, and serves as a contrast to the second bracketed statement. So, for consistency, John would also have to remove that statement as the contrast is no longer in place. However, we are in speculative territory here. The most we can say with confidence is that Mark and John both knew about a statement allegedly

The Mission Begins | 307 made by Jesus that said if the Temple were destroyed, he would rebuild it in three days in some miraculous manner. Turning back to the nature of the challenge to Jesus’ authority for his Temple actions, Mark and John give very different responses and seem to share no common ground, but there is a very strong thematic parallel that has been overlooked. In both cases, Jesus responds in a way that requires his opponents to complete a task that they can’t carry out. In Mark, Jesus said he would respond if they could tell him where the authority for John the Baptist came from. The opponents realized that any answer to that question would threaten their own authority and. So, they declined to answer. Therefore, Jesus didn’t have to justify his authority. In John, Jesus said that if the challengers tore down the Temple, he would rebuild it. Obviously, no one was going to destroy the Temple to see if Jesus could do what he said he could do, so Jesus didn’t have to justify his authority. In both instances, Jesus declined to justify his authority because his critics couldn’t pass the test he placed before them. Lastly, we should note some parallels between the money-changers in the Temple and the “unclean spirit” in the synagogue. Both are seen as corruptions of a body. Both see Jesus as an enemy trying to destroy them. Both ask Jesus to justify his actions. Both lose out to Jesus’ authority, words glorifying God in John and power in Mark. To briefly summarize the argument:







• John and Mark both say that after meeting with four named disciples, Jesus went to Capernaum. (CS16). • John and Mark both sequentially connect Jesus’ first miracle to his arrival in Capernaum. In John it occurs immediately before arriving in Capernaum; in Mark, immediately after. • John’s description of the trip to Capernaum serves no narrative purpose or function. • After arriving in Capernaum, Mark appears in a house of worship in Capernaum and John appears in a house of worship in Jerusalem. (In John’s case this fulfills Malachi’s prophecy about God “suddenly” coming to the Temple.) • After going to Capernaum, both Mark and John show Jesus chasing corrupt influences from a house of worship, resulting in wide-spread public fame in Galilee for the first time (CS17–18). In Mark the act involved chasing demons out of synagogue; In John it involved chasing the money-changers out of the Temple. • In both cases, the corrupt forces expelled by Jesus challenge his authority to act. In John the demons, with foreknowledge of Jesus’ identity, challenge his

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authority before the expulsion; In John the priests, with no foreknowledge of Jesus’ identity, challenge his authority after the expulsion. • John has bifurcated the story of Jesus’ first public act by separating the first miracle from the first popular act, replacing the popular miracle with a littleknown miracle just before the story begins and replacing the exorcism of the demon with the expulsion of the money-changers in the center of the story • Mark says that Jesus did many signs on that day in Capernaum. John says many people came to Jesus because of the signs he did that day in Jerusalem, but Jesus didn’t do any signs yet in Jerusalem. This suggests John’s passage is out of order. • John criticizes those who came to Jesus because of his “signs,” an implicit rejection of those who come to Jesus because of the deeds of power performed in Capernaum on that day.

These coincidences clearly suggest to me that John knew a version of Mark’s exorcism story and re-edited it to eliminate the exorcism as the basis of Jesus’ sudden popularity among the masses. He retained the beginning and end of the story but substituted a new middle that contained no miracle while creating symbolically parallel themes about expelling corruption. He appended a teaching that Jesus rejected those who came to him because of the “signs” they saw, although he doesn’t describe any prior signs that were seen. In addition, he replaced the popular first miracle, exercising power over a demon in the town of Capernaum, with a barely-noticed first miracle in the nearby little village of Cana. John’s sequence of events implicitly references the exorcism and critiques those who believed in Jesus because of the powers exhibited. In addition, we saw that John took three separate stories that appear in Mark’s Passover Passion account but not in John’s Passion account and combined them into a single episode set in Jerusalem on a Passover two years earlier. The three events were the chasing of the moneychangers, the request for proof of authority, and a statement about tearing down the Temple and raising it up in three days.

Jesus’ Second Sign (CS19) In Mark, right after the exorcism of the unclean spirit, the gospel says that Jesus and the four disciples, Simon (i.e., Peter), Andrew, James and John went to the home of Peter and Andrew.222 Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever.223 Jesus took her by the hand, lifted her up, and the fever left.224 Now well, she went and fixed a meal for her company.

The Mission Begins | 309 This is Mark’s second miracle story. This story, too, takes place on the Sabbath and no mention of a Sabbath healing violation occurs. Matthew, again apparently disturbed by the Sabbath issue, specifically places the event on a different day by omitting from his gospel the preceding story (i.e., exorcising the unclean spirit) that places the event on a Sabbath day.225 That evening, after the Sabbath had ended, the townspeople brought the sick and possessed to Jesus (CS20).226 This is followed by a second missionary tour in which Jesus proclaimed the gospel and cast out spirits (CS21).227 Luke made some subtle alterations to Mark’s account. Where Mark said “house of Simon and Andrew,” Luke said only “Simon’s house”, and omitted any direct reference to Andrew, James, or John.228 Technically, Luke doesn’t even say Simon was there. Where Mark says “they entered … with James and John [emphasis added],”229 Luke says “he” (i.e., Jesus) went to Simon’s house.230 However, Luke retains a telltale “they” in the story when a previously unmentioned “they” asks Jesus to do something about the fever.231 Only by reference to Mark, though, can this “they” be identified as Jesus’ chief disciples. As Luke has it, “they” may just be people from the neighborhood who knew Peter’s mother-in-law. Luke’s departure from Mark may reflect his alternative to Mark’s account of when the disciples became followers of Jesus. In Luke’s version Andrew is not among those who become immediate followers (and John corroborates Luke’s account with his version of the same fish miracle story). Luke places the recruitment of the disciples shortly after this scene, Mark places it before. Another difference between Mark and Luke is that the latter also omits Mark’s description of Jesus touching and lifting Simon’s mother-in-law to cure her. This may be due to such acts being a Sabbath violation. Instead, Luke’s Jesus “rebukes” the fever, a term that indicates an exorcism.232 Luke’s use of an exorcism suggests a common view of the time that such illnesses may have been demon-inspired. Mark, on the other, doesn’t describe Jesus’ action as an exorcism. But the cure through touching implies such an action. Mark may have eliminated the direct reference to an exorcism because he didn’t want to depict Peter’s mother-in-law as infected by a demon. John also describes a second miracle by Jesus and conspicuously identifies it as “the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.”233 However, John’s story looks nothing like Mark’s. It involves the healing of a royal official’s son and has no connection to the disciples. Nevertheless, several clues suggest that John’s story was intended as a replacement for Mark’s story. John positions his “second sign” story immediately after Jesus’ return to Galilee, when the “Galileans welcomed him, since they had seen all that he had

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done in Jerusalem at the festival.” This draws a direct connection between these witnesses and those who witnessed the nonexistent signs that Jesus did there. John, however, omits the reference to “signs” when he refers to what the Galileans saw, leaving the nature of their observations undefined. In between John’s Jerusalem event and the return to Galilee John inserts several other incidents. It is the argument below that John 4:45–54, encompassing the witnesses welcoming Jesus to Galilee (CS18) and the healing of the royal official’s son (CS19) was moved out of sequence and belongs between the end of the Temple cleansing scene (John 2:22) and the reaction of the Jerusalem witnesses (John 2:23–25). This has the effect of placing the recognition of the Galilean witnesses after the Temple cleansing, and the Jerusalem recognition of the multiple signs after the healing of the royal official’s son. John’s reason for moving the second sign sequence out of its original order may have been motivated in large part by the problem caused by his moving a Capernaum event to Jerusalem. Since the second event occurred in Galilee, John needs to arrange for a transition period from Jerusalem to Galilee. For John to reconnect with the original narrative storyline he needs to bring Jesus back to Galilee in order to follow up on Jesus’ new-found public recognition. The welcome by the Galileans serves that function. In between, John describes a series of events leading from Jerusalem back to Galilee. Following this welcome in Galilee John says, “Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum.”234 This notice draws a literary connection between Jesus’ “first sign” and what is about to happen with this royal official’s son, the “second sign.” Some scholars believe that the initial sentence about Cana was a later insert into the gospel by the redactor and that originally the story opened with “Now there was …”235 When the official learned that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee he went to Cana and begged Jesus to save his son, who was near the point of death.236 Jesus challenged the official to see if he wanted to see a sign before he would believe in Jesus but the man continued to plea for his little boy’s life.237 Jesus took this as a profession of faith without regard to miracles and told the man that his son would live and the official “believed the word that Jesus spoke to him [emphasis added].”238 As the official headed back to Capernaum he was met by his slaves who told him that the child was well.239 The official asked when the child turned for the better and the slaves replied, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.”240 When he heard the hour at which the son recovered he realized that it was

The Mission Begins | 311 the same hour in which Jesus told him the child would live.241 The father and his household became believers in Jesus.242 John tells us, “Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee [emphasis added].”243 There is some interesting ambiguity in this declaration about the second sign. It is slightly complicated by the fact that the underlying Greek reads “after coming again from Judea.”244 The “again” tends to be dismissed as a pleonasm, the use of more words than is necessary.245 In other words, “again” is thought to be unnecessary verbiage that adds nothing to the sentence. In the NRSV translation that I used above it is omitted from the English phrasing. But if we eliminate “again” there is a problem. The statement about the second sign seems to say that Jesus did two signs after coming from Judea. That is, both signs occurred after leaving Judea. But in John’s gospel, Jesus only did one sign upon coming from Judea, the healing of the royal official’s son. The first sign (the water into wine), though done in Galilee, did not happen after returning from Judea but after leaving Bethany across the Jordan. Across the Jordan is the region of Perea, part of Herod’s realm and not in Judea. John appears to realize this problem. The use of “again” implies that John made more than one trip from Judea to Galilee at this point even though his gospel describes just a single trip. This seems to be editorial fallout from John’s effort to undermine the source claim that Jesus performed two “healing” signs in Capernaum by rearranging chronological sequences. John’s clumsy language suggests that the original source had reported that after Jesus went to Judea, probably during the first missionary campaign, he returned to Capernaum and performed his first two signs. This would suggest that Mark omitted the Judea reference (possibly due to either editorial terseness and/ or a desire to keep Jesus in Galilee until the final days of his life) and John, who places the first missionary campaign after the first sign, amended the declaration by adding “again” to allow for Jesus to have an undocumented visit to Judea prior to the first miracle in Cana. This healing story in John is the subject of much discussion because it bears some surface similarities to a Q story about the healing of a centurion’s slave in Capernaum.246 In Luke’s account a centurion had an ill slave close to death and asked some of the Jewish elders to intervene on his behalf with Jesus. The elders told Jesus that the centurion was a worthy man who loved the Jewish people and built a synagogue for them. Jesus set out to meet the centurion but messengers stopped Jesus to tell him that the centurion did not feel worthy enough to have Jesus come to his house.

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He asked only that Jesus speak the word to heal his servant. Jesus was amazed. “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”247 When the representatives of the centurion returned home they found the man cured. Brown notes that since the time of Irenaeus in the late second century scholars have thought of John’s story as a variation on the centurion story in Luke and Matthew and there certainly seem to be a few similarities.248 I don’t doubt that John probably had some familiarity with the story. It’s presence in both Matthew and Luke suggests that it had some substantial degree of circulation. On the other hand, I think there is more to John’s use of this incident than meets the eye. We have several interesting clues in this story.



• This is the first incident in Galilee after he returns from his detour away from Capernaum to Jerusalem in order to substitute the money-changers scene for the exorcism in the Capernaum synagogue. • The sick child was in Capernaum. • The child suffered from a fever.249 • This was Jesus’ second sign. • John inserts a narrative connection between Jesus’ first two signs.

In Mark, Jesus’ second sign occurs at the house of Simon’s mother-in-law, in Capernaum, and she also suffers from a fever. John and Mark both use the same phrase about the healing. “The fever left her/him” In Mark, the incident happens immediately after Jesus receives his first wide-spread recognition in Galilee for his first public act. In John the story takes place immediately after Jesus receives his first wide-spread recognition in Galilee for his first public act. Mark and John, however, disagree on what the first public act was. John rejected the story of the unclean spirit and as we saw above substituted the Temple cleansing for it. This led him to break off the story after Jesus arrived in Capernaum and transfer events to Jerusalem. This results in a circuitous route back to Galilee and the very next thing that happens in Galilee after Jesus returns to his starting point is the story of the royal official’s son. And not to put too fine a point on it, if there is any doubt that this was the natural continuing point of John’s rerouted trip to Capernaum, he tells us just before this incident that Jesus was welcomed by Galilean witnesses who saw what he did in Jerusalem, i.e., the non-existent “signs” he did following the Temple cleansing. In addition, John inserts a narrative link between Jesus’ first sign and his second sign. If we recognize that John substituted the Temple cleansing for the “first sign,” the exorcism of an unclean spirit, then we can see that this healing story is the natural continuation point after the events described in Mark’s Capernaum exorcism.

The Mission Begins | 313 This suggests that John has moved the story out of its natural order and placed some narrative distance between the first sign and the second sign. John conspicuously uses the terms “first sign” and “second sign” to describe Jesus’ first two miracles, leaving no room for intervening miracles. This usage has been the subject of some discussion in Johannine circles. The broad thesis is that John had a source document that scholars nicknamed “the Book of Signs” and assumed that it had a numbered list of signs that John drew upon, preserving just the first two numberings. I would like to suggest an alternate theory. I propose that there existed a tradition reflected in Mark concerning Jesus’ first two miracles, which brought him to wide-spread public attention. John had problems with these two miracle stories and substituted two alternative miracle stories. When John says these are the first and second signs Jesus did, what he is actually saying is, “what you have been told about Jesus’ first two signs is wrong. These are the first two signs.” I have already described above how John substituted the wine miracle and the chasing of the moneychangers for the exorcism of the unclean spirit. Here I suggest that John substituted this second miracle story for the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law. His version still retains traces of the original story, to wit, a close literary connection to the first miracle, the numbering of the signs, a Capernaum location, and the curing of a fever. I suspect that John fused the original story about Simon’s mother-in-law with a different healing incident that addressed some of his concerns, especially the need to have the healing appear to be the result of an act of faith. In Mark’s version there was no demonstration of faith by Peter’s mother-in-law or anyone else in the house. Despite a number of demonstrated differences between John’s story of the royal official’s son and the Q account of the healing of the gentile centurion’s slave, many Johannine scholars are comfortable drawing a correlation between the two events.250 This may in fact be the case and I am not prepared to say there is no influence, especially since both versions of the story involve professions of faith, but I have my doubts. I would like to suggest that a different story might be involved, Mark’s account of the healing of the synagogue leader’s daughter. In Mark’s story, a synagogue leader’s daughter was ill, and he came to Jesus, fell at his feet, and begged him for help. “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live [emphasis added].”251 In John’s story, the royal official’s son “went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death [emphasis added].”252 The chief difference between Mark’s story of the synagogue leader’s daughter and John’s account of the royal official’s son is that in Mark the daughter died,

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and Jesus restored her to life.253 The restoration of life should be a major event in the life of Jesus, but the daughter’s resurrection is missing from John’s gospel. John, however, had a good narrative reason for omitting the resurrection portion of the healing. In John, Jesus restores someone else to life, Lazarus, an equally astonishing event, which, coincidentally, is missing from Mark. Neither gospel knows of the other’s great achievement in restoring a specific dead person to life. More importantly, in John, the raising of Lazarus is a major plot point that leads the Jewish leaders to want Jesus put to death and leads up to the subsequent arrest of Jesus. John, therefore, can’t allow for an earlier life restoration to disrupt and undermine his later narrative. So, he would have had reason to omit the fact that the child died before Jesus intervened. In support of this I would note an observation by Brown that the Semitic language has no word for “recovery” and that when Jesus said in John’s story that the son “is going to live” the term translated as “to live” has two different senses.254 The first would imply recovery from an illness; the second would indicate a return to life. He notes, for example, that in 1 Kings 17:23 Elijah says to a woman whose son is dead, “your son lives.”255 John’s language, therefore, allows for the idea that in the underlying source story the royal official’s son had died prior to Jesus’ intervention. When John has a servant tell the royal official that the son lives, without saying if he had first died, this may have been John’s way of blurring over the death scene. Another difference between Mark’s story and John’s is that Mark’s Jesus is present in the room with the deceased daughter and asks the family not to tell anybody what happened, and, in John, Jesus is in Cana when he heals the child in Capernaum. Mark continually asks beneficiaries not to tell other people about what he has done for them, so the presence of that element is consistent with Mark’s agenda and contra John’s, who wants everybody to know that Jesus has been sent from heaven. It is my view that John divided the story of the synagogue leader’s daughter into two parts, the first dealing with her being ill, and the second telling about her death and revival. John used the illness portion to construct his parallel to Mark’s healing of Peter’s mother-in-law and used the death and revival portion to help build his story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. I will deal with the Lazarus problem in Chapter 10. John’s distancing of Jesus from Capernaum appears to be a deliberate plot element. First, by placing distance between Jesus and the ill child, John downplays the possibility of an exorcism. Distance eliminates any face-to-face confronta-

The Mission Begins | 315 tion between Jesus and a demon. We are also not witness to what happens at the Capernaum end of the healing. We have only a report of a cure. Second, Mark’s first two signs are healings that take place in Capernaum. John places the first two signs in Cana, near Capernaum, and only one is a healing. He also transferred Jesus first public act to gain recognition from Capernaum to Jerusalem. This suggests a pattern of undermining Jesus’ connection to Capernaum, where he had a major reputation for healing (and a reputation for being rejected despite his performing signs.) This is consistent with John’s theme that healing is not to be taken as a sign of Jesus’ authority. Mark is vague about where the daughter’s healing took place. He places it after a couple of back and forth sea voyages and inserts a lot of material between the healing of Simon’s mother-in-law and the synagogue leader’s daughter, but some careful back tracing indicates to me that the second story may have also occurred in Capernaum. It is my suggestion that John blended together the story of Simon’s mother-in-law and the story of the synagogue leader’s daughter and may have also been influenced by the story of the centurion’s slave, in order to replace the story of Simon’s mother-in-law as the second miracle for which Jesus was known. He kept the ill child in Capernaum and retained the fever as the illness, but he changed the identity of the person who had the fever. John may have been motivated by several factors. First, in Mark’s story, the healing of the mother-in-law generates public recognition of Jesus, suggesting that people came to Jesus because of his signs. John objected to stories that showed Jesus gaining a following because of his healing powers. Second, the story of Simon’s mother-in-law has elements of an exorcism. While not mentioned in Mark, it is directly indicated in Luke. Even if Luke added the exorcism in, such action would reflect the view that many people of the time would have thought of the healing as a form of exorcism. John eliminates traces of exorcism. Third, John may have wanted to isolate anyone connected to the disciples from even the hint of demonic possession. Fourth, Mark’s story has no declaration of faith in Jesus by anyone present; including the disciples and no awe or inspiration surfaces after the fact. In John’s chronology there would be little reason at this time for Simon’s mother to have reason to believe in Jesus or even to know that Jesus caused the fever to dissipate. John’s Jesus has yet to perform any public signs. We don’t even know at this point (after the Capernaum incident and Jerusalem detour) if she even met Jesus.

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Fifth, the underlying story took place on a Sabbath and John may have wanted to avoid any Sabbath conflict issues until he set forth his own views later in John 5.

The Second Public Recognition of Jesus (CS20) In Mark, in the evening after the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law, crowds come to her home so that Jesus can heal the sick and exorcise demons. This constitutes what I call the “Second Public Recognition of Jesus” (CS15). In order to see how John parallels this scene we must first home in on his chronological reordering of the Second Sign event. In terms of narrative chronology, the evidence suggests that John has moved the scene out of sequence. Let me review the facts.



• John and Mark agree that the second sign performed by Jesus was the healing of a fever in Capernaum. • John and Mark both agree that this happened immediately after the notice that Jesus received wide-spread recognition in Galilee for an earlier act. • The earlier act in Mark was the exorcism in the Capernaum synagogue, which immediately preceded the fever story. • The earlier act in John was the cleansing of the Temple, which he used as a substitute for the exorcism in the synagogue in Capernaum. • John has two distinct follow-ups to the cleansing of the Temple. • The earlier one refers to people in Jerusalem who saw the “signs” (plural) that Jesus did, but if we accept that the Temple cleansing substitutes only for the exorcism in the Capernaum synagogue, we have only one sign. There should be a basis for the second sign. • The later follow-up says that Galileans witnessed what happened in Jerusalem and spread his fame in Galilee, but there is no direct reference to any signs.

This set of events suggests to me that John has moved both the first public recognition (CS18) and the second sign (CS19) out of their original sequential order, which would have been after the Temple cleansing incident. I would, therefore, move all of John 4:45–54 in between John 2:22 and John 2:23. This would parallel the underlying source in the following manner.

• CS16: Jesus goes to Capernaum (John 2:12) • CS17: First major public act/Cleansing of the Temple (John 2:13–22) • CS18: First public recognition/Galileans who witnessed the first public act (John 4:45)

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• CS19: Jesus’ second sign/Curing a fever in Capernaum (John 4:46–54) • CS20: Second Public Recognition/Many come to believe because of his (multiple) “signs” and Jesus chastises those who come to him because of signs (John 2:23–24)

The parallels to Mark would be as follows.

• CS16: Jesus goes to Capernaum (Mark (1:21) • CS17: First major public act/Exorcism of the unclean spirit (Mark 1:22–27) • CS18: First public recognition/Synagogue attendees amazed and fame spreads (Mark 1:28) • CS19: Jesus’ Second Sign/Curing a fever in Capernaum (Mark 1:29–31) • CS20: Second Public Recognition/Crowds come that evening for healing and exorcising (Mark 1:32–34)

For John, the original sequential order presented some problems in that he had some additional scenes set in Judea with John the Baptist and another lengthy episode set in Samaria that required him to postpone the second sign and its lead-in to a later point in time, when he returned to Galilee. In Mark, the sequences unfold one after the other. John has moved the pieces around. In this arrangement I have identified the crowds that followed Jesus in Jerusalem as the second public recognition of Jesus even though John makes it the first occasion. However, I believe that is only part of John’s CS20 scene. As you may recall, Jesus also rejected the followers implicitly because they came to him on account of the (nonexistent) signs they saw. This is part of John’s modus operandi, to reject those who come to Jesus because of signs rather than words.

Jesus Proclaims the Gospel (CS21) In Mark, after healing the sick and exorcising demons while he was at the house of Peter’s mother-in-law, Jesus went on a missionary tour to proclaim the gospel in the neighboring towns, “proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.”256 This is Mark’s second missionary tour and this time he includes exorcisms. Accepting that my above correction to John’s narrative chronology is correct and that the Jerusalem crowds that followed Jesus because of his multiple signs corresponded to the Capernaum crowds that came to the house of Peter’s mother-in-law because of Jesus’ multiple signs, John’s gospel has a parallel to Mark’s

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missionary tour to proclaim the gospel. But, since John doesn’t do healing tours and exorcisms, he has a very different event. Immediately after the Jerusalem Temple scene and reaction, John describes a conversation between a prominent Pharisee leader named Nicodemus, who was “a teacher of Israel,”257 and Jesus. Implicitly, the scene takes place in Jerusalem, but John never actually says where this happened. Nicodemus approaches Jesus and says, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.”258 Nicodemus’ reference to Jesus’ “signs” (plural) compounds John’s immediately preceding editorial error in having the witnesses to the Temple cleansing react to the non-existent “signs” that Jesus performed. As I suggested above the reference to the “signs” belongs to the second public recognition of Jesus after healing a fever. This places the Nicodemus conversation into the location immediately following the second public recognition. That aside, from John’s perspective, Nicodemus has it wrong. “Signs” aren’t proof that Jesus comes from God. John rejects that principle at the outset and tells Nicodemus that “no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.”259 In other words, it is not deeds that enable you to see what God wants but rather some theological concept that requires you to be born from above. Nicodemus doesn’t understand what “born from above” means and there is some back and forth over this point. Eventually Jesus explains that you have heard the testimony (i.e., Jesus’ words) and yet still don’t believe.260 Jesus continues and says, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”261 At this point Jesus talks about how to gain eternal life (i.e., the gospel of John’s Jesus). By way of parallel, then, Mark has Jesus go on a missionary tour to proclaim the gospel and conduct exorcisms, but Mark doesn’t say what the gospel is at that point. John eliminates the tour but teaches about the gospel. Both Mark and John, therefore, follow up the reaction to the second sign with a proclamation of the gospel (CS21). Before leaving Nicodemus, I want to note a particular element of Jesus’ teaching. He says to the Pharisee, No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life [emphasis added].262

Raymond Brown has made some interesting observations about the use of the phrase “so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” He notes that John uses this ex-

The Mission Begins | 319 pression three times (3:14, 8:28, 12:32) in his gospel.263 He says “must” implies divine will and sees this as a prediction by Jesus of his death and resurrection.264 In this regard, he suggests, John is paralleling Mark, who has three occasions (8:31, 9:31, 10:33–34) on which Jesus predicts his death and resurrection.265 But, Brown adds, John is not dependent on the synoptic gospels for his phrasing; Brown considers it a more ancient formulation than Mark’s.266 If Brown is right then John may have the original source phrasing and Mark may have altered it. I’ll return to this matter in Chapter 7. Note also that Jesus accuses Nicodemus of concentration on earthly things and not heavenly things. That is the accusation that Jesus hurls at Peter when the latter rebukes Jesus for making his first prediction of death and rising up. Not surprisingly, then, the Nicodemus conversation also includes what appears to be a parallel reference in John to Jesus being lifted up. Since John has eliminated Peter’s rebuke of Jesus after the prediction of dying and rising up, it would appear that he offloaded the prophecy and rebuke of Peter to this earlier Nicodemus encounter. We’ll discuss these death prophecies in more detail in Chapter 7.

After the Second Missionary Tour In my earlier analysis of the four disciple’s problem I took the position that Luke most likely represented a better placement of the recruitment of Peter, James and John than did Mark and John. Luke’s version omitted Andrew from the scene and this was corroborated by John’s relocated version of the fish miracle story. Luke places the recruitment scene immediately after the start of the second missionary tour.267 For reasons explained above I thought Luke’s placement of the recruitment scene made the most narrative sense of the three gospels and decided to follow his sequential placement for the fish miracle (CS22) and the recruitment of Peter, James, and John (CS23–25). While my placement might be off, the actual location of these scenes doesn’t undermine the validity of the main thrust of the sequential agreement on almost all of the parallels between Mark and John. Luke places the recruitment scene immediately after Jesus’ second missionary trip. As I argued above, Mark omitted the fish miracle and John relocated it to the post-resurrection period. Both also merged the recruitment scene with the earlier scenes with Peter and the other disciples. Therefore, both Mark and John have followed the second missionary tour with different scenes. Mark follows with a story about the healing of a leper by Jesus and how it creates some problems for his mission. John, however, introduces some chrono-

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logical problems. I have argued above that John’s portrayal of Jesus explaining the gospel to Nicodemus corresponded to Mark’s second missionary tour where Jesus proclaimed the gospel around the country and conducted exorcisms. John follows the Nicodemus scene with what appears to be John’s description of the first missionary tour. I have already showed the parallel between John’s first missionary tour and Mark’s, where each mentions the arrest status of John the Baptist. This leaves us with the problem of why John places what should be the first missionary tour at some point after what appears to be his substitute for the second tour (the Nicodemus dialogue). I will argue in the next section that John’s movement of the first tour notice is part of an editorial attempt to cope with what he perceived to be problems with a source version of Mark’s story about healing a leper (CS26–27).

Healing a Leper (CS26–27) The last story in Mark 1 tells of Jesus’ healing of a leper and resulting problems for the mission.268 Although neither Mark nor Luke specifically describe this act as an exorcism, Joel Marcus, in his commentary on Mark, says that the features of the story indicate that it is an exorcism and “fit into the exorcistic theme of this section of the gospel.”269 In the story, the leper approached Jesus as a suppliant and appealed to Jesus to cure him.270 Jesus took pity, placed his hand on the man, and commanded that he “be made clean.”271 The leper was cured, and Jesus told him to tell no one what happened. Despite Jesus’ request, the man went around telling everybody.272 As a result, Jesus’ fame spread and he “could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter [emphasis added].”273 Mark doesn’t say what town Jesus couldn’t go into nor is it clear why Jesus could no longer go into town openly. Craig Keener, in his commentary on this passage, suggests that the large crowds that were gathering around Jesus as a result of this would overwhelm the small town spaces.274 Hurtado suggests that when the man disobeyed Jesus’ commands it generated the wrong kind of attention that only offered “the shallow glory of publicity.”275 Certainly the notoriety would have increased Jesus’ popularity and his growing popularity is a theme of this portion of all the gospels. In addition to the town’s potential concern for overcrowding, a second unstated problem might also have been at issue. Jesus might have been banned from the town because of either his contact with a leper or because he might attract

The Mission Begins | 321 lepers to the town. Keener says, “Touching a leper was forbidden, and most people would have been revolted by the thought of it.”276 It’s not unreasonable to think that the town officials might have been worried about contamination from lepers. John has nothing that looks like this story in his gospel. (In Chapter 10 I will argue that John adapted this incident in constructing the story of Lazarus.) John might have been offended by the fact that the leper never expressed any faith in Jesus as God’s agent, nor does he even thank Jesus for what he did. He only saw Jesus as someone who can heal him but not necessarily as someone with a higher calling. Some people at that time were thought to have been magical healers without being thought of as a messiah or prophet.277 Even if the leper did think of Jesus as someone special, he insulted and disrespected him by failing to follow the instructions to tell no one. This is not a reaction that John would have liked. If this story were in the underlying source, John would have either omitted it or made some substantial changes. If we look in John for a parallel to Mark’s story that omitted the offensive miracle, we should focus on the other key aspect of the leper story. Jesus took actions that made him very popular and as a result of his popularity it became necessary to leave town. In Mark, the popular act is healing the leper, and that may have caused fear of contamination from lepers. It turns out that John has a similar scenario that omits the miracle aspects of the story. John presents it in two separate but connected incidents. The first part is John’s account of Jesus’ first missionary tour (CS14). He says, After this [i.e., the conversation with Nicodemus] Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized. John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim because water was abundant there; and people kept coming and were being baptized—John, of course, had not yet been thrown into prison.278

After a period of baptizing, word gets out that Jesus is making more disciples than John the Baptist. Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”—although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—he left Judea and started back to Galilee.279

Both Mark and John say that immediately after the second missionary tour (the dialogue with Nicodemus in John corresponds to the second tour in Mark) Jesus

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engaged in an act that made him very popular and created a threat to the local community leaders. In Mark, the fear comes from the prospect of attracting too many people into town and/or contamination from lepers coming into town for a cure; in John it is the success of his baptism mission. In both cases fear of the local officials led Jesus to leave the region. John appears to have replaced the faithless recipient of the miracle with the faithful followers of Jesus’ word. The fact that both gospels, at the same narrative location, portray Jesus as conducting an act that leads to his popularity and that popularity raises threats to local officials, causing Jesus to leave the region where he was operating, seems too strong a coincidence to be accidental. I suggest this is consistent with John’s frequently described practice of replacing offensive miracle stories with non-offensive stories based on Jesus’ words. John and Mark disagree about the chronology of this first missionary tour. I have argued above in the section analyzing the first mission that both appear to have moved the story from its original narrative location. John’s motive for such a move seems clear to me. He used the popularity generated from the first missionary tour as a substitute for the popularity generated by the healing of the leper. In both instances, Jesus’ popularity led to fear among the authorities and Jesus could no longer remain in the community where he was active. In John, this also leads to Jesus heading back to Galilee, where he can reconnect to the underlying storyline.

Leftovers In the analysis above I have argued that Mark 1 and John 1–4, despite several differences in detail and some issues with sequential order, both derived from a common narrative sequence of events and that John made several changes to the content and sequential order for a variety of theological reasons. Many of the changes involved replacing several exorcism scenes with non-exorcism scenes. John was also plagued with some doublets requiring editorial rearrangement for a smoother narrative flow. Because John 1–4 appears to encompass a much longer and wider narrative range of events than Mark 1 it could be argued that I have simply cherrypicked a few scenes out of many events and taken them out of context in order to make the case. Although I have attempted to counter that argument by showing that the chronological variations for the most part share narrative seams marking the beginning and ending of a story arc, it would also be help-

The Mission Begins | 323 ful to show that there is no wide array of Johannine scenes from which to pick and choose. Almost all of John 1–4 has been accounted for. Therefore, I thought it would be helpful to show what parts of Mark 1, John 1–4, and Luke 3:1–5:16 have been omitted from the proposed common source. The fewer the number of scenes omitted from the proposed common source, the more likely the Johannine narrative falls into the same tightly bound framework as Mark 1.

Mark’s Extra Scenes Mark 1 has been divided into twenty-two scenes. The only one not associated with the common source is the “Temptation in the Wilderness (Mark 1:12–13).” Luke has a longer version of this scene, but it comes from the Q material rather than the common source (Luke 4:1–13). There has been some suggestion that John 6:15, in which the crowds try to force Jesus to be king, might be a variation on the Temptation in the Wilderness scene but if that is the case the parallel would be to Q, not the proposed common source. While it is possible that this scene belonged to the proposed common source and John deleted it because of the interaction between Jesus and Satan, we have insufficient data from John to suggest that he knew this scene and so I have omitted it.

Luke’s Extra Scenes In addition to the “Temptation in the Wilderness,” Luke has one other scene not included in the proposed common source, the preaching of John the Baptist to the crowd, which appears just before the crowd asks John if he is the messiah (CS5).280 Also, Luke has moved the “Rejection at Nazareth” from its later position in the common source sequence (in parallel with Mark 6:1–6) and placed it in its present location, where it substitutes for the scenes in which I suggest that the future disciples failed to join up with Jesus (CS12, CS13). The scene in which John preaches to the crowd has two parts. The first, where John refers to the crowd as vipers, comes from the Q material and not the proposed common source. The second part, in which John tells various factions how they should behave towards others, is unique to Luke. In either event, the presence of this scene in Luke has no impact on my reconstruction of the proposed common source. However, its presence just before the messiah question led me to follow Luke’s chronology over John’s as to the placement of the messiah question in the common source sequence.

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John’s Extra Scenes John 1–4 contains five stories not incorporated within the proposed common source. three of the extra episodes belong to John’s problematic second Baptist arc. I’ll review all five incidents in order. They are:

• The wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11); • John the Baptist and a Jew discuss purification (John 3:25); • John the Baptist explains why Jesus’ following is growing faster than his own (John 3:29–30); • John the Baptist explains more about who Jesus is (John 3:31–36); • The sojourn in Samaria (John 4:4–42).

The Wedding in Cana (John 2:1–11). As I argued above, John used this story as a partial substitute for Jesus’ first miracle. In some sense this miracle seems to come out of the same context as the Passover miracles in John 6, the multiplication of loaves and fish and the crossing of the stormy sea. In the Exodus story we have a scene in which Moses transforms bitter water into sweet water.281 It appears immediately after crossing the stormy sea282and immediately before the story of manna from heaven.283 The Exodus story gives us a three-scene miracle triptych, each of which has a parallel in John, only in John, Jesus seems to one-up the Exodus story. He provides real bread and fish instead of manna and quail; he walks across the stormy sea instead of first splitting it and walking on land; and instead of converting bitter water into sweet, he converts water into wine. This raises a possibility that the conversion of water into wine may have been in the proposed common source. Mark has two of the three miracles in the Exodus sequence. If Exodus provided some sort of miracle template that appeared in the proposed common source, then it is possible that Mark chose to omit it for some reason. Perhaps the wedding story was too frivolous an occasion for Jesus to demonstrate miraculous powers that might give away his identity. If the “water into wine” scene was in the proposed common source, then I think it would have appeared closer in sequence to the bread miracle than where John has it. John would have moved it forward for the reasons already explained. However, neither Mark nor Luke have a variation on this miracle, so I am not prepared to say this scene appeared in the proposed common source. The Purification Discussion (John 3:25). John’s account of this discussion about purification consists of one problematic sentence and occurs right after he ends his displaced account of Jesus’ first missionary tour with the announcement of John the Baptist’s arrest status. (In John, the Baptist hasn’t yet been arrested.) “Now a

The Mission Begins | 325 discussion about purification arose between John’s disciples and a Jew.”284 That’s it. We aren’t told what was said. Why is this sentence here? The sense is that John has redacted material from a source version of some sort. Before looking more closely at the scene, I should note that ancient manuscripts are divided between using the singular “Jew” and the plural “Jews.” Metzger, in his Textual Commentary on this passage, argues that the singular form was more likely to be changed to a plural than the plural being changed to a singular.285 On the assumption that the singular is correct, some scholars have suggested that originally “Jew” read “Jesus” and it was changed in order to avert the appearance of a dispute between Jesus and the Baptist.286 Brown translates the passage as reading “a certain Jew.”287 He says there is no textual evidence for equating Jesus with the “Jew” but that such a “reading makes excellent sense.”288 With that in mind let’s turn to Mark 7:1–5 and Luke 11:37–38. Both passages recount a dispute over purity, more specifically the washing of hands before eating. In Mark it is a delegation of Pharisees and scribes who question Jesus about his disciples eating without first washing their hands. In Luke it is a single Pharisee who invited Jesus to dinner and questioned him about his not washing before dinner. Given that John has omitted the substance of the purification debate one might wonder whether this is the same incident that John depicts in his gospel. If in fact, the original dispute was between Jesus and the Baptist, and John changed the identity to avoid the appearance of conflict, might not Mark and Luke have done the same, only transforming the Baptist into a Pharisee. Mark uses a plural form but Luke has the singular. Unfortunately, we have insufficient evidence to determine the true identities of the participants to the dispute. John has a Jew and the Baptist; Luke and Mark have a Pharisee(s) and Jesus. I suspect that John transferred the debate from a Jew questioning Jesus about purity and changing it to a Jew questioning the Baptist about purity. John would have been motivated to avoid the appearance of Jesus having to defend himself for violating a Pharisaic tradition. (Hand washing was a Pharisee tradition but not a legal requirement of scripture.289) This may also explain why John omitted the details of the purity dispute. Although I am inclined to see John’s Purity dispute with the Baptist as a variation on the Mark/Luke version of a purity dispute with Jesus and one that would have been included in the common source, there are a few too many “ifs” involved in the analysis. So, while I suspect that John and Mark and Luke relied on the same common scene, I am not yet prepared to say it should be in the proposed common source.

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Jesus’ Growing Following (John 3:29–30). This passage follows after John’s disciples complain about Jesus’ following growing faster than John’s and John stating that he comes before the messiah. We discussed that part of the scene (John 3:26–28) above and suggested that it stood in as the Malachi 4:5–6 prophecy about the Elijah figure. Following that declaration John explains why Jesus is becoming more popular. He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason, my joy has been fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.290

In this passage, the Baptist refers to Jesus as the Bridegroom and himself as the friend of the bridegroom. The Baptist says the friend should rejoice for the Bridegroom. Mark 2:18–20 reiterates this Bridegroom theme. Some people came to Jesus and asked why John’s disciples and the Pharisees fast but Jesus’ disciples don’t.291 Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.292

In the first part of the response Jesus essentially says the same thing that the Baptist says. Jesus is the Bridegroom and his friends should be rejoicing for him. They shouldn’t subject themselves to hardships while he is still with them. Mark, though, adds on that they can fast after Jesus is gone. I suspect that John may have had problems with Jesus referring to himself as the Bridegroom as that didn’t quite fit the Jesus image that he worked hard to preserve. Transferring the explanation from Jesus to John solves the problem and that is what I think happened. However, while both Mark and John invoke the same “Enjoy your time with the Bridegroom theme,” we can’t be sure that John shifted the statement from Jesus to the Baptist. Also, the words used to express the theme are different. Again, I suspect this incident was in the proposed common source and that John altered it, but I am not yet prepared to include it. John Explains More about Jesus (3:31–36). In this passage John speaks of Jesus in elevated Johannine terms. He is the one from above who testifies to what he has seen and heard but no one accepts his testimony. The Father loves his son and puts all things in his hands. Whoever believes in the son has eternal life and whoever doesn’t will suffer God’s wrath.

The Mission Begins | 327 The passage is somewhat odd coming from John’s mouth. Brown says there is considerable controversy over who the speaker in this passage is.293 Although no change of speaker is indicated with regard to the previous verses (the Bridegroom passage) many scholars believe the speaker is Jesus and not John.294 Brown believes the case is stronger for Jesus than John.295 Some have suggested that these verses originally belonged to the dialogue with Nicodemus.296 Others have seen it as an attempt to create a thematic summary of what transpired with Nicodemus and John.297 Brown suggests it is a third variant of the Nicodemus speech (along with John 12:44–50).298 An important clue that not all is right with this passage is the claim that “He testifies to what he has seen and heard, yet no one accepts his testimony.”299 At this stage of Jesus’ career this is clearly untrue. The only major testimony Jesus has given to this point is the dialogue with a single individual, Nicodemus. Just a few verses before saying no one accepts Jesus’ testimony, John’s disciples complain about Jesus’ following growing faster than John’s. Immediately after this speech, we are told that when the Pharisees learned he was obtaining more disciples than John, Jesus picked up and left Judea.300 Earlier, after confronting the money-changers, many people followed Jesus. Obviously in John’s gospel many people were accepting his testimony. Clearly, this speech, whether by John or Jesus, belongs to a much later narrative stratum than its present location. The Samaritan Sojourn (4:4–42). The story of the Samaritan Sojourn is rather lengthy, taking up almost all of John 4. It encompasses everything between Jesus’ departure from Judea because of his popularity (CS27) to the encounter with the royal official and his feverish son (CS19). It tells of Jesus’ missionary activity in Samaria on his way back to Galilee. This story has no counterpart in the synoptic gospels and, as John’s story indicates, a major political/religious schism existed between the Jerusalem Temple movement and the Jews of Samaria who rejected the Jerusalem Temple as the center of Judaism.301 Matthew says that Jesus actually barred the disciples from entering any town in Samaria.302 Luke has two scenes in which a Samaritan is contrasted with Jews, and the Samaritan behaves in the better manner, but the use of the Samaritan in these scenes is meant as a contrast to bad behavior by the Jews.303 In another scene, however, Luke shows the Samaritans behaving disrespectfully towards Jesus because he won’t spend any time with them.304 His disciples ask him if they should “command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”305 Only John shows the existence of a Samaritan mission and the episode contains much of John’s typical rhetoric. It is almost certainly a Johannine insert

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into the narrative. In terms of narrative structure, it functions as a link in John’s return of Jesus back into Galilee after the narrative detour from Capernaum to Jerusalem. Although John says that Jesus “had to go through Samaria” to get back to Galilee, this is not so. While the route from Jerusalem to Galilee would take him through Samaria, Jesus wasn’t coming from Jerusalem. He was coming from the Jordan where he had been baptizing with his disciples. There were alternate routes from there to Galilee that Jesus could have followed. Brown notes that the use of “had to” suggests that the journey was divinely ordained.306 Brown may be right, but I think it is an indication that John has inserted the text and moved things around in geographical terms. As I argued above, Jesus baptizing by the Jordan constituted the first missionary scene (CS14) and belonged at an earlier point in the gospel. I strongly suspect that “had to” derives from the fact that John had Jesus detour from Capernaum to Jerusalem and needed to bring him back to Galilee after the Jerusalem encounter. In other words, Jesus “had to” go through Samaria to get back to Galilee from Jerusalem but John moved a few scenes around and created a slight geographical anomaly that he failed to cleanup.

Conclusions Apart from the lengthy Samaritan Sojourn there is very little extra material in John 1–4 from which I could pick and choose scenes. Other than that segment, there are only four other scenes from which to pick. Three of them revolve around the very problematic second Baptist arc. Of those, one might be a variation of or addition to the Nicodemus scene (John’s version of CS21). The other two actually suggest possible parallels to scenes in Mark that appear outside of Mark 1, and I chose not to include them in the proposed common source. The fifth scene was the “Wedding at Cana” and John actually integrated it into the narrative to undermine the scene from the proposed common source that portrayed Jesus’ first public act as an exorcism (CS17). What this shows is that John 1–4 and Mark 1 share a tightly bound set of scenes, with almost no room for picking and choosing desirable episodes, and these scenes appear to derive from a common source known to both. Whatever variations we have in the chronological sequence between John and Mark, with one exception, all fall within this tightly bound narrative arc. The one exception is John’s placement of the fish miracle in the post-resurrection period, but we know from Luke’s parallel that it originally belonged to this narrative sequence.

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Summary In this chapter we looked at many scenes in Mark 1, John 1–4, Luke 3:1– 5:16 and a few extra scenes from John 21:1–7 and Luke 1:11–17, 32. From this collection I identified twenty-seven scenes that belong to a proposed common source that unfolded in a particular order. Table 6.3, Scenes from Mark 1, John 1–4, and Luke 3:1–5:16 included in the proposed common source, lists just those twenty-seven scenes in the proposed sequential order. Eliminating the clutter in Table 6.1 should make it easier to examine how well Mark, Luke and John agree with the proposed order of scenes in the Common Source.

Table 6.3:  Scenes from Mark 1, John 1–4, and Luke 3:1–5:16 included in the ­proposed common source. Source: Author Scene Description

CS#

Mark

John

Luke

Jesus is the Son of God [John 1:1–5 presents an enhanced definition of the meaning of Son of God.] John the Baptist is ordained before birth to be the messenger from God according to Malachi’s prophecies. [Mark omits a specific reference to John being ordained before birth. Mark and John rely here on Malachi 3:1. Luke relies upon Malachi 4:5–6.] Appearance of John the Baptist. Quotation from Isaiah 40:3 about the voice in the wilderness. Crowd asks John the Baptist if he is the Messiah. Proclamation by John the Baptist about the one who is to come. John baptizes Jesus. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove.

CS1

1:1

1:1–5, 14, 18.

1:32

CS2

1:2

1:6–7

1:11–17

CS3 CS4

1:4–6 1:3

1:19 1:23

3:1–3 3:4–6

CS5

1:20–22 3:15

CS6

1:7–8

1:24–28 3:16–18

CS7 CS8

1:9 1:10

1:29–31 3:21 1:32 3:22

Continued 

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Table 6.3:  Continued Scene Description

CS#

Mark

John

Luke

A voice from heaven says that Jesus is CS9 1:11 the son of God. [In John, the voice is that of John the Baptist.] Andrew is a disciple of John the Baptist. CS10 [Luke omits Andrew from the named disciples in this episode.]

1:34

3:22

1:40

Jesus is known as “Jesus, the son of Joseph.” Simon (Peter) and his brother Andrew meet Jesus. [Luke omits the scene but implies its existence in Acts 1:21. Mark sets the scene at the Sea of Galilee. John places it in the camp of John the Baptist. Luke 4:38 also indicates that Jesus and Peter knew each other before Peter became a disciple.] Two more named future disciples meet Jesus. [John and James in Mark; Philip and Nathanael in John. Luke omits the scene but implies its existence in Acts 1:21.] Jesus begins his first missionary tour. [Luke separated the issue of John’s arrest from the notice of the first missionary tour.] The arrest status of John the Baptist is mentioned. Jesus goes to Capernaum. Jesus performs first widely-noticed public act. [In Mark, Jesus expels an “unclean spirit” from a man’s body. In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple of corrupt influences.]

CS11

1:45

Possible corroboration from Luke 5:9–10. 3:23

CS12 1:16–18

1:41–42 See Acts 1:21. Also see Luke 4:38.

CS13 1:19–20

1:43–51 See Acts 1:21

CS14 1:14–15

3:22–23 4:14–15

CS15 1:14

3:24

CS16 1:21 CS17 1:22–26

2:12 4:31 2:13–22 4:32–35

3:19–20

The Mission Begins | 331 Table 6.3:  Continued Scene Description

CS#

Mark

John

Luke

Jesus receives first public acclaim in Galilee. Jesus’ second sign–healing a fever in Capernaum. [In Mark, he heals Simon’s mother-in-law. In John, he heals a royal official’s son.] Jesus receives second public acclaim for his “signs” Jesus proclaims the gospel [In Mark: Jesus proclaims message in Galilee, conducts exorcisms. In John: Jesus teaches the message to Nicodemus.] Jesus helps Peter, James the son of Zebedee and his brother John catch an abundance of fish. [John places event in post-resurrection period.] Peter recognizes Jesus as the Lord. Jesus says, “Follow me.” Peter, James and John (but not Andrew) become followers of Jesus.

CS18 1:27–28

4:43–45 4:36–37

CS19 1:29–31

4:46–54 4:38–39

CS20 1:32–34

2:23–25 4:40–41

CS21 1:35–39

3:1–21

4:42–44

CS22

21:1–6

5:1–7

CS23 21:7 5:8 CS24 1:17 21:9. CS25 Mark and John merge 5:11 this scene with CS12 and CS13 CS26 1:41–42 4:1 5:12–13

Jesus heals a leper. [John substitutes baptisms for the healing of the leper.] Jesus ‘actions make him popular and he CS27 1:45 leaves the area. [In Mark, it is due to his healing a leper. In John, it is due to the success of his baptism mission.]

4:1–3

5:15–16

This table is a subset of Table 6.1, including just those scenes that belong to the proposed common source.

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Mark 1 had twenty-one of these scenes, all of which have a parallel touchpoint in John. The only incident in Mark 1 missing from the collection is the story of Jesus’ wandering in the wilderness. If we make no change to the order of scenes in either of the gospels Mark and John agree on the sequential order of fourteen out of Mark’s twenty-one scenes, two-thirds of the common scenes and over half of the total scenes. However, there is a secondary agreement between Mark and John as to two other scenes, CS18 (first public recognition of Jesus in Galilee) and CS19 (second public act, healing a fever). Mark and John agree on the order of the two scenes but John has shifted them out of sequence into a later period. John’s relocation as we saw, was due to his earlier sudden shift of Jesus from Capernaum to Jerusalem and his location of other scenes in Jerusalem before returning to Galilee. This brings the sequential agreement to sixteen out of twenty-one scenes. One of Mark’s departures from John concerns the placement of the Isaiah quote in the story of John the Baptist. Mark places it before the appearance of John the Baptist, John after. Based on the sequential agreement between John and Luke, I determined that Mark was probably the one who made the change. The variation is trivial at most and if we reverse Mark’s order we add two more scenes in sequential agreement with John, eighteen in all. There is one other inconsequential disagreement between Mark and John, having to do with the start of Jesus mission (CS14) and the notice about the arrest of John the Baptist (CS15). In both Mark and John, the two scenes are linked to each other but appear in reverse order. According to my analysis above, though, both had moved the two scenes out of order from the proposed source arrangement but in different directions. Nevertheless, it is clear both know the two scenes are connected. The two scenes, despite the sequential divergence, when considered in context with the other eighteen agreements between Mark and John, should indicate that they, too, were part of a written source known to Mark and John. The only other scene out of order between Mark and John is Jesus’ direction to the disciples to follow him (CS24). The disagreement occurs because each has altered the story of Jesus’ recruitment of the first group of disciples. The degree of correlation in sequence and thematic content between Mark 1 and John is overwhelming and indicates a very high degree of probability that these twenty-one scenes were known to both Mark and John from a written manuscript and that they probably knew the scenes in the original order before making a few relatively trivial changes in the sequences. John, however, has more scenes in parallel to the proposed common source than Mark does. In those cases, we find additional correlations in Luke. Both

The Mission Begins | 333 gospels tell the story of the fish miracle in the presence of the of the disciples and Mark has deleted most of those scenes. Luke and John agree that Jesus helped Peter and others catch a large number of fish (CS22) and that after the catch Peter recognized Jesus as the lord (CS23). Luke placed the fish story after Jesus performed his first two signs and John placed it in the post-crucifixion narrative. I argued above that this was the original story about the recruitment of the disciples and that Luke probably represented the best positioning of that story. John and Luke both say that the crowd asked John if he was the messiah (CS5). Luke and John also agreed that almost immediately after the baptism of Jesus (CS7–9) and before the start of his first mission tour (CS14), Jesus was known as “Jesus, the son of Joseph” (CS11). John says Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist (CS10). The other gospels don’t directly confirm that point but Luke and John omit Andrew from the named recruits in the fish-miracle recruitment story, providing some corroboration for John’s claim. This brings John’s total number of scenes to twenty-six out of twenty-seven. The only scene he is missing is the decision of the disciples to follow Jesus. This is due to his placement of the fish miracle story in the post-resurrection period after the disciples have already followed him. Even there, though, John has an altered scene where Jesus asks Peter to follow him, but here the context is one of higher danger than in the earlier period. Jesus asks Peter to follow him after telling him of the death that it will bring to him. Peter, however, never directly says he will follow. It is implied. In addition to the twenty-seven scenes discussed above, we saw evidence of additional scenes known to both Mark and John. The most problematic is the Temple cleansing scene, which John has used as a substitute for the exorcism of an unclean spirit. John has attached to this scene a discussion of Jesus’ authority for his action, which scene also follows in Mark’s Temple cleansing scene. But Mark’s two scenes occur in the last week of Jesus’ life and John places them two years earlier. John also seems to know about a statement made by Jesus about replacing the Temple if it is torn down, a variation of which appears in Mark’s account of Jesus’ post-arrest trial in a different context. We’ll look at this group of scenes in more detail in Chapters 7 and 9. Another difficult area concerned Jesus’ second public act, the healing of a fever in Capernaum (CS19). In Mark and Luke, the healing appears to be an exorcism. John has eliminated the exorcism and appears to have substituted the healing of a fever in a royal official’s son for the healing of a fever in Peter’s mother-in-law. The evidence suggested that John adapted part of Mark’s account of a

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girl raised from the dead (Mark 5:21–24, 35–43) in order to construct an alternative version of Mark’s story. Additionally, in John’s account of explaining the gospel to Nicodemus, we saw some foreshadowing of Jesus’ three predictions that he would have to die and rise up as depicted in Mark. I didn’t elaborate on them here but will discuss those scenes in more detail in Chapter 7. John also appears to have transferred Jesus’ rebuke of Peter, for concentrating on worldly matters and not heavenly matters, to Nicodemus. In both Mark and John this rebuke is directly connected to Jesus’ teaching about having to rise up. We also saw that John appears to have moved a scene from Jesus’ call of the twelve disciples, the changing of Simon’s name to Peter as depicted in Mark, and moved it into the first meeting between John and Peter (CS12) in an apparent attempt to make it look like Peter became a follower of Jesus at this point. To this point, we have looked at all of John 1–6. Omitting the sojourn in Samaria (4:4–42), which is unique to John, the problematic second Baptist arc (3:25–36), which may have some parallels with other stories in Mark, and portions of John’s very theological Prologue (1:1–18), we find John has a very long string of stories, and scenes within stories, that appear to have close thematic parallels with Mark and flow in fairly close sequential agreement with Mark’s narrative sequence. Most of the variations are trivial, just rearranging the order of a detail within a larger story unit. In a few instances John moved a story element out of its narrative context but left seams indicating where such changes occurred. In a few instances John has a few scenes missing from Mark but present in Luke, and in some other instances Luke and John agree against Mark and in some other instances Mark and John agree against Luke. The very high degree of correlation between John 1–6 and Mark-Luke clearly demonstrates the existence of literary relationship between these three gospels that seems to depend on a written source. This is strengthened by the previous demonstrations in Chapter 4 that John 8:31–59 and John 9 also have significant and substantial parallels with several other episodes in Mark.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

Mark 1:1. Mark 1:2. Luke 7:27. Luke 1:17.

The Mission Begins | 335 5. Mark 9:11. 6. (Mays 1988), 755. 7. Malachi 3:2–4. 8. John 2:16. 9. Luke 1:17. 10. Mark  9:11. 11. Malachi  4:1–3. 12. Mark  9:4. 13. Luke  1:32. 14. John 1:6–7, 21. 15. John  1:1. 16. Luke 1:39–45. 17. Luke  7:20. 18. (Brown 1966), 19–20. 19. (Brown 1966), 27. 20. John  1:1–5. 21. John 1:6–9. The italicized portion designates John 1:6–7. 22. John 1:19–21. 23. (Brown 1966), 27. 24. (Brown 1966), 27. 25. John 1:18. Some ancient manuscripts have variations of this phrase, all basically pointing to some form of the expression that Jesus is the son of God. (Metzger 1994), 169. 26. John  1:14. 27. John  1:15. 28. John  1:30. 29. John 1:29, 36. 30. (Brown 1966), 67–71. 31. (Brown 1966), 71. 32. John 1:30–31. 33. John 1:32–34. 34. John 3:22–23. 35. John  3:26. 36. (Brown 1966), 153. 37. (Brown 1966), 154. 38. (Brown 1966), 154. 39. (Brown 1966), 154. 40. (Brown 1966), 154. 41. Mark  1:1. 42. Mark1:2–3. 43. Mark  1:4.

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44. Mark  1:5. 45. Mark  1:6. 46. Matthew  3:1–4. 47. John  1:18. 48. John  1:19. 49. John 1:20–21. 50. John  1:22. 51. John  1:23. 52. John  1:23. 53. Luke  1.1. 54. Luke  1:3. 55. Luke 1:15–17. 56. Mark references Malachi 3:1 at Mark 1:2 and Malachi 4:5–6 at Mark 9:11. Luke references Malachi 3:1 at Luke 7:27 and Malachi 4:4–6 at Luke 1:17. 57. Luke  1:32. 58. Luke 3:31–32. 59. Luke  1:32. 60. Luke  3:1–3. 61. Luke  3:4–6. 62. Matthew  3:1–2. 63. Matthew  3:3. 64. Matthew  3:4. 65. Matthew  3:5–6. 66. Luke 3:7–9; Matthew 3:7–10. 67. (Kloppenborg 1987), 74. 68. Luke 3:10–14. 69. Luke  3:15. 70. Mark  1:7–8. 71. Luke 3:16–17; Matthew 3:11–12. 72. (Kloppenborg 1987), 74. 73. Luke 3:16; Matthew 3:11. 74. Mark  1:7. 75. Luke 3:16; Matthew 3:11. 76. Mark  1:8. 77. Luke 3:16; Matthew 3:11. 78. Luke 3:17; Matthew 3:12. 79. Malachi  4:1. 80. John 1:24–25. 81. John 1:26–27. 82. John  1:27. 83. John 1:26–27.

The Mission Begins | 337 84. John 1:29. 85. John 1; 29–30. 86. John 1:31. 87. John 1:31. 88. John 1:33. 89. (Brown 1966), 71. 90. Matthew 3:13–15. 91. Mark 1:9. 92. Mark 1:10. 93. Mark 1:11. 94. John 1:32–34. 95. Mark 1:4. 96. John 1:29. 97. Luke 3:18. 98. Luke 3:19–20. 99. Mark 6:17–29. 100. Luke 3:21–22. 101. Luke  1:41. 102. Luke  1:43. 103. Luke  1:44. 104. Mark  11:30. 105. Mark  11:31. 106. Luke  3:23. 107. Luke 3:24–38. 108. John  1:45. 109. Mark 1:12–13. 110. Luke 4:1–13; Matthew 4:1–11. 111. Luke  4:5–6. 112. Mark 1:14–15. 113. John 3:22–24. 114. John 3:25–36. 115. Luke 4:14–15. 116. John  4:1–2. 117. John  1:42. 118. Mark  1:13. 119. Mark  1:21. 120. John 2:1–12. 121. Mark  1:16. 122. Mark  1:17. 123. Mark  1:18. 124. Mark  1:19.

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125. Mark  1:20. 126. See, for example, Mark 5:37, 9:2, 10:35–37. 127. John  1:35. 128. John  1:36. 129. John  1:37. 130. John 1:38–40. 131. John  1:41. 132. Cephas is the Aramaic word for “rock” and Peter is the Greek word for same. 133. Mark  3:16. 134. Acts 1:21–22. 135. John  1:44. 136. John  21.2. 137. John  20:25. 138. See, for example, Mark 5:37, 10:35–37. 139. Mark 3:16–17. 140. Mark  3:18. 141. Galatians  2:9. 142. John  21.2. 143. John  21.2. 144. Mark 3:16–18. 145. Bar is Aramaic for “son of.” 146. John  1:43. 147. John  1:44. 148. John  1:43. 149. John  1:45. 150. John  1:46. 151. (Brown 1966), 77. 152. Luke 5:1–11. 153. Luke  5:1. 154. Luke  5:2. 155. Luke  5:3. 156. Luke  5:4. 157. Luke  5:5. 158. Luke  5:6–7. 159. Luke  5:7. 160. Luke  5:8. 161. Luke 5:9–10. 162. Luke  5:10. 163. Luke  5:11. 164. John 20:19–28. 165. John  21:4.

The Mission Begins | 339 1 66. (Mays 1988), 1075–76. 167. John  21:2. 168. John  21:7. 169. John  21:3. 170. John  21:4. 171. John  21:7. 172. John  21.7. 173. John  21:11. 174. John  21:12. 175. John  21:14. 176. Compare Luke 24:36–42 to John 20:19–29. 177. John 21:15–17. 178. John 21:18–19. 179. John  21:19. 180. Luke 7:18–20. 181. Luke 7:18–19. 182. John  1:44. 183. John  1:49. 184. John  1:51. 185. (Brown 1966), 77. 186. (Brown 1966), 77–78. 187. John  12:22. 188. Mark  1:21. 189. Mark  1:23. 190. (Strong 2001), #169. 191. Mark  1:24. 192. Mark 1:25–26. 193. Mark  1:27. 194. Luke  4:36. 195. Mark  1:28. 196. John 2:13, 6:4, 12:1. 197. John  2:1. 198. John  2:2. 199. Cf., John 6:60–66. 200. John  2:7–9. 201. John  2:11. 202. John  2:12. 203. Jon  2:13. 204. John 2:23–25. 205. John  4:45. 206. John  1:54.

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2 07. Mark 11:27; Luke 20:1. 208. Mark  11:17. 209. Isaiah  56:7. 210. Mark 11:18; Luke 19:47–48. 211. Mark  11:30. 212. Mark  12:33. 213. John  2:18. 214. John  2:19. 215. John  2:21. 216. Mark 14:57–59. 217. John  2:21. 218. Mark  13:2. 219. Luke 21:5–6. 220. Baba Batra, 4a; Shemot Rabba 36:1. 221. John  1:1–3. 222. Mark  1:29. 223. Mark  1:30. 224. Mark  1:31. 225. Matthew 8:13–14. 226. Mark 1:32–34. 227. Mark 1:35–39. 228. Luke  4:38. 229. Mark  1:29. 230. Luke  4:38. 231. Luke  4:38. 232. Luke 4:39. J, L Mays in commenting on this passage describes it as an exorcism. (Mays 1988), 1020. 233. John  4:54. 234. John  4:46. 235. (Brown 1966), 190. 236. John  4:47. 237. John 4:48–49. 238. John  4:50. 239. John  4:51. 240. John  4:52. 241. John 4:52–53. 242. John  4:53. 243. John  4:54. 244. (Brown 1966), 192, n.54. 245. (Brown 1966), 192, n.54. 246. Luke 7:1–10. Matthew 8:5–13.

The Mission Begins | 341 247. Luke  7:9. 248. (Brown 1966),192. 249. John  4:52. 250. (Brown 1966), 193. 251. Mark  5:23. 252. John  4:47. 253. Mark  5:35. 254. (Brown 1966), 191, n.50. 255. (Brown 1966), 191, n. 50. 256. Mark  1:39. 257. John  3:10. 258. John  3:2. 259. John  3:3. 260. John  3:11. 261. John  3:12. 262. John 3:13–15. 263. (Brown 1966), 146. 264. (Brown 1966), 146. 265. (Brown 1966), 146. 266. (Brown 1966), 146. 267. Luke 5:1–10. 268. Mark 1:40–45. 269. (Marcus 1999), 208. 270. Mark  1:40. 271. Mark  1:41. 272. Mark  1:44. 273. Mark  1:45. 274. (Keener 1993), Mk 1:40–45. 275. (Hurtado 2011), 34. 276. (Keener 1993), Mk 1:40–45. 277. See, for example, the story of Simon the magician in Acts 8:9 ff. 278. John 3:22–24. 279. John  4:1–3. 280. Luke 3:7–14. 281. Exodus 15:23–25. 282. Exodus  15:22. 283. Exodus  16:1. 284. John  3:25. 285. (Metzger 1994), 175. 286. (Brown 1966), 152. 287. (Brown 1966), 150.

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2 88. (Brown 1966), 152. 289. (Keener 1993), Mark 7:2–3. 290. John 3:29–30. 291. Mark  2:18. 292. Mark 2:19–20. 293. (Brown 1966), 159. 294. (Brown 1966), 159. 295. (Brown 1966), 159–160. 296. (Brown 1966), 159. 297. (Brown 1966), 159. 298. (Brown 1966), 160. 299. John  3:32. 300. John  4:1–3. 301. John  4:9. 302. Matthew  10:5. 303. Luke 10:29–37, 17:11–19. 304. Luke 9.52–53. 305. Luke  9:54. 306. (Brown 1966), 169.

Bibliography Brown, R. E. (1966). The Gospel According to John I-XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Hurtado, L. W. (2011). Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Keener, C. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Kloppenborg, J. S. (1987). The Formation of Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Mays, J. L. (1988). Harper’s Bible Commentary. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Metzger, B. M. (1994). A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament, second edition a companion volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.). London: United Bible Societies. Strong, J. (2001). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

7

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem

The chief disruption to the sequential agreement of what will ultimately prove to be a very long set of parallel events in Mark and John revolves around the very different versions of Jesus’ last trip to Jerusalem in the two gospels. I am not talking here just about the occasional reordering of a detail within a story or John’s frequent practice of slicing out an offensive element and relocating it in a different context. I am talking about the resequencing of several episodes. The divergence between John and Mark incorporates both significant chronological differences as to when the visit occurred and what took place in the course of those events. There is almost no narrative overlap within the two accounts of Jesus’ last visit. At the same time, John’s version of the last visit has several parallels to events outside of Mark’s version of the story, and Mark’s version of the last visit has several parallels to events outside of John’s version of the last visit. If the two were working from a common written source then at least one of them, if not both, have radically altered the narrative flow. Mark’s account of Jesus’s last visit runs from Mark 11:1 through 13:2. It consists of three major strands. First is what scholars usually refer to as the Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem, and which Mark appears to place about five days before the final Passover. Second is a series of confrontations, arguments and teachings at the Temple. Third is a long series of prophecies. The visit ends about two days

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before Passover, at which point Mark proceeds to the events leading up to the arrest of Jesus.1 John separates the Triumphal Entry scene from Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. The last visit narrative runs from John 7:1, just shortly after the miracle of the loaves, to 10:39. In John, the visit begins at about the time of the Festival of Booths, some six months before the final Passover,2 and ends at about the Festival of Dedication (Hanukkah), about three and a half months before the final Passover.3 His much longer account of the Triumphal entry scene encompasses John 12:12–50. Intriguingly, like Mark, he places it five days before the final Passover. A key difference between Mark and John as regards the Triumphal Entry is that at the conclusion of the scene, Mark’s Jesus enters Jerusalem to begin the final visit and John’s Jesus doesn’t enter the city but goes into hiding. So, while Mark says Jesus engaged the authorities in the Temple during the final week, John says Jesus was hiding away. We have already looked at several episodes that John places in the course of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem and which have parallels to stories in Mark that happened outside of his account of the last visit to Jerusalem. In Chapter 4 we saw that John 8:31–59, all of John 9, and John 10:19:21 were built out of Mark 3:20–35 (“True Kindred/Satan Accusation” sequence), Mark 8:22–26 (healing the blind man at Bethsaida with saliva), and Mark 10:46–52 (healing the blind man at Jericho). In addition, we saw in Chapter 5 that John 7:14–15 paralleled Mark 6:2, from the Hometown Rejection story, and in Chapter 3 we saw that John 7:19–24 originally belonged at the end of John 5 as a continuation of Jesus’ defense against violating the Sabbath by healing. John 7:16–18 served as a narrative bridge between these two John 7 passages. At the same time, we have also seen in Chapter 6 that John has placed some episodes from Mark’s account of the final visit in the early part of his narrative, well before his account of the final visit. These included the chasing of the moneychangers from the temple and the resulting argument over Jesus’ authority to engage in such actions. Given that we have already looked at John 8:35 –10:21, we can skip over that material in this chapter. In addition, my analysis of the remaining material indicates that John 7:32, 7:45–52, 8:12–20, and 10:23–39 incorporate a heavily disguised account of the Jewish trial of Jesus, an event present in Mark and Luke but missing from John’s narrative. Because of the complexities of that analysis I will postpone that discussion to Chapter 9.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 345 John 7:53–8:11, the story of the adulterous woman, has no counterpart in the other gospels. However, most commentators agree that this story is a late addition and was not part of John’s original gospel.4 The chief reason for this conclusion is its absence from early major textual witnesses and from early Greek writers on John.5 There is evidence that the story may have been known in early times but not as a part of scripture.6 Because it lacks any parallel in Mark or Luke I don’t consider it to be part of the proposed common source. In this chapter, then, we are effectively focusing on John 7:1–13, 7:25–44, and 8:21–30 for any further parallels between John’s account of the last visit and that of Mark and/or Luke. Additionally, because John separates the Triumphal Entry from the last visit, I will look at all three versions of the Triumphal Entry. Luke and John both have longer accounts than Mark and some of their additional material appears to overlap, suggesting that Mark might have removed some details from his version of the Triumphal Entry. John also incorporates some references to Jesus being “lifted” up. I noted previously, that John has three passages about being lifted up and some scholars see these three passages as parallels, and possibly earlier versions, of Mark’s three predictions that Jesus will die and rise up. We’ll review all three passages in Mark and John to see what we can extract from the proposed common source. There is also some material in John’s account of the Triumphal Entry that appears to belong to the events just prior to the arrest of Jesus. We’ll hold off on looking at that material until Chapter 8. A question that should be raised is why there is such a stark disparity between Mark and John regarding the last visit to Jerusalem when in so many other instances there seems to be a significant amount of sequential agreement and/or narrative parallel. My answer is that it has to do with a major plot change in John’s gospel with regard to the reason why the authorities wanted to put Jesus to death. Let me briefly outline the argument. In Mark, the popularity of a messianic Jesus led the priests to fear him as a political rival who would seek to rule in their place. (The High Priest was the Roman appointed head of the Judean polity.) Therefore, they plotted to kill him. The issue in Mark is one of political rivalry and jealousy. In John, on the other hand, it is the Romans who are upset with Jesus’ popularity. The upsurge in popularity was due to Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead,7 whose resurrection is absent from Mark, Luke, and Matthew. According to the priests, “If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”8

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For John, the raising of Lazarus is the culmination of Jesus’ mission, proof that he has power over life and death and that faith in Jesus as the one sent by the Father will bring eternal life. John wants the raising of Lazarus to be the source of opposition, a direct challenge to Jesus’ authority over life and death. John didn’t want to depict Jesus being put to death for petty issues of jealousy or political rivalry among earthly leaders. John even has the priests put out an arrest warrant for the raised Lazarus as well as Jesus.9 This means that if Mark represents the closest form of the proposed common source version of the last visit, and for reasons explained below I think it does, then John would have to modify or eliminate any stories in Mark’s source version that related to the jealousy angle among the chief priests so that he can focus on the “Lazarus/Roman Threat” theme. First, he placed a large time gap between Jesus’ last visit and the events leading up to the plot to kill Jesus. Second, he set up the raising of Lazarus as the reason for the actions of the Jewish authorities. Those who lacked faith in Jesus as the one sent by God to save the people thought (ironically) that the only way to save the people was to kill Jesus.10 Third, he removed Jesus from Jerusalem during the final days of the dispute so that the story focused on the aftermath of the Lazarus incident. Fourth, he moved the most well-known cause of conflict between Jesus and the authorities, the chasing of the moneychangers, from the last week of Jesus’s life to a time frame two years earlier, removing the murder threat and mitigating the incident’s impact over several visits to Jerusalem.

The Triumphal Entry Mark, Luke and John all have versions of the scene frequently referred to as the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, although in John Jesus never actually enters the city. Luke and John have several additions to Mark’s account and in some of those instances they agree with each other against Mark, indicating that Mark has omitted some scenes. In Mark, the story serves as the first stage of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. In John, Jesus goes into hiding after the event and never voluntarily returns to Jerusalem. An interesting difference between the three versions concerns what words the crowd shouted to greet Jesus. In the analysis below, I look at the differences and attempt to reconstruct what words the proposed common source had attributed to the crowd.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 347 I will also look at some issues raised by the narrative chronology and sequence of events as well as some questions as to the use by John of a prophecy from Zechariah 9:9 and what looks like a connection between this story and Solomon’s actions in claiming the throne of his father David. John has also added in some additional material to his narrative that doesn’t belong there. It appears to be imported and altered from other locations in the proposed common source and I will address those matters in more detail when we come to them, both in this chapter and the next.

Mark’s Version (11:1–11) On the way to Jerusalem, Jesus sent two disciples into a village to obtain a donkey colt, with instructions on where to find it and what to say to the villagers.11 The disciples brought back the colt, placed cloaks over the mount, and Jesus rode towards Jerusalem atop the animal.12 As Jesus approached the city, throngs greeted him along the roadway, spreading cloaks on the ground and waiving branches.13 As he rode by, the crowd shouted, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”14 When he reached the city gates, Jesus entered Jerusalem and visited the Temple.15 Due to the lateness of the hour, he just looked around and then left, going to the nearby city of Bethany.16

Luke’s Version (19:28–44) Luke closely follows Mark’s account of the instructions given to the disciples about finding and bringing the donkey and of Jesus mounting the animal.17 He then departs from Mark on a few details. The crowd spread cloaks along the path but didn’t waive branches. As Jesus rode along, Luke added that the crowd was motivated by “all the deeds of power that they had seen.”18 Also, the words shouted by the crowd differ from those in Mark, to wit, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!”19 At this point Luke significantly departed from Mark’s narrative. After the crowd shouted its blessing, Luke added a scene in which some Pharisees who witnessed what took place approached Jesus and complained, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.”20 Jesus replied, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”21 Following the confrontation with the Pharisees, Jesus wept over Jerusalem’s fate.22 He begins, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things

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that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes [emphasis added].”23 He doesn’t say who this “you” is, but we should probably assume it is a reference to the Jewish authorities. Note Luke’s emphasis on “peace”, which reinforces the “peace” theme” in his version of the words used by the crowd. Next, Jesus adds on a prophecy that sounds very much like a prediction of the Roman destruction of the Jewish Temple. “Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another.”24 He says that this would come about “because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God [emphasis added].”25 As in Mark, Jesus entered the city and went to the Temple. But instead of turning around and going to Bethany as Mark has it, Luke moved directly to the confrontation between Jesus and the money changers.26 Mark placed that incident on the next day, when Jesus returned to the city.27 Luke makes no mention of leaving for Bethany. He has, for all practical purposes, eliminated Mark’s account of the first day in Jerusalem and continued with his version of Mark’s Temple confrontations.

John’s Version (12:12–50) Although John appears to be drawing upon the same background story as Mark and Luke he departs significantly from Mark and appears to have some variations on Luke’s additions to Mark. John begins without any mention of sending the disciples to fetch a donkey. He starts with Jesus on foot and being greeted by a crowd that rushed out to greet him.28 The enthusiastic crowd waived branches but there is no mention of placing cloaks on the ground.29 In this regard John partially agrees with Mark against Luke. Here, too, the crowd shouts out a greeting, but the words used differ from both Mark and Luke, with Jesus saying, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!”30 After the crowd greeted Jesus, we are told that he found a donkey and sat on 31 it. This, John says, was to fulfill scripture and he recites a passage from Zechariah 9:9.32 “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt [emphasis added]!”33 John is the only one of the three to reference Zechariah’s prophecy. Matthew, though, also refers to the same Zechariah passage in his version of the story, but the context is slightly different.34 I’ll have more to say about the Zechariah passage further below.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 349 John adds that the crowds had turned out because they heard about the raising of Lazarus.35 In this regard he seems to agree with Luke against Mark. Both Luke and John say the crowd was motivated by the deeds of power that Jesus had done. Mark has no such description. However, Luke’s gospel does not include the story of raising Lazarus. This would suggest that John has replaced Luke’s multiple unidentified deeds of lesser power with Jesus’ one greater deed (in John) of restoring life. (Luke actually has two separate accounts of Jesus raising someone from the dead, but he places them earlier in the gospel.36 Neither of those resurrections appear in John’s gospel.) Among those who were present for the praise of Jesus were some Pharisees and they were unhappy with what they saw. “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!”37 Although the words are different from Luke’s version of the Pharisee complaint, both versions show the Pharisees upset about Jesus’ popularity. So, Luke and John both show Pharisees complaining about what the crowd was doing and Mark has no such scene. The agreement between John and Luke suggests that Mark chose to omit it. Although John tells us that Jesus sat on the donkey, he provides no indication that John rode the donkey towards the city or entered Jerusalem. Instead, Jesus appears to have held court at the location where he sat on his mount. John 12:20–36a, following immediately after the Pharisee complaint, describes some teachings and discussions that occurred while Jesus sat on the donkey. These scenes do not belong to the source version of the Triumphal Entry narrative and I will discuss some portions of this sequence in this chapter and the remaining parts in the next. I will skip over those verses for now and jump to John’s conclusion to the Triumphal Entry story, where two things take place. First, John says that after the teachings just alluded to Jesus went into hid38 ing. So, where the Triumphal Entry in Mark serves as a starting point for Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem during the final week of Jesus’ life, in John it serves as a defining point keeping Jesus out of Jerusalem during the final week of his life. Nevertheless, John and Mark seem to agree against Luke as to what happened after the Triumphal Entry. In their versions, after the Triumphal Entry scene, Jesus left Jerusalem without confronting any of the authorities. Luke, on the other hand, shows Jesus chasing out the moneychangers from the Temple. This suggests that Luke modified the sequence of events. We should note at this point that prior to John’s description of the Triumphal Entry, the High Priest had issued an order to arrest Jesus on sight.39 From John’s perspective this would explain why Jesus went into hiding. Presumably, the precise time for his arrest and execution had not yet arrived.

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The second thing that occurs is a commentary by John on the events that transpired. He begins by saying, “Although he had performed so many signs in their presence, they did not believe in him [emphasis added].”40 This line is problematic. To begin with, John’s Jesus just had a massive enthusiastic turnout precisely from people who witnessed a single sign, the raising of Lazarus. Which witnesses to his signs didn’t believe in him and which “many signs” did they witness? John doesn’t say. Previously, we have seen instances in which John has puzzling references to crowds having witnessed multiple signs that he hasn’t described, and which hadn’t yet taken place in his gospel. These tended to be artifacts left over from redacting earlier references to healing missions and exorcisms. This suggests that John may have slightly redacted Jesus’ observation. Luke says the crowd that turned out had come because of “all the deeds of power that they had seen.” These signs would have been mostly healing missions and exorcisms. This suggests that John, consistent with his earlier editing approach, altered the original text. Here he replaced the original reference (preserved in Luke) to the witnesses to the various healing missions and exorcisms with the witnesses to his raising of Lazarus, introducing the theme of eternal life. He moved the original phrase about “many signs” from where Luke had it to this new location in order to disguise the original reference. It is my suggestion that the proposed common source referred to members of the crowd witnessing multiple signs. John changed it to the Lazarus event and Mark removed the reference altogether. John tells us that this lack of faith was in fulfilment of a prophecy from Isa41 iah. He quotes two separate passages attributed to the prophet, Isaiah 53.142 and 6:10.43 It is the latter that interests me. “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, so that they might not look with their eyes, and understand with their heart and turn—and I would heal them [emphasis added].”44 This seems to parallel Luke’s lament over Jerusalem, which said in part, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes [emphasis added].” Both Luke and John say in connection with the Triumphal Entry, after the complaint of the Pharisees, that the authorities have been blinded to the truth and that God will punish them for their lack of commitment. So, John and Luke appear to be describing the same concept but in different words. We should assume that one of the evangelists reflects the original wording and that the other altered the text.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 351 Complicating John’s commentary, despite the earlier pronouncement that witnesses lacked faith, John concludes by telling us, “Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him” but that they feared to make their views known because the Pharisees would throw them out of the synagogues.45 This is a somewhat clumsy addition to the earlier lament about lack of faith from witnesses. Brown suggests that the reference to being thrown out of synagogues indicates that John is referring to events that occurred to the Johannine community towards the end of the first century.46 This identifies it as late addition to the gospel that couldn’t be part of the proposed common source. After this commentary on the failure to believe in Jesus, John has him summarize his teaching.47 This summary serves as a lead in to John’s account of Jesus’ Last Supper with the apostles,48 which we will discuss further in the next chapter. As John’s Jesus has gone into hiding, we have now moved to another location and into another time frame.

What Did the Crowd Shout? Mark, Luke and John each give a different version of what the crowd shouted out to Jesus. Below, I attempt to reconstruct what would have been in the proposed common source. Here are the three gospel versions of what was said. Mark: “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!” Luke: “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” John: “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel!”

The first thing I notice is that Mark has two blessings for Jesus and one salute to heaven; Luke has one blessing for Jesus and one salute/prayer for heaven; and John has only one blessing for Jesus and no mention of heaven. I’ll start by analyzing the blessings. Mark’s first blessing is to the “one who comes in the name of the Lord.” His second is for the coming kingdom of our ancestor David. In this second blessing the crowd has identified Jesus as a Davidic messiah. Both Luke and John conspicuously omit any direct reference to the kingdom of “David.” Since Luke uses Mark as a source, we have to ask why he chose not to follow him and substituted different words. We’ll come back to that.

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Let’s compare the blessings. Mark and John begin with “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”; Luke begins with “blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord.” So, Mark and John agree against Luke in using “one” where Luke uses “king.” John and Mark also agree against Luke that after the opening portion there was a reference to a king. John appends “King of Israel” and Mark’s adds a second expansive blessing for the one who will rule David’s kingdom. Luke has no appendage but has acknowledged that “the one” is a king by substituting “king” for “one.” So, Mark and John agree against Luke in first referring to “the one” and then adding an identification of “the one” as a king. John and Luke, however, also agree against Mark on some details. First, they both have only a single blessing for Jesus where Mark has two separate blessings. John and Luke both refer to a king existing in the present where Mark talks about a coming kingdom in the future. John and Luke also use the specific term “king” and Mark doesn’t use that specific word. And, as I mentioned above, neither John nor Luke make any reference to David where Mark specifically incorporates a Davidic messiah into his blessing. Reading all three together and aligning the agreements and disagreements, I think it is fair to say that John represents the original form of the blessing. John in agreement with Luke indicates only a single blessing. John in agreement with Mark indicates that it began with “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” John, also in agreement with Mark, places a reference to the “one” as some sort of king at the end of the first part of the blessing. We just need to resolve the question of how the king was identified. John uses the phrase “King of Israel” and Luke simply says “king” and changes the word order. Neither mentions David. Both also talk about an existing king. So, I think Mark altered the description of the king by inserting the second blessing. I think both Mark and Luke had motive to make the change. Luke is gentile-inclusive in his gospel and I suspect the term “King of Israel” may have been seen as gentile-exclusive and he chose to redact the phrase. He never uses the term “King of Israel” throughout his gospel. Describing Jesus only as a “king” would be a more inclusive description of Jesus’ role, not limiting it to a territory or a people. But simply placing the word “king” at the end of the blessing wouldn’t read well; (i.e., “Blessed is the one who came in the name of the Lord, a king.”) So, he made a smart stylistic change by substituting “king” for “one.” Mark, on the other hand, may have thought the term “King of Israel” may have come too close to an accurate description of who Jesus was, and did not want to depict any humans as able to correctly identify Jesus. He does on one occasion draw a connection between “messiah” and “king of Israel” but in the context

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 353 of Jews mocking the crucified Jesus.49 Here he has the Jews identify Jesus as a Davidic messiah, but from Mark’s perspective, such a description must be erroneous, because no human knew Jesus’ true nature until after he died. In support of that view Mark has a scene later in the gospel where Jesus specifically denies that Jesus can be a Davidic messiah.50 We’ll look at that scene further below. John was indifferent to what term the Jews used to describe Jesus as long as they believed he was the one sent by God to bring eternal life. Earlier in his gospel, Nathanael, whom Jesus highly praised, identified him as both the “Son of God” and the “King of Israel.”51 This brings us to the second part of the crowd’s cheer, the blessing of heaven. Luke has an expanded version of Mark’s praise and John has no reference to heaven. I suspect Mark has it right and that Luke altered it to go with his thematic agenda of “peace.” John, I suspect, deleted it because the separate blessings for Jesus and for heaven may have implied that Jesus and the Father were not acting in concert. Taking all the pieces together, the full cheer of the crowd would likely have been “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

The Zechariah 9:9 Citation Of the three gospel versions of the Triumphal Entry under consideration, only John cites or makes use of the prophecy in Zechariah 9:9 and it is used there to explain why Jesus sat on the donkey. However, Matthew also refers to the same passage in his version of the story.52 But Matthew relates the prophecy to the effort of the disciples to locate the donkey pursuant to Jesus’ instructions and places it before the Triumphal Entry. Since Matthew didn’t get it from Mark, it suggests that the association of this scene with the Zechariah prophecy had some degree of circulation. But was it in the proposed common source? If it were, why did both Mark and Luke delete it? Scriptural citations would be expected to enhance their gospel claims to the legitimacy of Jesus’ role. It is my view that the addition of the Zechariah passage was a later development. Originally, I suspect, most Jews even slightly familiar with their history as given in the bible, would have seen the Triumphal Entry not as a fulfilment of the Zechariah prophecy but as a reflection of how Solomon seized the throne away from Adonijah, who was initially seen as the rightful heir to David’s throne.

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According to the biblical account, when David was ill and near death, a power struggle developed over his successor. Solomon’s mother, Bathsheba, working with the prophet Nathan, maneuvered David into endorsing Solomon as his heir. Pursuant to David’s instructions, So the priest Zadok, the prophet Nathan, and Benaiah son of Jehoiada, and the Cherethites and the Pelethites, went down and had Solomon ride on King David’s mule, and led him to Gihon. There the priest Zadok took the horn of oil from the tent and anointed Solomon. Then they blew the trumpet, and all the people said, “Long live King Solomon!” And all the people went up following him, playing on pipes and rejoicing with great joy, so that the earth quaked at their noise. [emphasis added]53

Gihon was in the Kidron Valley just outside of Jerusalem and its spring was a major water source for the city. Solomon’s procession on mule went from Gihon up into Jerusalem and Solomon sat on David’s throne and the city cheered.54 Solomon, who allegedly built the first Temple, would have been a great hero to the Jews and the story of his succession as David’s heir would have probably been well known. To the average Jew, Jesus’ procession on a donkey into Jerusalem as crowds cheered on would be seen as a reenactment of Solomon’s seizure of the throne from his rivals, in this case either the Jewish authorities and/or the Romans. Mark’s added blessing implicitly ties the Triumphal Entry to Solomon’s ride by referring to the “coming kingdom of our ancestor David.” John, however, appears to have altered the basic story, eliminating the donkey ride, which would have equated Jesus with a Davidic messiah. John had no interest in contemporary politics or claims of earthly kingship. He was only interested in promoting the gospel of eternal life in the future. So, he altered the politicized Solomon story and replaced it with a pacific alternative scenario in which Jesus simply sat on a donkey and cited a prophetic voice saying that “your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

Chronological Issues John sets the scene known as the Anointing at Bethany six days before Passover55 and places the Triumphal Entry on the next day, five days before Passover.56 After the Triumphal Entry scene, John says Jesus went into hiding. This leaves Jesus outside of Jerusalem during all the time that Mark says Jesus went to the Temple day after day. Mark places the Anointing scene no earlier than two days before the Passover57 but places the Triumphal Entry scene close in time to where John puts it.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 355 The most cautious approach to this disagreement is to say that John and Mark place the Triumphal Entry at about the same time but disagree as to when the Anointing scene took place. If they both relied on a common source for the story, then either the source was imprecise or at least one of the two changed the date. I will discuss the Anointing scene in more detail in the next chapter. Here I am concerned with chronology. The conflict in dating bothers me. The problem concerns when the Triumphal Entry occurred. It is my belief, mostly speculative at this point, that both Mark and John have made chronological alterations to the narrative sequencing. More specifically, I believe that the Triumphal Entry happened after the Anointing scene as John has it but that the Anointing scene occurred two days before Passover, as Mark has it. In this scenario, the anointing of Jesus with oil at Bethany parallels the anointing of Solomon with oil just before riding the donkey into Jerusalem to claim his throne. After the ride, Jesus would have gone into hiding to avoid arrest. If this is correct, it would mean that Mark moved the Triumphal Entry scene from after the Anointing scene and after Jesus left Jerusalem to the period before Jesus went to Jerusalem. It would also mean that John changed the dates for the Anointing and Triumphal Entry scenes. I’ll look at the motives for each doing so in a moment. First let me explain why I think this is the case. The Triumphal Entry scene depicts a large crowd hailing Jesus as King of the Jews. From a political-historical standpoint this is problematic. The Romans would not tolerate an unauthorized individual being hailed as king of the Jews and would likely crack down on such a demonstration and take such a person into custody as soon as possible. The Romans simply didn’t tolerate such actions. As I noted above, John saw the popularity of Jesus as an important concern of the Romans. However, Mark shows Jesus coming back to Jerusalem day after day with no Roman interaction, although the Romans would have had large numbers of troops stationed in and around Jerusalem during the Passover holiday period. From a literary standpoint, I note that after Mark depicts Jesus being hailed by large crowds as the Davidic Messiah that adulation disappears from Mark throughout Jesus’ return visits to Jerusalem. No one during the subsequent visits declares him to be the Davidic heir. There is one scene, discussed further below, in which there is a discussion about whether the messiah can be a descendant of David, but it doesn’t depict anyone saying Jesus is the Davidic messiah.58 If anything, it shows Jesus denying that the messiah comes from David’s line, which would imply that someone accused him of not being the messiah because he was not seen as a descendant of David. The absence of any further salutations is puzzling, and perhaps provides a clue that Mark may have moved the Triumphal

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Entry from the end of the Jerusalem visit, where it would serve as the climax to Jesus’ appearance in the city, to the beginning of the visit. Another literary clue comes from Luke, who omits Mark’s claim that after the Triumphal Entry Jesus went into Jerusalem, turned around, and left without confrontation. While Luke generally follows Mark’s account of the Triumphal Entry, his deletion of that scene may indicate that it didn’t appear in the proposed common source. This could indicate that Mark eliminated the claim that Jesus hid away after the parade and replaced it with a claim that Jesus went in and out of the city without any confrontation. Luke, faced with a choice between Mark’s sequence and the proposed common source, may have chosen Mark’s chronology for the Triumphal entry but didn’t take sides as to what happened immediately after the ride ended. Consistent with this theory, we would need a reasonable explanation for why both Mark and John would make such alterations. In John’s case, the most likely explanation is that he needs to explain why Jesus didn’t appear in Jerusalem during the final week. This was necessary to isolate the Roman concern over the Lazarus incident from the jealousy of the Jewish authorities. So, he moved the plot to kill Jesus, based on his alternative scenario about the raising of Lazarus, to an earlier point in time so that it would be necessary for Jesus to stay away from the city until his “hour” had come. John says that after the Triumphal Entry Jesus went into hiding, which would be consistent with avoiding Roman capture after the Triumphal Entry. Mark, I suspect, would have been appalled by depicting Jesus as going into hiding so he rearranged matters such that not only doesn’t Jesus go into hiding after the Triumphal Entry, but returns to Jerusalem day after day. However, he made a slight additional change. Instead of saying that Jesus left the city and went into hiding, he says that Jesus popped into the city and left, without any confrontations taking place. He then begins all the action on the following day. While this arrangement strikes me as the most logical recreation of what the narrative sequence should have been in the proposed common source, it is still speculative because we have no corroboration. So, for convenience, I will leave Mark’s arrangement intact and just separately note my speculative alternative as to the chronology of the Triumphal Entry.

Reconstructing the Proposed Common Source Below I outline the sequence of scenes that occurred in the proposed common source concerning the Triumphal Entry. Based on the apparent agreement be-

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 357 tween Luke and John it would seem that Mark omitted three scenes from the proposed common source, one indicating that the crowd turned out because of the signs that Jesus performed, a second involving complaints by the Pharisees at the greeting Jesus received from the crowds, and the third incorporating some sort of lament over the blindness of Jewish authorities to the presence of God. Mark said the crowd greeted Jesus by waiving branches and spreading cloaks on the ground. Luke acknowledges only the cloaks; John only the branches. John probably omitted the laying of cloaks along the road because he eliminated the ride on the donkey along the road. Why Luke eliminated the branches is difficult to say. Together, however, Luke and John reinforce Mark’s description of waiving branches and laying down cloaks, so I suspect Mark is correct in recording the presence of both activities. Based on my analysis of the differences among Mark, Luke and John as to what the crowd shouted, I have inserted my reconstructed version of what was said. Mark and John disagree about whether Jesus rode the donkey into the city. Mark says Jesus did, but John doesn’t show Jesus doing so. It is my view that despite John’s reliance on Zechariah 9:9, this scene was originally modeled on the story of Solomon’s succession to David’s throne. Therefore, I believe Mark comes closest to the proposed common source. Although I believe that Mark moved the Triumphal Entry from after the visit to Jerusalem and after the anointing at Bethany, with Jesus going into hiding at the end of the ride as John has it, I lack corroboration for that theory. So, I just note that after the ride Jesus left Jerusalem without confronting any authorities. Bearing the above in mind, here is my reconstruction of the original Triumphal Entry sequence.

1) Jesus sent his disciples to the village to find a donkey for him to ride towards Jerusalem. 2) The disciples brought a donkey to Jesus and he mounted it, riding towards Jerusalem. 3) Crowds that saw the signs Jesus performed came out to greet him, spreading cloaks on the ground and waiving branches. 4) Jesus rode the donkey to the Jerusalem gate (in imitation of Solomon’s ride to Jerusalem to claim the Jewish throne and establish the kingdom of God). 5) The crowds cheered Jesus as he rode by, shouting out, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the King of Israel! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

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6) Pharisees watching the parade expressed unhappiness at the growing popularity of Jesus. 7) Jesus lamented over Jerusalem because the authorities were blinded to the presence of God’s messenger. 8) Jesus entered the city and went to the Temple. 9) Jesus left Jerusalem without any direct conflict with the temple authorities.

Mark’s Jerusalem Visit and John’s Parallels Following the Triumphal Entry, Mark 11:15–12:44 describes Jesus’ several encounters at the Temple during the final visit to Jerusalem. These are followed by a lengthy speech by Jesus about what is to come and how the disciples should behave. At the end of this speech Mark introduces the plot to kill Jesus and the events that follow. Mark’s chronology is slightly vague. The Triumphal Entry happened on one day, the chasing of the money-changers happened on the next day, and the rest of the visit to Jerusalem, including a lengthy speech with predictions of the future, appears to have happened on the third day. Following the lengthy speech at the end of the Jerusalem visit we are told it is now two days before Passover. It is unclear if this last day in Jerusalem took place took place on the second day before Passover, on the third day before Passover or if there were one or more intervening days between the speech and the notice of Passover. On the assumption that the speech occurred the day before the two-day announcement, Mark’s Triumphal Entry would have occurred on the fifth day before Passover, the same day that John sets for his version of the event. John has some parallels to Mark’s stories, some obvious and some less so, and lacks some that appear to be of no interest to John’s theological agenda. Whether John omitted or Mark added scenes we can’t say. The problem here is that some of John’s parallels fall outside of his account of the final visit. Table 7.1, Mark’s Temple Encounters and Johannine Parallels, provide an overview of the main scenes in question. I have broken Mark down into fifteen incidents but two of them aren’t really encounters in the Temple. One involves the taking of a one-day break after the chasing of the moneychangers. The other records a speech Jesus made to his disciples about future events. I have also eliminated from the table two incidents in Mark relating to the cursing of a fig tree that take place outside of Jerusalem.59 Highlighted scene descriptions indicate that there is no Johannine parallel to Mark’s story. Highlighted verses in the John column indicate that the scene is out of order with Mark’s arrangement.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 359 Table 7.1:  Mark’s temple encounters and Johannine parallels. Source: Author Scene Description

Mark

1.  Jesus chases the money-changers from the Temple. 11:15–17 [For reasons explained in Chapters 6 and 7, John has

relocated this and related scenes to an earlier position in the gospel.] 2. Authorities want to kill Jesus. [For plot reasons, John separated the money-changer scene from the reaction of the priests to the chasing of the money-changers.] 3. Jesus leaves Jerusalem with his disciples. [Mark inserts a break for the day. John has no break.] 4. Priests ask Jesus where he gets his authority to do these things [re chasing the money-changers.] 5. Jesus responds. [John substituted a different response.] 6. Parable of the wicked tenants. [John has historicized the parable.] 7. Jewish authorities want to arrest Jesus because of his criticism. 8. Question about paying taxes 9. Sadducees challenge Jesus on resurrection with question about multiple marriages 10. The most important commandment. 11. The second most important commandment 12. Question about David’s son [John has multiple messiah debates. He focuses on the David issue at 7:40–43.] 13. Jesus denounces the scribes. 14. The value of a widow’s offering 15. Jesus predicts the Temple’s destruction.

11:18

John 2:13–17

7:25–26a

11:19 11:27–28

2:18

11:29–33

2:19–22

12:1–11

7:28–29

12:12

7:30

12:13–17 12:18–27 12:28–30 12:31 12:35–37

21:15–17 13:34–35 7:40–43

12:38–40 12:41–44 13:1–2

2:19

Highlighted scenes have no parallel in John. Highlighted cells in the John column do not follow Mark’s order. Commentary on scene descriptions appears in brackets.

Of the Table’s fifteen Markan episodes, I have identified ten parallels with John, but two of those parallels (5, 15) involve the same Johannine scene, John’s reference to destroying the Temple at John 2:19. This is because of John’s alterations to Mark’s version of the money-changers story.

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At the end of Mark’s Temple encounters, Jesus makes a prediction about the Temple being destroyed. In John’s version of the chasing of the money-changers, Jesus also says something about the Temple being destroyed. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”60 In John’s money-changers story this answer serves as an alternative to the answer Jesus gives in Mark’s version of the money-changers story as to where Jesus gets his authority to act as he does. So, John’s usage does double-duty as a parallel to Jesus’ response to the challenge to his authority and as a statement about the Temple being destroyed. It will be my argument in Chapter 9, that Mark’s prediction about the Temple being destroyed is a redacted version of what John’s Jesus says about the Temple being destroyed. It was originally a statement made by Jesus at some point in the course of the last visit to Jerusalem. It is my view that John moved the statement about the destruction of the Temple out of position and substituted it for the answer Jesus gave when asked about his authority for chasing the moneychangers. So, John has ten parallels to Mark’s last visit to Jerusalem but only nine specific incidents. In this chapter I will focus on the money-changers story and only briefly touch on Mark’s Temple prophecy. I’ll save the analysis of that prophecy for Chapter 9.

The Johannine Parallels to Mark’s Temple Encounters In this section I will look at those scenes in John that appear to be parallel to some of Mark’s Temple encounters. Some of these parallels fall outside of John’s version of the last Jerusalem visit. In the next section, I’ll look at the Mark stories that don’t have a Johannine parallel.

The Temple Cleansing and Related Matters This narrative encompasses four scenes: (1) the chasing of the money-changers; (2) the authorities react by expressing a desire to kill Jesus; (3) the Jewish officials inquire of Jesus where he gets his authority from; and (4)Jesus’ response. I have already discussed much of this material in detail in Chapter 6 and I will only summarize those discussions here. You may wish to go back to that section and re-read it. Mark places the first two scenes a day ahead of the last two. John places the first, third, and fourth scenes during Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem and the third scene during Jesus’ third and final visit to Jerusalem. (See the discussion below.) Luke also places the first two scenes on a separate day from the other two but is

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 361 vague—”one day, as he was teaching [emphasis added]”61—about how many days elapsed between the Temple-cleansing and the inquiry about authority. Nevertheless, Luke places last two scenes immediately after the first two. On the day after the Triumphal Entry, Mark says that Jesus went back to the Temple and chased out the money-changers, citing scripture as his justification.62 When the Jewish authorities learned about this they wanted to kill him because his teachings were so well received that they became afraid of him.63 Despite the fear, nothing happens and Jesus leaves the city.64 So Mark places a desire by the authorities to kill Jesus on the first day of the Jerusalem confrontations, but not on the first day of entry. Jesus returns the next day and the authorities confront him. “By what authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority to do them?”65 Jesus says he won’t answer unless they first answer his question. “Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin? Answer me.”66 The interrogators saw this as a trap. If they said “Heaven” then Jesus would have told them to believe what John said. If they said “human origin” the crowds would have been angered because John was widely perceived as a prophet.67 To avoid taking a position they said that they didn’t know. Jesus said, therefore, that he wouldn’t tell them by what authority he acted.68 As I have already observed, John moved the money-changer scene to the earliest stage of Jesus’ mission. He had at least two reasons for doing this. First, he wanted to show Jesus fulfilling the Malachi 3:1 prophecy about the Lord sending a messenger who will suddenly appear at the Temple and purify it. Second, he wanted to replace the exorcism in the proposed common source that first brought Jesus wide-spread fame in Galilee with a non-miraculous event that first brought Jesus wide-spread fame in Galilee. To this we can now add that John wanted to move the most conspicuous political conflict between Jesus and the Jewish authorities to an earlier point in time so that he could downplay the impact of this confrontation as a reason for the authorities to seek Jesus’ death. In doing so, he separated the original death threat from the original narrative sequence. In addition, John’s Jesus used different words of rebuke then Mark’s Jesus did. Mark’s Jesus spoke about a “den of robbers” and John’s Jesus talked instead about not profaning “my Father’s house” by turning it into a marketplace. John’s change of language reflected his desire to show Jesus glorifying the Father rather than the temple. On the other hand, as in Mark, these events happen just before Passover. In Mark, the priests react by wanting to kill Jesus because his words transfixed the crowds. John omits that scene from his account of the chasing of the moneychangers because he is not yet ready to introduce death threats. He wants

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Jesus to be free to return to Jerusalem in John 5 and raise the issue of death threats in connection with healing on the Sabbath. However, on the first day that Jesus appears in Jerusalem at the Temple for his third and final visit he announces that the authorities are trying to kill him.69 That scene, however, falls within the John 7:14–24 addendum to John 5. If we eliminate the entire sequence, though, we pick up at John 7:25, where we are immediately told that the authorities wanted to kill Jesus. So, Mark and John both indicate that on the first day of confrontation at the Temple, during the final visit to Jerusalem, the authorities desired to kill Jesus. But John’s relocation of the Temple-cleansing scene eliminated that confrontation as the excuse for the authorities to seek his death. Instead, John relates the death threat back to the confrontation over healing on the Sabbath, challenging the claim that the authorities wanted to kill Jesus because they saw him as a political rival. Mark follows up the Temple cleansing on the next day with a challenge to Jesus’ authority and Jesus’ response. John keeps the two events on the same day as the Temple cleansing, but his Jesus has a very different response than Mark’s. In Mark, Jesus raises the question of John’s baptism and when the priests won’t answer, Jesus declines to say where he gets his authority from. Jesus’ hesitation to explain where his authority came from, if in the proposed common source, would have been offensive to John. As John demonstrates in John 5, Jesus aggressively claims that the Father has given him all authority to make judgments on all issues. Since the whole point of Mark’s story was to not say where Jesus got his authority from, John had to replace that response with something else. As I pointed out in Chapter 3, John inserted a response that appears to have been taken from the trial of Jesus as portrayed in Mark. (I’ll clarify the issue in Chapter 9.) That response completed the parallel between Marks’s cleansing of the man with the corrupting spirit and Jesus’ cleansing of the temple with corrupting priests. In summary then, Mark and John have three scenes that occur just before a Passover and unfold in the same sequential order, the Temple-cleansing, the question about Jesus’ authority, and a response to the question by Jesus. John has a different response by Jesus because Mark’s scenario, if in the proposed common source, would have been offensive to John’s theological agenda. Mark separates the events by a day; John places them on the same day but John places those three scenes two years earlier than Mark does. John’s fourth parallel, the desire to kill Jesus, has been separated from the main story line because, as I suggested above, John wanted to diminish this event

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 363 as a reason why the authorities wanted Jesus dead. So, John left the desire to kill Jesus in place, but he reworked the context so that the desire to kill Jesus reflects back on the accusation that he violated the Sabbath and not on the desire of the priests to kill Jesus because he had become a political rival. So, John has changed the context of the death threat during the final visit to Jerusalem. But in both Mark and John, the desire of the authorities to kill Jesus is associated with Jesus’ first Temple confrontation during the final visit to Jerusalem.

The Parable of the Wicked Tenants Mark follows the debate over Jesus’ authority with a parable about wicked tenants.70 The parable talked about tenants on a vineyard persecuting and killing the rent-collectors sent by the owner. When the owner sent his son to collect the rent, they wanted to kill him too. Jesus taught that the owner would come and take the vineyard away from the corrupt tenants. For our purpose we need only note that the parable was interpreted as an attack on the Jewish authorities for failing to accept the authority of Jesus as the son of God. Consequently, “they wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowd.”71 Implicit in this parable is the idea that the “tenants/Jewish authorities” rejected God and his messengers. This is the second time that Mark depicts hostility from the authorities. In the first instance they wanted to kill him after the money-changers incident and in the second incident they wanted to arrest him. In both cases they failed to do so because of their fear of the crowds. A parallel with John is difficult to establish because John doesn’t do parables. But during John’s account of Jesus’s final visit to Jerusalem we may have a substitution for the parable scene. While in the Temple, John says that Jesus cried out, “You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.” [emphasis added]72

Upon completing this statement John says, “Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.”73 The narrative parallel to Mark’s parable seems to be fairly close. In both case Jesus makes a remark suggesting that God sent him to the authorities but they rejected him as God’s agent, and, therefore, they have rejected God. Mark places the accusation in the form of a parable. John has historicized the parable as a concrete set of facts.

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In both cases the accusation is followed by a failed arrest attempt. In Mark, the authorities refuse to act because of fear of the crowds. In John they fail to succeed because it is not yet Jesus’ hour to be arrested. John, however, doesn’t explain what actions the crowd took that failed to result in an arrest. In addition, John’s scene follows close on the heels of the earlier scene where Jesus indicates that the authorities want to kill him, just as Mark’s scene does. An important narrative difference between Mark and John is that John inserts this scene in the middle of a messianic debate and there are further attempts to arrest Jesus as John’s narrative arc continues. However, in Mark’s parable, Jesus is depicted as the son of God, a messianic claim about Jesus, and later in Mark’s Temple narrative there is additional messianic debate. So, to some extent, Mark integrates the Parable of the Wicked Tenants with messianic issues. Therefore, I’ll look at the messianic debates in Mark and John as the next order of business.

The Question About David’s Son In the course of Mark’s Temple narrative, Jesus challenges the idea that the messiah can be a descendant of David.74 John also sets forth a number of debates about messianic issues but a key difference between Mark and John is that in Mark it is Jesus who raises certain arguments and in John it is Jews who debate the issues amongst themselves. John’s Jesus doesn’t care about the debates because his authority comes directly from the Father and such arguments are beneath him. In Mark’s Wicked Tenants parable Jesus compared himself to the rejected “son of God” and in Mark’s debate over David’s son Jesus makes an argument that the messiah cannot be a son of David. Mark says that the crowd enjoyed Jesus’ explanation.75 The teaching in Mark is based on a reading of Psalm 110:1. While Jesus was teaching in the temple, he said, “How can the scribes say that the Messiah is the son of David? David himself, by the Holy Spirit, declared, ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet.” ’David himself calls him Lord; so how can he be his son?” And the large crowd was listening to him with delight.76

Mark’s reliance on Psalm 110:1 almost certainly reflects a misunderstanding of the text caused by using the Septuagint Greek translation of the Hebrew and would not have been so understood by the Hebrew/Aramaic speaking Jews in Judea. But that is a matter best dealt with elsewhere. Here we are not concerned

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 365 with the historical credibility of the citation but just how it affects our analysis of the proposed common source. Earlier in Mark, during the Triumphal Entry, the crowd hails Jesus as the son of David. Since a chief theme in Mark is that no human knows who Jesus really is until after he dies, we should assume that Mark considered the crowd to be in error. Here he makes an explicit argument that the messiah can’t be the descendant of David. For Mark, the messiah is simply the Son of God, as indicated in the opening of his gospel and in the parable of the Wicked Tenants. Before looking at what I believe to be John’s version of this incident I should first address what I see as a tension in the gospels as to an understanding of who or what the messiah was. The primary conflict is between “Messiah as the descendant of David” and “Messiah as one like the son of man” as described in Daniel 7:13–14. In the latter, the text describes one like the son of man coming with the clouds of heaven and to whom was given dominion and glory and kingship. There is a secondary tension between the terms “son of Man” and “son of God”, in which the two merge into a single entity. A little later in Mark, during the final speech of Jesus before leaving Jerusalem, Jesus predicts future events. At some point in time, “they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.”77 During Mark’s account of the Jewish trial, Jesus says, “ ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’ ”78 Both of these images rely on the Daniel “son of man” imagery. This tension over the nature of the messiah is made more explicit in John. The conflicting views are placed in the mouths of the Jews. In the scene immediately before that described above as a parallel to the Wicked Tenant’ parable, Jews say, “Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.”79 Just a few verses later, other Jews say, “Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”80 These two views reflect the conflict over whether the messiah is Daniel’s “one like the son of Man” who comes from who knows where or the descendant of David who comes from Bethlehem. John’s Jesus stands above the debate, not taking sides and implicitly rejecting both views. For purposes of sequential analysis, John’s specific reference to whether the messiah has to be a descendant from David can be found at John 7:40–43. In John’s passage that I suggest is parallel to the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, Jesus says,

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You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.

When he says “you know where I am from” he doesn’t mean Bethlehem. He is known to be from Galilee, not Bethlehem. As Nathanael initially says about Jesus, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”81 The chief priest says about Jesus towards the end of John 7, “Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee.”82 John’s Jesus, therefore, can be a messiah even though they know where he is from (first argument) and even though he doesn’t come from Bethlehem (second argument). John does not even use Mark’s Daniel language about “coming in the clouds.” John’s Jesus is the messiah because he has been sent by God to bring the light. That is how he achieved his commission and the various arguments about the characteristics of the messiah are of no moment to him. I think it is fair to say that Mark and John both show that during Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem, there were arguments about whether or not Jesus was the messiah, and that such a debate in some form appeared in the proposed common source. Mark leans more to the idea that Jesus is the son of God in a manner reflecting Daniel’s one like the son of Man. John favors the idea that traditional definitions are meaningless as Jesus has been directly commissioned by God to spread the gospel. Mark directly and John implicitly show Jesus rejecting traditional views of the Davidic messiah, but John goes further in dismissing other messianic theories. These disagreements reflect differing theological understandings of the messiah and make it difficult to identify the specific form of the debate that took place in the proposed common source. To summarize the above, John’s parallel to Mark’s messiah debate encompasses John 7:25–27, 7:31, and 7:40–44 and falls on both sides of John’s alternative to the parable of the wicked tenants. To these passages I would add John 7:11–13 as part of the general scenario. It shows the Jews are searching for Jesus at the festival and arguing over whether he is a good man or a deceiver.

The Most Important Commandment In the course of Mark’s account of the various encounters by Jesus in the Temple a scribe approaches Jesus and asks him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”83 Jesus responds, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 367 and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ”84 Jesus appended to this answer, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”85 The scribe fully agreed with Jesus’ answer and added, “this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”86 Jesus thought that the scribe answered wisely and said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”87 In a moment I will look at what I believe to be John’s parallels to this discussion but first I need to point out that if this were in the proposed common source John would have had several problems with this episode and its teaching. In John’s theology the primary commandment in John’s gospel is to accept that Jesus is the one sent by the Father to bring eternal life. That and only that is how one can get to the kingdom of God. This contradicts Mark’s Jesus who sees belief in the two commandments from Mark’s story as the way to get to the kingdom. So, if John were to make use of this incident, he would have to alter it in some way to make it consistent with his theology. This means that John would have to disassociate these teachings as an explanation of how to get into heaven. I believe John did so by first bifurcating the two commandments and placing each into separate stories in different contexts. In his version there are no public teachings about how to get into heaven. John places his version of the prime commandment, love God, into the story of Jesus’ third resurrection encounter with the disciples (John 21:15–17) and his version of the second commandment, love one’s neighbor, into the last supper story (13:34–35) where, as I shall explain in Chapter 8, it serves as a substitute for the Eucharist ceremony. We briefly noted this resurrection story in Chapter 6, in our examination of John’s version of Luke’s fish miracle and the recruitment of the first disciples. Immediately before Jesus asks Peter to “Follow me” he asks Peter three times if Peter loves him, and after each answer he gives Peter an instruction about taking care of Jesus’ flocks. That this serves as a substitute for the commandment to love God can be seen from an earlier passage in John, where he says, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came from God and now I am here. I did not come on my own, but he sent me.”88 To love God, therefore, you have to love Jesus. And if you love Jesus then you will accept that he is the one sent by God to bring eternal life. John is saying, therefore, that loving God means accepting Jesus as the path to eternal life. This is different from what Mark ‘s Jesus teaches.

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As to the second commandment, love your neighbor, during John’s story of the last supper, Jesus turns to the disciples and says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”89 John has modified the teaching that you should “love your neighbor as oneself,” which in Mark was a public teaching to the Temple audience. He substitutes a private teaching to just the disciples that they should love each other as a sign to others that they should love each other as a recognition of Jesus teachings. In effect, John has made the disciples middlemen in spreading the word that everyone should love each other because that is the way to know that someone accepts Jesus as the one sent by the Father. An interesting side issue is that Luke, too, disagrees with Mark’s setting for this story, placing the “two commandments” much earlier in his gospel.90 Luke’s alternative placement indicates that at least two, and possibly all three, authors have changed the narrative location of the story. Which ones made the change we can’t say? But as John appears to agree with Mark in placing both commandments after the Triumphal Entry story, I will follow Mark’s narrative setting for when the incident occurred.

Jesus Predicts the Temple’s Destruction Mark says that when Jesus left the Temple the disciples admired the building.91 Jesus remarked, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”92 The scene serves as a prelude to a long speech by Jesus describing an apocalyptic future of hard times, persecution, war, and devastation before the final days arrive.93 As mentioned above, I will examine the relationship between this prophecy in Mark and John’s statement about tearing down and rebuilding the Temple in Chapter 9. In anticipation of the argument, I suggest that Mark’s prophecy is a redacted version of the statement in John. John does have his own lengthy farewell speech to the disciples at a later point in time and one can probably find an overlapping touch-point here and there. For example, both Mark and John say the disciples will be persecuted94 and that the spirit will come to guide them.95 But these are only small brief connections in two lengthy and different speeches that encompass many teachings. Whether either evangelist drew on an existing speech in the proposed common source we cannot say.

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Mark’s Temple Encounters with No Johannine Parallels In this section I will look at those Temple encounters in Mark that have no apparent parallel in John and see if there are any reasons why John may have omitted them if they were in the proposed common source.

The Question About Paying Taxes While Jesus was teaching in the Temple Mark says that a group of Pharisees and Herodians attempted to trap Jesus with a question about whether it was lawful to pay taxes to the emperor.96 The goal here was to get Jesus to take a position that put him in deep conflict with the Roman government. By way of background, in the time of Jesus there was a revolutionary group of Pharisees that opposed the paying of taxes to Rome and demanded the end of Roman control over the Jewish homeland.97 Josephus referred to them as the Fourth Way (as opposed to three other Jewish philosophical groups—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes) which caused an ongoing state of disruption.98 Rightly or wrongly, Josephus drew a straight line between the rise of the Fourth Way and the later revolt against Rome in 66 CE.99 John has no such incident in his gospel. The issue had no relevance to John’s message that the way to eternal life was through belief in Jesus as the one sent by God to deliver the message. Political disputes among various factions were of no concern him. If this incident were in the source document, it is likely that John would have omitted it.

The Question About Resurrection Following the Tax Trap, Mark describes a theological challenge to Jesus’ teachings from the Sadducees, “who say there is no resurrection.”100 The Sadducee argument derived from a practice in Jewish law in which a widow marries the brother of her deceased husband. If a woman marries a sequence of seven brothers, one at a time after each of the brothers pass away, and then she dies, ask the Sadducees, “In the resurrection whose wife will she be? For the seven had married her.”101 Jesus responded, in part, that in the resurrection there would be no marriage and that the resurrected were like angels.102 This answer wouldn’t have satisfied the Sadducees because they also didn’t believe in angels.103 Jesus also added an argument based on scripture intended to prove the existence of resurrection.104

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This episode is also missing from John’s Gospel. While it does deal with the question of resurrection and eternal life, it does so in the context of argument and debate as to the existence of such events. While the Sadducees represented a small but influential philosophical movement among the Jews, the Pharisees were far more influential among the Jewish population and they believed in both resurrection and the angels.105 John worked from the premise that the concept of resurrection and eternal life was a given as it was among the Pharisees. It would serve no purpose for him to give a platform to those who challenge the fundamental premises of his message. Had he included the Sadducee argument some people reading his gospel might have been influenced away from Jesus’ message. For this reason, if the incident was in the source document, I strongly suspect that John would have omitted it.

Jesus Denounces the Scribes Following the argument about a Davidic messiah, Mark shows Jesus denouncing the scribes for their prideful and hypocritical behavior.106 John has no such incident. Mark’s attack raises ethical rather than theological issues. Since it has no bearing on John’s message, if it appeared in the proposed common source it is likely that John would have omitted it.

The Widow’s Offering This is the last of Mark’s direct encounters with the Jewish authorities and crowds. In this scene Mark’s Jesus argues that a poor widow making a small donation to the synagogue makes a bigger contribution than rich people making large contributions because she gives up a more substantial percentage of her assets.107 John has no such incident. Again, the issue is a matter of behavior and has no connection to John’s message. John keeps emphasizing that the only way to obtain eternal life is by believing in Jesus as the one sent by God to bring eternal life. While John would likely have agreed with the argument, it doesn’t serve to advance his message. If it were in the proposed common source, he would probably have omitted it.

Summary of Johannine Parallels to Mark’s Temple Encounters In the discussions above I showed that John has ten parallel scenes to Mark’s account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. Within the parallels John has changed

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 371 many details for theological or narrative purposes. The parallel scenes include the following:



• The Temple Cleansing; • The desire of the authorities to kill Jesus; • The question about authority; • Jesus’ response to the question; • An accusation by Jesus that the authorities have rejected the son of God (Parable of the Wicked Tenant); • A concern that Jesus be arrested for these comments; • The most important commandment; • The second most important commandment; • The argument over whether the messiah can be the descended from David (John focuses in on the specific David argument at John 7:42, but has a larger discussion of the messiah issue throughout John 7); • A statement is made about the Temple’s destruction.

John also lacks five scenes from Mark’s Temple confrontations, two of which involve no encounter with the authorities. Whether Mark’s additional scenes came from the proposed common source we can’t say. The five scenes missing from John are:

• A one-day break between the chasing of the money-changers and the question about authority. • The question about taxes; • The Sadducee challenge on resurrection; • Denouncing the scribes for prideful behavior; • The value of the widows offering;

The first item deals with a chronological issue that reflects John’s relocation of the Temple cleansing story. Three of the incidents (second, fourth, fifth) dealt with matters of contemporaneous behavior. These issues had nothing to do with John’s agenda and if they were included in the proposed common source, he would likely have omitted them. The Sadducee challenge did touch on John’s theme of eternal life, but the Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection or angels and I suspect that John wouldn’t have wanted to provide a platform for a clever argument against his fundamental belief in resurrection. After leaving, Mark also describes assorted prophecies in a lengthy speech to Jesus’ followers that doesn’t seem to have a direct parallel in John, although both gospels have some reference to coming persecution of the disciples and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

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To the Jordan Not strictly related to the last visit, but in close proximity to the narrative, Mark and John both talk about Jesus going to the Jordan River, but their chronology differs. At the very end of John’s last visit to Jerusalem, he leaves the city and immediately heads to the Jordan River, to the area where John had been baptizing.108 This suggests a strong parallel to a similar journey in Mark. According to Mark, as Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem for the last visit he crosses into Judea and over to the Jordan River.109 In both gospels Jesus is swamped by believers and in both gospels Jesus never returns to Galilee after this trip. Reflecting their chronological differences, Mark places the scene on the way to Jerusalem and John places it on Jesus’ departure from Jerusalem. The similarities between Mark and John suggests that this scene at the Jordan came from the proposed common source. John positions this scene immediately before the story of the raising of Laza110 rus. Mark places it in very close narrative proximity to a story about a rich man who rejects Jesus’ invitation to become a disciple.111 In Chapter 10 I’ll explore some connections between John’s Lazarus story, Mark’s story of the rich man, and Luke’s Lazarus parable.

Lifting Up the Son of Man Mark’s gospel has three occasions on which Jesus predicts that he will be put to death and rise up after three days. They fall at Mark 8:31, 9:31, and 10:33–34. All three occur prior to Mark’s account of the final visit to Jerusalem. John has three instances in which Jesus says that the Son of Man will be “lifted up.” They occur at John 3:14, 8:28 and 12:32–34. The second occasion takes place during John’s account of the final visit to Jerusalem. The third occurs within the extra material in John’s version of the Triumphal Entry. There has been some discussion about these two sets of three statements and whether or not they reflect a connection between John and the synoptic gospels. Raymond Brown believes that John’s passages are parallel to but not necessarily dependent upon knowledge of one of the other three gospels.112 He notes the lack of detail in John compared to Mark’s passages and suggests that this might indicate that John’s phrasing might be more ancient than Mark’s.113 If that is the case, then John may more closely reflect the language in the proposed common source than Mark does.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 373 Because two of John’s three declarations connect to his account of the final visit, we should take a closer look at the relevant material. We will also look at whether any additional parallels can be established between John and Mark with regard to these two sets of Son of Man passages. I’ll begin with a look at John’s three declarations in context and compare them to the three predictions in Mark containing the proposed parallels. In the discussions below, I will refer to the three statements in John as “declarations” and the three statements in Mark as “predictions.”

The Third Declaration (John 12:20–36a) In my discussion above of John’s version of the Triumphal Entry scene I indicated that John 12:20–36a contained some additional material that didn’t belong to the original version of that event. Here I will take a closer look at the passage. It begins right after the Pharisees complained about the enthusiastic reception Jesus received from the crowd as he came near Jerusalem. A group of Greeks (presumably Jews from the diaspora) met with Jesus. He announced to them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified”.114 This is followed by some teaching about how a grain dying in the earth bears fruit and how “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”115 Shortly thereafter, at John 12:27–30, a passage that I will explore in detail in Chapter 8, Jesus says that his soul is troubled, and we learn about a voice from heaven glorifying Jesus. I will argue later that this passage belongs to the scene just before the arrest of Jesus and that John has relocated it here, sandwiching it in between two parts of the dialogue with the Greeks. When we return to the surrounding narrative, Jesus says, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”116 Jesus doesn’t directly refer to the Son of Man here as the one being lifted up. But in the opening part of the scene he referred to himself as the Son of Man and in the next verse it is made explicit that it is the Son of Man to be lifted up. The crowd (the visiting Greeks?) say, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?” The scene concludes with Jesus explaining that “The light is with you for a little longer”117 and that the listeners should “become children of light.”118 Jesus doesn’t give any clear explanation as to who the Son of Man is. Taking the scene as a whole (except for John 12:27–30) it constitutes John’s third declaration that the Son of Man will be lifted up.

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The Second Declaration (John 8:21–30) Brown says that analyzing the structure of John 8:12–59 is perhaps more difficult than any other chapter or discourse in the first twelve chapters of John.119 John 8:12–20 is mostly a Johannine composition that has Jesus address crowds in terms that they find difficult to understand. It begins with Jesus talking about going away where they cannot come because of their sins. The crowd thinks he is talking about suicide. He responds with remarks about the crowd being from this world while he is from above and if they don’t believe “I am he” they will die in sin.120 Jesus doesn’t say who they should believe “he” is but his use of “I am” as a precedent identifies him with the biblical name for God. The crowd is confused and asks him, “Who are you?”121 Jesus expresses frustration with their question. “Why do I speak to you at 122 all?” Jesus continues to explain things and the crowd continues not to understand. Jesus says, in part, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he.”123

The First Declaration (John 3:14) John’s initial use of the “lifted up” message occurs early in his mission, during his conversation with Nicodemus. As you will recall from Chapter 6, I suggested that John created the Nicodemus discourse as a replacement for the proposed common source claim that Jesus went on a mission to spread the gospel through exorcisms and healings. John substituted a straight teaching of the gospel as a substitute for the exorcisms. In the course of his teaching Jesus says, “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up [emphasis added].”124 Having reviewed the three Johannine declarations about the Son of Man being lifted up, let’s see if any connections other than the lifting/rising theme can be drawn with Mark’s three predictions. At the start, I note that because of John’s different chronology from Mark regarding the last visit to Jerusalem direct comparisons are somewhat difficult. But comparisons can be made.

The First Prediction Mark’s first report of Jesus predicting his death takes place during the scene where Peter tries to understand who Jesus is. Peter reacts negatively to the prophecy and Jesus chastises him. The specific quote in question has Jesus say, “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 375 by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”125 In both Mark’s first prediction and John’s first declaration each use the directive “must,” an indication, says Brown, that divine will is involved in the expression.126 This is the only instance in which the two evangelists include “must” as part of the terminology. Here we need to observe some contextual problems in the scenario. John’s usage occurs in the course of talking to Nicodemus early on. Mark’s comes in the course of a discussion with Peter, who fails to understand the true nature of Jesus. But there is more to be said. First, as I argued in Chapter 6, the conversation in John between Jesus and Nicodemus appears to be a Johannine insert or construct designed to substitute for the underlying source claim that Jesus went out to proclaim the Gospel and perform exorcisms. John, I suggested, substituted a direct explanation of the gospel to a Jewish teacher. This suggests that John may have moved the Son of Man declaration from another location. Second, we have something in John that looks like a similar statement by Jesus that takes place parallel to Mark’s account of the argument between Jesus and Peter. In that instance, John has Jesus say, “Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before [emphasis added]?”127 It is this phrase, like Mark’s death prediction, that triggers opposition to Jesus’ teaching. What is notable here is that John has substituted “ascending” (Greek, anabainonta) for “lifted up” (Greek, hypososete). But the themes are the same. Third, as per the analysis in Chapter 2, John went out of his way to exonerate Peter from Jesus’ denunciation. He changed Peter’s response from negative to positive, put the complaining words in the mouths of generic disciples rather than Peter, changed the “Satan/Devil” accusation from one against Peter to one against Judas, and had someone other than the disciples misidentify Jesus. So, we see that John did a lot of work to reconstruct this scene to eliminate all traces Peter’s negative image. But there was one piece of the episode missing. In Mark, Jesus attacks Peter for “setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”128 That specific accusation disappears in John’s version of the same scene but, surprisingly, it shows up in the Nicodemus dialogue almost immediately before the “lifted up” teaching. Jesus says to Nicodemus, “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things [emphasis added]?”129 This is essentially the same accusation Mark’s Jesus makes against Peter.

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It appears to me that John, consistent with his other efforts to rewrite the Peter story and rehabilitate the apostle, took the specific statement Peter reacted to (the death prediction) and the accusation about the reaction (focusing on worldly things) and transferred them from the Peter story to the Nicodemus discourse, making Nicodemus a substitute for Peter. At the same time, in order to further remove Peter from any connection to the original offending phrase, which may have been well-known as a Jesus teaching, he substituted a similar phrase (“the Son of Man ascending”) that was slightly different and wouldn’t be confused with the original teaching. In this manner there would be no indication that the generic “disciples” included Peter as one of those who rejected a fundamental theological teaching from Jesus. If I am right about this, and John needed to isolate this phrasing from Peter because others would have known about the interaction between Jesus and Peter, it would imply that that John’s phrasing is more likely to be closer to the source version than Mark’s; that Mark’s usage signifies a later development in the theology of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is my view here that John’s first “lifted up” declaration originally appeared in the Peter story that contained Mark’s first prediction of Jesus’ death, and John moved it into the Nicodemus discourse. The joint use of “must” by Mark and John is a clue that both versions relate to the same episode, as is the criticism about earthly things and heavenly things.

The Third Prediction Let me now skip over to the third declaration/prediction about the Son of Man in Mark and John. In John, Jesus’ third declaration that the Son of Man would be lifted up occurs while he is holding court while seated on the donkey during the Triumphal Entry scene. (Technically, the visiting Greeks add in the Son of Man language, which Jesus initially omits.) Mark’s third prediction takes place only two scenes before his version of the Triumphal Entry. The first of these two intervening scenes involves a discussion between Jesus and the brothers Zebedee (John and James) concerning a request that they be seated at his left and right during Jesus’ glory.130 As I suggested in Chapter 6, John demonstrates some hostility towards these brothers. This scene of their self-aggrandizement, even without some negative inclination towards the brothers, would probably have been highly offensive to him, and he has no such specific scene in his gospel. This would also be consistent with John eliminating negative images of the disciples. It is possible, but not demonstrably so, that a later scene in

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 377 John, where Jesus teaches humility to the disciples by washing their feet (discussed in Chapter 8), the evangelist may have been influenced by a version of Mark’s power-seeking episode. The second of these two intervening scenes in Mark recounts the healing of blind Bartimaeus. As I argued in Chapter 4, John incorporated elements of that story into his larger account of the healing of a blind man in John 9, which narrative John sets in the middle of the final visit to Jerusalem. If we accept that John would have dropped the Zebedee incident if it were in the source and that he incorporated the blind Bartimaeus incident into John 9, then we would jump from Mark’s third death prediction to the beginning of Mark’s Triumphal Entry scene, bringing it in close alignment with John’s sequencing. Mark’s sequence, omitting the two stories, would place the third prediction just before the Triumphal Entry; John’s sequencing places it during the Triumphal Entry. But Mark adds a further connection to John. Just before the prediction, Mark says, “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them.”131 For all practical purposes, this is how John starts his Triumphal Entry scene. John, as we saw, re-ordered events such that Jesus received his enthusiastic welcome while “walking” towards Jerusalem and only mounts the donkey afterwards. Admittedly, in Mark, the prediction is set some distance away from Jerusalem as Jesus first healed blind Bartimaeus near Jericho before reaching Jerusalem. But if John moved the blind Bartimaeus incident into John 9, that ceases to be a problem. John places Jesus on the road to Jerusalem as Mark does and has the prediction take place on the road to Jerusalem as Mark does. In John, though, it happens closer to Jerusalem than it does in Mark.132 The evidence here indicates that in both Mark and John the third prediction/ declaration about the Son of Man has a close narrative connection to the start of the Triumphal Entry scene. If we can agree that John’s first declaration originally belonged to the story of Peter’s identification of Jesus, we see that there is a tight chronological agreement between the first and third incidents. This leaves just the second prediction/declaration to resolve.

The Second Prediction Mark has several events that take place in Galilee between the first and third predictions. John’s narrative chronology, however, has for all practical purposes omitted everything that happened between Peter’s identification of Jesus and the start of last visit to Jerusalem. So, a clean chronological comparison is not possi-

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ble, other than to show it falls between the first and third predictions/declarations that do have a relatively strong narrative connection. Mark places the second death prediction somewhere in Galilee. It was a secret teaching to just the disciples “But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”133 Disciples who don’t understand what Jesus says raises a red flag for John and we should expect that if he has a version of the story there would be no uncomprehending disciples. John doesn’t disappoint. John’s version of the second declaration takes place during his account of the last visit to Jerusalem. No disciples are present. Jesus is teaching but the crowd doesn’t comprehend what he is talking about. He begins by telling them, “I am going away, and you will search for me, but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.”134 The crowd (replacing the disciples) doesn’t comprehend what Jesus is talking about although they seem to know that it has something to do with Jesus dying. “Is he going to kill himself? Is that what he means by saying, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come’?”135 Further back and forth conversation continues to leave the crowd unable to understand what Jesus is saying. Ultimately, Jesus says, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he.”136 John doesn’t follow the identical pattern that Mark has in that an uncomprehending crowd replaces the uncomprehending disciples. He begins with hints about his being lifted up but speaks in Johannine riddles and the crowd, like the disciples, doesn’t understand what he means. He finishes up with a direct statement about the Son of Man being lifted up. Although it could be argued that this comparison of the second prediction/ declaration by John and Mark, when considered in isolation from the other two, is a long stretch, when taken together in context with the other two it shows that all three sets share a close narrative context, exhibiting similar thematic issues that go well beyond just the rising/lifting meme. The evidence strongly supports the idea that there was a common source for all three predictions in Mark and three declarations in John. As suggested above, I think John more closely adheres to the language of the proposed common source.

John and the Brothers of Jesus John 7:1–10 serves as a transition from John’s Passover Galilee cycle in John 6 to Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. There are several indications that this story has been altered and relocated in the narrative sequence. To see this, we need to set some context.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 379 John 5 takes place in Jerusalem with authorities wanting to put Jesus to death for healing on the Sabbath and for blasphemy. In mid-speech at the end of John 5 the scene shifts to Galilee at the beginning of John 6. “After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias.”137 So we know, per John, that prior to Passover Jesus left Jerusalem amid threats to put him to death. This leads into John’s major Galilee cycle in John 6. At the end of John 6, presumably still in the Passover time frame, Jesus is in Galilee. John 7:1 tells us that “After this Jesus went about in Galilee. He did not wish to go about in Judea because the Jews were looking for an opportunity to kill him.” Surely, this claim seems to make much more narrative sense at the beginning of John 6, with Jesus leaving hostile Jerusalem to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. John leaves Jerusalem because of hostility and the Galilee cycle should follow after. This seems to be a clue that there may be some sort of timeshifting going on in John’s account of events. After announcing that Jesus decided to stay away from Jerusalem, John 7:2 tells us that the Festival of Booths was approaching. This is a six-month jump from the end of the Galilee cycle in John 6. If the John 7:1 announcement takes place at or near the Passover festival announced in John 6:4, we have half of a year pass by before John resumes his account of Jesus’ actions and sets up his version of the final visit to Jerusalem. Mark, on the other hand, following the end of his parallel to John 6 (at Mark 9:1) records several additional events before Jesus begins the entry to Jerusalem (at Mark 11.1). At this point in John, Jesus’ brothers urge him to go to Jerusalem, presumably with knowledge that the Jerusalem authorities want to kill him. So his brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.”138

There is nothing here to indicate that the brothers know anything about death threats in Jerusalem (and Judea) from the authorities. It also clearly implies that nobody in Judea knows about Jesus’ ability to perform “works.” Yet, the very reason that Jesus won’t go back to Judea is that he healed on the Sabbath, i.e., he performed a sign in Jerusalem and many people knew about it and the authorities wanted to kill him for it. Additionally, per John’s narrative, at the earlier time of the Temple Cleansing scene, during Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem, “many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing.”139 So, from early on in John’s gospel, there is

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no time prior to this statement by the brothers that Jesus wasn’t known for having done signs in Jerusalem. At the same time the passage indicates that Jesus is known in Galilee for having performed “works” (plural). In John’s gospel, prior to this point, Jesus performed only two public signs, healing the royal official’s son and the multiplication of the loaves. The second of these happened during John 6 after the second Jerusalem visit. This creates a significant chronological anomaly in John. At the time the brothers made this remark Jesus would have to be going to Jerusalem prior to performing any signs in Jerusalem (before the first recorded visit in John) but after the second public Galilee miracle, following Jesus’ second recorded Jerusalem visit. This passage strikes me as a leftover artifact from the proposed common source (missing in the other gospels) that indicates that John invented the first two Jerusalem visits and that this scene with the brothers takes place just before Jesus’ first and only visit to Jerusalem. In John, it actually does take place just before the final visit, as I propose it does in the source, but John has manufactured his version of the final visit, moving it back in time. The “brothers” scene likely took place shortly before the last Passover, before Jesus had any existing conflicts with the Jerusalem authorities and had not yet performed any signs in Jerusalem. However, the lack of corroboration in Mark or Luke makes it difficult for me to include it in the proposed common source and I will hold back from that claim. Following the remark by the brothers, John inserts an observation. He says that they said these things, “For not even his brothers believed in him.”140 This statement appears to be taken at face value by commentators on John. But the endorsement seems misplaced. I don’t see anything in the statement to suggest the brothers didn’t believe in him. In fact, the advice seems to suggest otherwise. They knew about his signs—”so that your disciples also may see the works you are doing”141—and suggesting that he show off his abilities to his followers in Jerusalem seems consistent with believing in him. So why does John say what he does? The answer is theological. For John, deeds of power aren’t the appropriate proof of authority; the words of Jesus make his case. So, when the brothers urge Jesus to spread the word to his disciples in Judea by showing them signs, John sees this as a failure to accept Jesus based on his words. Consequently, John concludes that the brothers didn’t (yet) believe in Jesus because they relied on Jesus’ deeds and not his words. Bear in mind, that according to Acts and other Christian writings, James, the brother of Jesus, became the head of the Jesus movement,

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 381 perhaps above even Peter, after the crucifixion.142 So John may have moved this scene forward to allow for a change in attitude among the brothers. If John has moved this passage as I have suggested, then he needs to deal with the problem he has created by having a hostile environment awaiting Jesus in Jerusalem. So, he has Jesus reply, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil. Go to the festival yourselves. I am not going to this festival, for my time has not yet fully come.”143 Since affairs in Jerusalem are hostile to Jesus and his time hasn’t yet come, it makes sense for him to stay home, which, initially, is what Jesus did. “After saying this, he remained in Galilee.”144 While that’s all well and good, John still needs to get Jesus to Jerusalem for the final visit well ahead of the Passover festival. So, having explained to us why it is perfectly sensible for Jesus to remain at home, his hour not yet having come, “after his brothers had gone to the festival, then he also went, not publicly but as it were in secret.”145 This secret visit clearly has an artificial thrust to it, running counter to the claim that Jesus stayed in Galilee. The scene shifts to Jerusalem, where the crowds wonder if Jesus will show; debates break out over whether Jesus is a good man or a deceiver.146 But an air of fear hangs over the debaters as they worry about a crackdown by the authorities.147 I have suggested above that this scene belongs with other John 7 passages that incorporate debates about whether Jesus can be the messiah. In the middle of the festival, John’s incognito Jesus jumps onto a Temple stage and publicly teaches.148 This begins the John 7:14–24 segment that I have argued belongs originally to the end of John 5.

Who Moved the Last Jerusalem Visit? On a few occasions above I have talked about John having manufactured his account of the last Jerusalem visit, but I haven’t made any direct argument in support of that position. The basis of the argument is that the evidence that John has moved things around far outweighs evidence that Mark has done so. The most important piece of data is the Temple cleansing incident. John and Mark both place the Temple cleansing scene just before Passover, but John places it two Passovers earlier than Mark. In Chapter 6 I offered substantial evidence that John has moved the story from some other location in the narrative and inserted it as a replacement for what Mark depicts as an exorcism of an unclean spirit in Capernaum. I won’t repeat the arguments here but will refer you to the earlier dis-

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cussion. The contextual evaluation there showed clearly that John has moved the story from some other location in the underlying narrative. John has only two other Passover incidents. His second Passover event occurs in Galilee, so that can’t be the chronological setting for the Temple cleansing in Jerusalem. That leaves only the last Passover in Jerusalem as the setting for this scene. But John doesn’t even place Jesus in Jerusalem during this third Passover period. The evidence, then, seems to strongly suggest that John has moved the Temple cleansing scene from the final Passover period to one that occurred two years earlier. This in turn corroborates Mark’s chronology of the Temple ­cleansing. John’s placement of the Triumphal Entry scene in the week before a Passover holiday reinforces the idea that John has broken from the underlying narrative regarding the events of the last week in Jerusalem by placing them earlier. We have also seen that John took a portion of the Sabbath conflict from John 5 and placed it into the final city visit at John 7:14–24. This shows some indication that John has moved events from elsewhere into his final visit scenario. John also has several instances where his account of the final visit incorporates a substantial amount of material that Mark has placed elsewhere. John’s account of the healing of the blind man in John 9 is built up primarily from Mark’s healing of the blind man at Bethsaida through the use of saliva along with elements of Mark’s healing of blind Bartimaeus at Jericho. It seems highly unlikely that Mark took a story like John’s Jerusalem account and turned it in to two separate stories about healing a blind man outside of Jerusalem. At the same time, it seems highly unlikely that Mark would have transformed something like John’s Abraham/Satan story in Jerusalem and turned it into a story about Jesus having troubles with his own family in Galilee. Since Mark’s stories don’t appear to be alterations of John’s stories, I have to assume that John is the one who substantially altered the underlying text, suggesting that John took Galilee stories and relocated them to his account of the last visit to Jerusalem. While there seems to be substantial evidence of story alterations and chronological re-arrangements by John, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that Mark has moved the story of the last visit from an earlier time frame. It is possible that he inserted a couple of events into the story of the final week that may have appeared elsewhere, such as the widow’s contribution or the commandment to love one another, but there is no credible evidence that he did so. But even if he did, it doesn’t mean that the underlying story of a final visit took place at any time other than the final week of Jesus’ life.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 383 The case in favor of John moving the last visit back to a longer period of time seems far stronger than the charge that Mark moved it forward into a shorter period of time. Therefore, I am strongly convinced that John has altered the chronology and that he has radically altered the content of the final visit to Jerusalem as it appeared in the proposed common source.

Summary In this chapter we looked at the wildly divergent accounts of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem in both Mark and John. The two differ over both the chronology of the visit and the substance of what occurred and there is little overlap between the two accounts. A discussion of the last visit to Jerusalem is also complicated by the fact that John has severed the Triumphal Entry narrative from the last visit narrative. Mark places the two events in a continuous sequence, beginning with the Triumphal Entry; John reverses the order of the two events and places a substantial narrative and chronological break between the two parts. Additionally, we have observed that the two gospels have very little overlap within each account of the Last Visit but that each account of the last visit has parallels outside of the other’s account of the last visit. There is some evidence of a sequential (but noncontiguous) agreement between John and Mark’s account of the last visit, but this may be a coincidence due to where John placed the money-changers story. However, if John’s account of chasing the money-changers was aligned with Mark’s version of the last visit, which version appears to be the one in the proposed common source, then we have a very strong sequential agreement for six out of ten parallel scenes in John aligning with Mark’s account of the last visit. It was my proposal that the primary cause of this chronological disruption derived from the very different theories presented by Mark and John as to the reason the priests plotted to put Jesus to death. In Mark, the motive was envy and jealousy over Jesus’ popularity, with an undercurrent of fear that such popularity would cause the priests a loss of political and religious power. In John, the priests were motivated by the fact that Jesus’ popularity, especially from bringing Lazarus back from the dead, would cause Rome to destroy the Temple and the nation, that the death of Jesus was necessary to save all that was dear to the Jewish people. The evidence shows that John significantly altered the two main confrontations between Jesus and the authorities in the Temple Encounters narrative. He moved the chasing of the moneychangers to the earlier part of the gospel and eliminated

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Table 7.2:  Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem: Parallels in John, Mark and Luke. Source: Author Scene Description

Mark

1. The Triumphal Entry Third Death Prediction/Lifting up declaration. 10:32–34 Jesus sends disciples to find a donkey. 11:1–3 Disciples bring donkey to Jesus/Jesus finds 11:4–7a donkey. Jesus mounts the donkey. 11:7b Crowds lay down cloaks and waive branches. 11:8 Jesus rides the donkey toward the Jerusalem 11:9a gate. Crowd had witnessed Jesus’ signs. Crowds shout out a blessing. 11:9b–10 Pharisees were unhappy over Jesus’ reception. Jesus lamented the blindness of Jerusalem’s authorities. Jesus left Jerusalem without engaging the 11:11 authorities. 2. Inside Jerusalem Beelzebul accusation/True Kindred sequence. 3:20–35

Jesus heals a blind man using saliva. 8:22–26 Second Death Prediction/Lifting up 9:30–32 declaration. Jesus went to the Jordan River, never to return 10:1 to Galilee. Jesus healed blind Bartimaeus. 10:46–52 Jesus chased the moneychangers in the Temple. 11:15–17 Authorities wanted to kill Jesus. 11:18–19 Authorities asked Jesus by what right he does 11:27–28 what he does. Jesus responded with a challenge the 11:29–33 authorities couldn’t meet. Parable of Wicked tenants/Attack on the 12:1–11 authorities. Authorities wanted to arrest Jesus because of 12:12 criticism.

John

Luke

12:32–34

18:31–34 19:29–31 19:32–35a

12:14a

12:14b–15 19:35b 12:12–13a 19:36b 19:36a 12:16–18 12:13b–15 12:19 12:37–40

19:37 19:38 19:39–40 19:41–44

12:36b

8:31–59 9:8–41 10:19–21 9:1–7 8:21–30

8:19–21 11:14–23 12:10–12 9:43b–45

10:40–42 9:1–7 2:14–17 7:25 2:18

18:35–43 19:45b–46 19:47–48 20:1–2

2:19:21

20:3–8

7:28–29

20:9–18

7:30

20:19

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 385 Table 7.2:  Continued Scene Description The most important commandment. The second most important commandment. Messiah debates not related to David’s son.

Mark

John

12:28–30 21:15–17 12:31 13:34–35 7:11–13 7:25–27 7:31 Can David’s Son be the messiah? 12:35–37 7:40–43 Jesus talks about the future destruction of the 13:1–2 2:19 Temple.

Luke 10:27 10:27

20:41–44 21:5–6

Scene descriptions are divided into two sections, “The Triumphal Entry” and “Inside Jerusalem.” All scenes follow Mark’s order. Highlighted scene descriptions in the Triumphal Entry section indicate that the scene is missing in Mark but present in both John and Luke. Highlighted scene descriptions for Inside Jerusalem indicate that the scene appears in the last visit accounts of both Mark and John. Verses in bold indicate that the scene appears in that gospel’s account of the final visit.

the death threat resulting from political rivalry. In place of the political rivalry, he placed the Sabbath death threat into the beginning of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. He also replaced the Parable of the Wicked Tenants, with a teaching that the authorities did not recognize that Jesus was sent by God. Based on the analysis above, showing that John’s account of the last visit to Jerusalem was an artificial creation that took many incidents out of sequence, I concluded that John was the one who made the primary alteration to the chronology. The editorial justification for his action was to place narrative distance between Jesus’ confrontation with the priests and the raising of Lazarus. He wanted the opposition to Jesus to be based on rejecting his power over life and death, not petty jealousy. Table 7.2, Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem: Parallels in John, Mark and Luke, summarizes the findings. John’s account of the final visit runs from 7:10 to 10:42 and his version of the Triumphal Entry runs from 12:12–43. Table 7.2 covers only those portions of the Triumphal Entry and the Last Visit that have parallels between John and Mark or John and Luke, with the exception that I have eliminated certain passages from John’s two accounts for subsequent analysis in Chapter 9. It will be my argument at that time that John 7:32, 7:45–52, 8:12–20, and 10:22–39 all belong to what was originally an account of the trial of Jesus before the Jewish authorities after he was arrested and that John 12:27–30 originally

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belonged to the pre-arrest narrative after the Last Supper. Below, I summarize some of the major findings in this chapter. Based in large part on the absence of the Zechariah 9:9 quote in the Triumphal Entry story in both Mark and Luke, and its presence only in John and Matthew, it was my argument that the passage was a late addition to the earlier account and that the original story was more likely modeled after Solomon’s ride on a donkey to claim the throne from Adonijah, who would have been the heir expected to succeed David. John significantly altered the scene by inserting the Zechariah passage and depicting Jesus only sitting on the donkey but not riding it to the gate. Consistent with this view, he showed Jesus walking before the assembled crowds rather than riding the donkey. For this reason, I accept the earlier scenes in Mark, where he sends the disciples to retrieve a donkey and bring it to him so that he can mount it and ride before the crowd. However, an analysis of John and Luke showed the presence of three scenes absent from Mark’s account, suggesting that Mark omitted them. The missing scenes in Mark included a claim that the crowds turned out because they had witnessed Jesus’ deeds of power, the Pharisees complaining about the reception Jesus received, and a lament by Jesus over the blindness of the Jerusalem authorities. Despite their differences regarding the chronology of the last visit, John and Mark both placed the Triumphal Entry at about five days before the final Passover. I offered some evidence that the scene probably should have been placed at about two days before Passover and that both John and Mark, for different reasons, had moved it earlier. However, part of the evidence was based on underlying historical assumptions and we are concerned here only with what would have been in the proposed common source, historically accurate or not. Since none of the gospels had direct evidence for such a move, although there were some clues, I have decided that for purposes of reconstructing the proposed common source, I will leave Mark’s chronology of the Triumphal Entry before the final visit in place as opposed to after as I believe it should be and as John has it. I did find some indications of overlapping parallels between Mark and John within both accounts of the final visit but they were few, limited to the following: a claim that the authorities wanted to kill Jesus shortly after his first public appearance in the Temple during his final visit to Jerusalem, a Johannine substitute for the Parable of the Wicked Tenants that criticized the authorities for failing to accept Jesus as the son of God sent by the Father, a desire to arrest Jesus because of that accusation, a debate (or debates) about the nature of the messiah in close narrative connection to the insult from the Wicked Tenants parable, and a statement about the destruction of the Temple.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 387 When we went beyond the confines of the Last Visit narratives, we found several more parallels. John’s account of the chasing of the moneychangers from the temple, immediately followed by a request for Jesus’ authority, and Jesus’ different response to that request, as mostly detailed in Chapter 6 and partly in this chapter, all seem to be a direct parallel to Mark’s account of the same incidents. The analysis also suggested that John must have moved the story from a later position in an underlying narrative and the only location that made sense, based on the Passover connection, was the final Passover week in Jesus’ life as set forth in Mark. In Chapter 4 we also established that John 8:31–9:41 and 10:19–21 presented alternative accounts to Mark 3:20–35, his True Kindred/Satanic Influence narrative, and to Mark 8:22–26 and 10:46–52, Mark’s two accounts of healing a blind man, all of which John combined into a lengthy narrative arc. There also appears to be parallels between Mark’s story about Jesus and a scribe discussing the two most important commandments, love God and love your neighbor. John would have found the theme, a way to heaven, offensive to his own gospel, and appears to have separated the two commandments from each other and placed each in separate locations in differing contexts. We also took a look at John’s three declarations about the Son of Man being lifted up and Mark’s three predictions about Jesus dying and rising up three days later. The analysis showed that the three sets of verses not only shared a theme, leading some scholars to believe they were parallels to each other, but that they also unfolded in a sequence of three corresponding contexts, further indicating a parallel between all three. Further analysis showed that John’s first “lifted up” statement had been transferred from the dialogue between Peter and Jesus, where Jesus rebukes Peter for his focus on earthly matters, and reinserted into the dialogue with Nicodemus. At the same time, John revised the language in the confrontation with Peter by using the less familiar term of “ascending up.” Brown had suggested that John’s usage may have been more primitive than Mark’s, and the contextual analysis indicated that this was probably the case. Mark’s three predictions represented a later theological development in the phrasing. In addition to shifting the “lifting up” declaration to the encounter with Nicodemus, John also shifted the accusation against Peter, that he focused on earthly matters rather than heavenly matters to Nicodemus in the same dialogue. John ends the Last Visit narrative by having Jesus go back to the Jordan River where John had baptized. Mark sets up his narrative for the journey to Jerusalem by having Jesus stop at the Jordan River. In both gospels, Jesus never goes back to

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Galilee after the stop by the Jordan River. The different chronology between John and Mark has to do with John setting the last visit to an earlier time. Finally, we looked at John’s story about Jesus and his brothers in that gospel’s transitional narrative to the final visit. The evidence suggested that John had moved the story out of sequence and that it probably belonged just before the final visit to Jerusalem in the week before the last Passover. Unfortunately, we lack corroboration in Mark or Luke for this conclusion and therefore I can’t confidently accept it as part of the proposed common source.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Mark 14:1. John 7:2. John 10:22. (Brown 1966), 335. (Brown 1966), 335. (Brown 1966), 335. John 12:11. John 11:48. John 12:10. John  11:50. Mark 11:1–6. Mark  11:7. Mark  11:8. Mark 11:9–10. Mark  11:11. Mark  11:11. Luke 19:29–36. Luke  19:37. Luke  19:38. Luke  19:39. Luke  19:40. Luke  19:41. Luke  19:42. Luke 19:43–44. Luke  19:44. Luke 19:45–46. Mark  11:15. John  12:12. John  12:13.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 389 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

John  12:13. John  12:14. John 12:14–15. John  12:15. Matthew 21:4–5. John 12:17–18. Luke 7:11–17; Luke 8:49–56. John  12:19. John 12:36b. John  11:57. John  12:37. John  12:38. John  12:38. John  12:40. John  12:40. John  12:42. (Brown 1966), 487. John 12:44:50. John  13:1. Mark  15:32. Mark  12:35. John  1:49. Matthew 21:4–5. 1 Kings 1:38–40. 1 Kings 1:45–47. John  12:1. John  12:12. Mark 14:1–3. Mark 12:35–37. Mark 11:12–14, 20–25. John  2:19. Luke  20:1. Mark 11:15–17. Mark  11:18. Mark  11:19. Mark  11:28. Mark  11:30. Mark 11:31–32. Mark  11:33. John  7:19. Mark 12:1–11.

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71. Mark 12:12. 72. John 7:28–29. 73. John 7:30. 74. Mark 12:35–37. 75. Mark 12:37. 76. Mark 12:35–37. 77. Mark 13:26. 78. Mark 14:62. 79. John 7:27. 80. John 7:41–42. 81. John 1:46. 82. John 7:52. 83. Mark 12:28. 84. Mark 12:29–30. 85. Mark 12:31. 86. Mark 12:32–33. 87. Mark 12:34. 88. John 8:42. 89. John 13:34–35. 90. Luke 10:25–28. 91. Mark 13:1–2. 92. Mark 13:2. 93. Mark 13:3–37. 94. Mark 13:9; John 15:18–19. 95. Mark 13:11; John 14:16. 96. Mark 12:13–15. 97. (Josepus 1987) Antiquities 18.1.4. 98. (Josepus 1987) Antiquities 18.6.23. 99. (Josepus 1987) Antiquities 18.6.23. 100. Mark  12:18. 101. Mark  12:23. 102. Mark 12:24–25. 103. Acts  23:8. 104. Mark 12:26–27. 105. Acts  23:8. 106. Mark 12:38–40. 107. Mark 12:41–44. 108. John 10:40–42. 109. Mark  10:1. 110. John  11:1. 111. Mark  10:17.

Jesus’ Last Visit to Jerusalem | 391 1 12. (Brown 1966), 146. 113. (Brown 1966), 146. 114. John  12:23. 115. John  12:25. 116. John  12:32. 117. John  12:35. 118. John  12:36. 119. (Brown 1966), 342. 120. John  8:24. 121. John  8:25. 122. John  8:25. 123. John  8:28. 124. John  3:14. 125. Mark  8:31. 126. (Brown 1966), 146. 127. John  6:62. 128. Mark  8:33. 129. John  3:12. 130. Mark  10:37. 131. Mark  10:32. 132. John places the declaration after Jesus arrives at Bethany; Mark places the prediction before arriving at Bethany. 133. Mark  9:32. 134. John  8:21. 135. John  8:22. 136. John  8:28. 137. John  6.1. 138. John  7:3–4. 139. John  2:23. 140. John  7:5. 141. John  7:3. 142. Paul refers to James, the brother of Jesus, Peter and John (Zebedee) as the Pillars of the church (Galatians 2:9). In Luke, at Acts 15:19, it appears that James, the brother of Jesus is the one who has the authority to rule on fundamental theological questions. 143. John  7:6–8. 144. John  7:9. 145. John  7:10. 146. John 7:11–12 147. John  7:13. 148. John  7:14.

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Bibliography Brown, R. E. (1966). The Gospel According to John I–XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Josepus, F. (1987). The works of Josephus: complete and unabridged. Peabody: Hendrickson. Kloppenborg, J. S. (1987). The Formation of Q. Harrisburg: Trinity Press International. Mays, J. L. (1988). Harper’s Bible Commentary. San Francisco: Harper & Row.

8

The Plot to Kill Jesus

In this chapter we will look at the sequence of narrative events associated with the Jewish plot to kill Jesus, beginning with the initial council meeting where the plot was conceived to its ultimate consummation with the handover of Jesus to Pilate. The proceedings in front of Pilate will be considered separately in Chapter 11. In the previous chapter I proposed that John had radically altered the account of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem in order to accommodate his alternative theory as to why the council plotted to kill Jesus. As a result, that narrative segment, despite several parallel agreements between Mark and John as to specific stories, is the one major narrative arc where, so far, John significantly departed from Mark’s sequential and chronological arrangements. In this chapter we will see that John once again returns to a substantial sequential agreement with Mark as to the unfolding of the story of Jesus. As is often the case, though, we have several problems to overcome. To begin with, Mark says that the Last Supper was a Passover meal, coming after the sacrifice of the lamb,1 and John says that the Last Supper took place the night before the Lamb was sacrificed and the Passover meal had not yet been eaten.2 So, where Mark has a scene in which the disciples prepare for the Passover meal, John offers a different pre-meal preparation scene.

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Another important problem concerns the institution of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist ceremony. Mark places this scene in the course of the Last Supper. As you will recall from Chapter 2, John moved what looked something like a Eucharist scene into his Discourse on Bread. But John’s Eucharist scene is very different from Mark’s, and Luke throws in some additional variations that have to be considered. This generates two separate problems. We have to account for 1) the differences between the two versions of the Eucharist scene and 2) John’s need to substitute a different scene to replace his missing Eucharist ceremony at the Last Supper. As to the first point, I will argue that John preserves the earlier form of the Eucharist ceremony but that it has been moved out of its original location at the Last Supper and that Mark and Luke introduced a later modified version based on teachings by Paul. As to the second point, I will argue that John took a story similar to Mark’s account of the most important commandment (in his last visit to Jerusalem narrative) and modified it as a substitute for the Eucharist scene at the Last Supper. There are also a couple of sequential issues. Where Mark and John place the Anointing at Bethany story after the last visit to Jerusalem, Luke has moved it well before the last visit and also has some significant variations from Mark and John. We will also see that John has moved a group of four consecutive scenes from the proposed common source into different locations and then altered them for theological reasons. One minor problem concerns the sequential order of Peter’s three denials of Jesus. Mark and Luke disagree slightly on the placement, whereas John divides the story into two separate parts, one consistent with Mark’s setting and the other consistent with Luke’s. I will suggest that John’s version is the one that probably comes closest to the original narrative arrangement, although which of the three is correct is a matter of trivial concern. Aside from those problems whatever remaining sequential issues we have are few and trivial, essentially altering the order of a scene within a story. The particular order of those scenes has no impact on the narrative flow and simply reflects an editorial decision on how to best tell a particular story.

The Analytic Structure The narrative arc under analysis in this segment is lengthy and comprises many episodes that for the most part follow the same narrative order in all three gospels.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 395 However, each of the three gospels has some material not included in the other two. John 14–17, for example, falls in the middle of the sequence and consists of one long discourse by Jesus and constitutes a Johannine insert that is not part of the original proposed common source. As discourses and speeches are mostly outside the scope of this work, I will pass over it. There are also some other speeches here and there in Mark and Luke that I will pass over. After comparing all three narratives, I have extracted fifty-one scenes, running from the plot to kill Jesus through the hand-off to Pilate, that I believe belong to the original narrative account in the proposed common source. Because of difficulties in recovering what I believe to be the original form of the Eucharist ceremony, I have elected to treat the story as a single scene, rather than a collection of scenes. Table 8.1, Scenes Breakdown in Mark, John, and Luke from the plot to kill Jesus to the handover to Pilate, shows my analytic scheme. Let me explain how it is organized and what it shows. The CS# column indicates which scenes I have identified as belonging to the proposed common source and the numbers indicate the order in which the scenes unfold. The verse columns show where the scene is located in each gospel and highlighted verse cells indicate that the scene in that gospel is out of order with respect to the proposed common source. Of the fifty-one scenes, forty appear in Mark and there is one additional scene, CS22, explicit in John and implicit in Mark and Luke that I also consider a match. It is the scene where Judas leaves to betray Jesus. Since he couldn’t bring the arresting party to Jesus’ location without leaving the last supper setting, I consider this just an editorial oversight on the part of Mark and Luke (who follows Mark here). That brings Mark’s total to forty-one scenes. Each of Mark’s forty-one scenes has a parallel in John, almost all of which fall into the same sequential order in both gospels. Several of the differences are trivial and a few require some discussion below. Of the remaining ten scenes, John and Luke agree against Mark as to the existence of five additional scenes. The remaining five appear in only one gospel (two in Luke and three in John) but have been included because the narrative context suggests that they are part of a larger story present in both gospels. In John, scenes CS28–31 are significantly out of order with respect to the proposed common source. This is due to John’s predilection for moving offensive scenes into different contexts. In Luke, scene CS2–11, all involving the Anointing at Bethany, have been moved out of order from both Mark and the proposed common source. We can only speculate here as to Luke’s reasoning, but I believe

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Table 8.1:  Common scenes in Mark, John, and Luke: From the plot to kill Jesus to the handover to Pilate. Source: Author

Scene Descriptions Jewish authorities plot to kill Jesus. Jesus visits a friend’s home in Bethany. A woman had a jar filled with ointment. The woman weeps. Tears fall on Jesus’ feet. She wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair. She pours the ointment on Jesus. People complain about the woman’s actions. The ointment was worth 300 denarii. Jesus defends the woman’s actions Jesus rebukes the critics. The ointment was for Jesus’ burial. Satan enters into Judas. Judas decides to betray Jesus. Preparation for the Last Supper Jesus predicts a disciple will betray him. The disciples seek betrayer’s identity. Jesus says, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Jesus dipped bread into the bowl. Jesus hands the bread to Judas but does not verbally identify him as the betrayer. Jesus tells Judas to leave and do what he must do. Judas leaves.

Common Source Order Mark

John

CS1 CS2

14:1–2 14:3

11:45–53 22:1–2 12:1 7:36

CS3

14:3

12:3

7:37 7:38 7:38 7:38 7:38 7:39

Luke

CS4 CS5 CS6 CS7 CS8

12:3 12:4

12:3 12:3 12:5

CS9

14:5

12:5

CS10 CS11 CS12 CS13 CS14 CS15 CS16

14:6 14:7 14:8

12:7 12:8 12:7 13:2 13:2 13:3–20 13:21

CS17 CS18

14:19

13:22–25 22:23 13:26

CS19 CS20

14:20

13:26 13:26

14:10–11 14:12–16 14:18

CS21 CS22

7:40–43 7:44–47 22:3 22:4–6 22:7–13 22:21

13:27 implicit

12:30

implicit

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 397 Table 8.1:  Continued

Scene Descriptions The Eucharist ceremony [John has moved the Eucharist scene into the Discourse on Bread (6:35–58) and substituted the commandment to love one another at this location.] Jesus warns the disciples of hard times ahead. Peter says he will stand by Jesus. Jesus predicts that Peter will deny Jesus three times before the cock crows. Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives with his disciples. Jesus is greatly distressed. Jesus prays to Father to remove the cup he has been given. [John has divided the scene into two parts and moved both out of sequence.] An angel comforts Jesus. Jesus says the hour has come. Judas arrives along with the arrest party. Judas approaches Jesus. A disciple cuts off the ear of the High Priest’s slave. It is the slave’s right ear. Jesus tells the disciples to stop the violence. Jesus complains about the arrest party. Jesus is placed under arrest. Jesus taken to the High Priest. Peter enters High Priest’s courtyard.

Common Source Order Mark

John

CS23

14:22–25

13:31–35 22:14–20

CS24

14:27–28

13:36

22:31–32

CS25 CS26

14:29 14:30–31

13:47 13:38

22:33 22:34

CS27

14:32

18:1

22:39

CS28 CS29

14:33 14:33–36

12:27 12:27 18:11b

22:44 22:41–42

CS30 CS31 CS32

14:41 14:42–43

12:28–30 22:43 12:27 22:45–46 18:3 22:47

CS33 CS34

14:44–45 14:47

18:5 18:10

22:47–48 22:49–50

18:10 18:11

22:50 22:51 22:52–53.

CS35 CS36

Luke

CS37

14:48

18:20

CS38 CS39 CS40

14:46 14:53 14:54

18:12 22:54 18:13–14 22–54a 18:15–16 22:54b–55 Continued 

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Table 8.1:  Continued

Scene Descriptions A servant girl accuses Peter of being a disciple of Jesus. Peter denies Jesus for the first time. Nighttime proceedings before High Priest. [The nighttime proceedings will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 9 and will be broken down into additional scenes in the reconstruction of the proposed common source.] Jewish guards strike Jesus. Peter is accused a second time of being a disciple of Peter. Peter denies Jesus for the second time. Peter is accused a third time of being a disciple of Jesus Jesus denies Peter for the third time. A cock crows. Morning proceeding before Jewish authorities. Jesus is taken to Pilate.

Common Source Order Mark

John

Luke

CS41

14:66–67

18:17

22:56

CS42 CS43

14:68 14:55–64

18:17 22:57 18:19–21

CS44 CS45

14:65 14:69

18:22 18:25

22:58

CS46

14:70

18:25

22:58

CS47

14:70

18:26

22:59

CS48 CS49 CS50

14:71 18:27 14:72–73. 18:27 15:1a 18:24

22:60 22:61 22:66–71

CS51

15:1b

23:1

18:28

CS numbers indicate scenes included in the proposed common source and the order in which they appear. Highlighted verse cells indicate that the particular scene is out of order from the parallel scene in the proposed common source.

that there were parts of the story that he found highly offensive and chose to create a radically different version of the story in a different setting. Finally, before moving on to the analysis, I want to draw your attention to scenes CS41, 42, and 45–49. These all belong to the story of Peter denying Jesus on three separate occasions. Mark and Luke each present the scenes in contiguous succession but disagree slightly on the order. John has presented the story in two non-contiguous segments. If you look at Table 8.1 you will see that John’s first segment aligns with Mark’s chronology and the second segment aligns with Luke’s

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 399 chronology. For that reason, I have chosen to follow John’s arrangement as most likely to reflect the original scenes sequence, but I am not wedded to the idea. Whichever of the three has the original arrangement, the entire narrative remains intact and has no editorial impact on the larger narrative.

The Jewish Council Plots Jesus’ Death (CS1) Mark and John both place the Jewish plot to kill Jesus after their respective accounts of the last visit to Jerusalem.3 Mark places it two days before Passover, immediately before the story known as “the Anointing at Bethany.”4 John also places the plot to kill Jesus immediately before the anointing at Bethany, but he places the Bethany story six days before Passover.5 Mark positions the story immediately after the encounters at the Temple over the three preceding days. His arrangement leaves little doubt that the council’s opposition to Jesus stems from the confrontations at the Temple and its fear that the Jews would follow Jesus and turn against the council that governed the city. Luke specifically says that the priests acted because “they were afraid of the people.”6 John’s chronology, however, places significant time differences between the confrontations in Jerusalem and the actions of the authorities. In Mark, the priests wanted to arrest Jesus in secret before the Festival, fearful “there may be a riot among the people.”7 But the arrest takes place after the festival starts and no riots materialize, not even during the public proceedings before Pilate. John has a different take. After Jesus departs Jerusalem, John sets up the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.8 This act leads to Jesus’ popularity and the Jewish council convenes to address the situation. (We won’t look into the Lazarus story here but will take a detailed look at it and the problems it presents in Chapter 10.) According to John, So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council, and said, “What are we to do? This man is performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and destroy both our holy place and our nation.”9

After some internal debate, “from that day on they planned to put him to death.”10 As a result, “Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.”11

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In John, Jesus stays out of Jerusalem during the final Passover week. He has arranged his narrative so that the reader sees a direct connection between the plot to kill Jesus and the raising of Lazarus, separate and apart from what happened in the earlier Temple confrontations. But, John’s description of the plot has an odd hole. Although the conspirators mention the many signs that Jesus did as giving rise to his popularity, there is no mention of Lazarus or anyone else being raised from the dead. If Jesus had done such a thing, surely it would have come up in conversation somewhere along the line. If one eliminated the Lazarus story from John’s gospel and retained his version of the plot to kill Jesus, there would be not a hint that Jesus raised someone from the dead. It would in and of itself not be inconsistent with Mark’s version. It just provides additional details that Mark could have omitted. But Mark frames the story as one of fear that the Jewish authorities could lose their influence due to the popularity of Jesus (and Luke concretizes that frame by saying specifically that the chief priest feared the people) and John frames it as one of fear that Rome would react violently to the popularity of Jesus as a result of raising Lazarus from the dead. Reading Mark and John together, I would conclude that in the proposed common source the council expressed concern over Jesus’ popularity due to his signs, but not over the raising of Lazarus. This would be consistent with the earlier observation in Chapter 7’s analysis of the Triumphal Entry scene, where Luke says that the crowds turned out because of the signs (plural) they had seen, and John says that they turned out because of the single sign of raising Lazarus.

The Anointing at Bethany (CS2–12) Immediately after the plot to kill Jesus, Mark and John both describe an incident known as “the Anointing in Bethany.”12 Although there are some differences in details it is fairly obvious that they are both describing the same incident. While Mark and John disagree on the chronology of the event, they agree on its placement right after the council plots to kill Jesus. Luke, though, has positioned the anointing scene much earlier in his gospel and his version differs significantly from both Mark and John.13 At the heart of all three versions is the story of what happened when a woman pours oil on Jesus to soothe him and the criticism that arises from her action. It should be emphasized that despite there being an anointing, there is no indication

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 401 in any of the versions that this was a messianic anointing. It is portrayed as a social act of hospitality. Mark and John place the story in a home in Bethany. Luke is silent on the location. Mark says the house belonged to “Simon the leper [emphasis added].”14 Other than Jesus, that is the only person present that Mark identified by name. Luke says the host was a Pharisee named Simon but omits the reference to “leper.”15 John doesn’t explicitly say who the house belonged to but Lazarus, “whom [Jesus] had raised from the dead,” and his sisters, Mary and Martha, were present and Martha was serving a meal.16 John also mentions by name the presence of Judas Iscariot, “the one who was about to betray [Jesus].”17 John, however, never mentions any one named “Simon,” let alone “Simon the Leper.” Despite John’s failure to specifically identify the owner of the house, it is commonly thought of as Lazarus’ house and in an attempt at harmonization it is often suggested that Lazarus was the son of Simon, an elegant solution if true. It is interesting, though, that Mark doesn’t mentions any of the names in John’s account (other than Jesus) and John omits the one name (other than Jesus) mentioned in Mark’s account. We’ll explore this further in Chapter 10, when we look at the Lazarus cycle in more detail. Although John places the “Anointing at Bethany” story six days before Passover and Mark says that it happened no earlier than two days before Passover, Mark does, however, indicate that Jesus had also arrived at Bethany six days before Passover, just before the Triumphal entry to Jerusalem.18 Mark’s internal narrative chronology—three days in the Temple followed by two days before Passover— appears to place the Triumphal entry at five days before Passover, indicating a probable arrival in Bethany at about six days before Passover. This suggests that the proposed common source may have placed Jesus in Bethany about six days before Passover. So, if John did move the anointing scene earlier, he may have latched on to this earlier arrival in Bethany as the time for the anointing.

Mark’s Version of the Anointing Scene (14:3–9) In Mark, an unidentified woman comes up to Jesus while he is seated at a table and she is carrying an “alabaster jar of very costly ointment of nard [emphasis added],”19 later described as worth three hundred denarii.20 She broke open the jar and poured the oil over Jesus’ head.21 Some unidentified individuals complained about this act saying that the large amount of money could have been better spent on the poor, and they scolded her for wasting the money on an extravagance.22

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In response, Jesus chastised the critics, telling them that she has performed a good service for him and that “you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.”23 Jesus added that she had anointed him for his burial and that she will always be remembered for what she did.24 Mark is vague as to when precisely the scene takes place. The time frame can run from two days before the slaughter of the lamb (i.e. the day of the plot), to the day of the slaughter of the lamb.25 But Mark doesn’t explain why Jesus should be anointed for burial while he is still alive and possibly two days before his arrest.

John’s Version of the Anointing Scene (12:1–8) In John, Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha, are present. Martha serves dinner and Mary takes “a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anoints Jesus’ feet, and wipes them with her hair.”26 Here, too, the costly nard costs three hundred denarii.27 On this occasion, it is Judas Iscariot “the one who was about to betray him” who made the complaint about not giving the money to the poor.28 John adds in that Judas made this complaint not because he cared for the poor but because he was a thief who kept the funds for the missionary group and used to steal from the purse.29 Again Jesus chastised the critic (here presumably just Judas) and says, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”30

Mark and John Compared Both Mark and John agree the incident happened in Bethany. Both agree that the oil was made from nard, and that it was worth three hundred denarii, a very large sum of money, often described as the equivalent of a year’s wages.31 Both agree that the woman who anointed Jesus was criticized and that Jesus defended her actions. Both imply that the use of the oil had something to do with Jesus’ burial. And both say that Jesus said words to the effect of, “you always have the poor with you but you do not always have me.” On the other hand, Mark has the oil poured on Jesus’ head; John says on the feet and that the woman wiped his feet with her hair. Mark does not identify the critics but says “some” criticized her. John says it was Judas who made the criticism and adds an insulting gloss about Judas to the story, accusing him of being a thief. Mark has no Lazarus, Mary or Martha in his version and John’s story has

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 403 no Simon the Leper. Mark says the jar was broken,32 implying all the oil was used up, and says the woman prepared Jesus for (imminent) burial;33 John says the oil was poured and some was left for his burial, whenever it happened. (Keep in mind that John places the story six days before Jesus dies.) John says a meal was being served; Mark mentions no meal. And, as mentioned above, they disagree on how long before Passover the event took place. Nevertheless, it is hard not to see that the two stories describe different versions of the same story.

Luke’s Version of the Anointing Scene (7:36–50) In Luke’s version, Jesus was invited to the house of Simon, a Pharisee.34 An unidentified woman from the city came to the house with an “alabaster” jar of ointment.35 She bathed Jesus’ feet with tears, dried them with her hair, and poured ointment on his feet.36 The host, Simon, complained that if Jesus were truly a “prophet” he would know that the woman was a sinner, although in what way she was a sinner is not expressly stated. Jesus responded that the woman gave him more hospitality then Simon did. She washed his feet with tears while Simon provided no water for his feet; she kissed his feet while Simon gave him no kiss; she anointed his feet with ointment while Simon “did not anoint [Jesus’] head with oil [emphasis added].”37 He then forgave her sins and the guests grumbled about his action.38 While Luke agrees with John about oil being poured on the feet, he indicates that Simon failed as a host because he “provided no oil for my head.” So Luke seems to have a foot in both camps. Luke has a number of differences from Mark and John. The most important is that he eliminates the argument over the woman wasting money on expensive oil that could have gone to the poor and substitutes a criticism of the woman that she was a sinner. Luke doesn’t mention the cost of the oil and doesn’t identify the oil as nard. Nor is there any indication that the oil was for his burial. He also eliminates Jesus’ statement about the poor always being with us while he will soon be gone. He does identify the host as Simon, as Mark, does, but eliminates Mark’s description of the host as a leper. He also retains Mark’s alabaster jar to hold the oil. At the same time, he agrees with John that the oil was applied to the feet and the woman at one point dried his feet with her hair. But in Luke’s version, it is not the oil that is dried with the hair but the moisture from the woman’s tears. And, unlike, John, none of the oil is saved. So Luke seems to fall somewhere between Mark and John.

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Ordinarily, when John and Luke agree against Mark, as they do here with oil being placed on the feet instead of the head, I tend to agree that John and Luke come closer to the source story than Mark. Here I don’t think that is the case. Mark may come closest to the version in the proposed common source. First, I can’t see any good reason why Mark would change the anointing from the feet to the head. On the other hand, I can see a reason for changing it from the head to the feet. Anointing on the head so close to Jesus’ execution could have been interpreted as a messianic anointing. This could have been seen as a valid reason for the Romans to have Jesus executed and I suspect over time this led to a modification of the story as it circulated. Second, there is an interesting difference between John and Luke. Luke says the woman cried and her tears wet Jesus’ feet and that she used her hair to dry them. Then she placed the ointment on his feet and didn’t wipe it off. John has no tears. He says the ointment was wiped off with her hair. That doesn’t make much sense. Neither Mark nor Luke say anything about wiping the ointment off. Third, according to Luke, Jesus said, “You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment.” Why didn’t she anoint his head if that was what was expected? I think switching the anointing to her feet was an effort to make her a humbler unsophisticated person, rather than the extravagant wastrel in the Mark and John versions. I think Luke was deeply embarrassed by the underlying story that seemed to show Jesus luxuriating while indifferent to the plight of the poor. Fourth, I find Luke’s tears-wipe-oil to be an interesting contrast to John’s oilwipe sequence. I can understand why each would switch the anointing from the head to the foot, but where did both come up with the hair being used to wipe, while disagreeing as to what she wiped with her hair. These observations suggest to me that in the underlying story the woman engaged in two different actions. One involved anointing the head and the other involved using her hair to dry tears falling on Jesus’ feet. Both Mark and John discuss the anointing in terms of Jesus’ imminent funeral. Contextually, this suggests that it was topic of conversation at this dinner and, in terms of narrative, it is hard to imagine that there wasn’t a great deal of grief and tears at the thought that Jesus would soon die. I suspect that the underlying story first showed Jesus talking about his imminent death, followed by a great deal of grief, with one woman at Jesus’ feet crying and wiping her tears off with her hair, and then the application of oil as a soothing and comforting experience in a situation of great horror. This is the version of the story that I adopt for the proposed common source and it encompasses scenes CS4–7.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 405

John’s First Insertions into the Narrative Structure Immediately after the anointing story, Mark tells of Judas’ decision to work with the priests. John, however, has placed some insertions into the narrative before arriving at Judas’s decision. First he announces that that the chief priests decided to put Lazarus to death as well, “since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”39 This remedies the earlier failing to mention Lazarus, when the council plotted to kill Jesus, and provides further evidence that in the source material the council was not concerned with the raising of Lazarus. Oddly, after this announcement Lazarus disappears from the gospel and we have no idea what happened to him. The second insertion is John’s lengthy modification of the Triumphal Entry scene. I have discussed that in great detail in Chapter 7. In Mark, the Triumphal Entry appears before the last visit to Jerusalem. In John it comes after the last visit to Jerusalem. As a result, it interrupts John’s sequential narrative of the events leading up to the handover of Jesus to Pilate. Despite the interruption, John still follows along, almost completely, with Mark’s sequential order of events. That being said, though, I must also point out that the analysis below will show that John had some theological concerns with a couple of scenes in the narrative leading up to the arrest of Jesus. As is his fashion, he separated out some scenes, CS28–31, and moved them to this location in the narrative, making them part of his version of the Triumphal Entry. We will look at those scenes when we come to that part of the underlying narrative.

Judas Decides to Betray Jesus (CS13–14) I have divided the betrayal of Jesus into two scenes. All the gospels agree or imply that prior to the Last Supper Judas went to the authorities in connection with the arrest of Jesus. But John and Luke both say that the devil entered into Judas before he did this. Mark has no such allegation. Therefore, I added the devil’s involvement to the betrayal scene. Immediately following the anointment at Bethany, Mark says that Judas “went to the chief priests in order to betray [Jesus] to them.”40 The priests were pleased and promised him money and Judas looked for an opportunity to betray Jesus.41 Although money is mentioned in Mark, there is no indication in his gospel that Judas asked for money in advance or that he was actually motivated by

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money. It is Matthew, writing later, who introduces the idea that Judas sought remuneration for betraying Jesus.42 Luke has modified Mark’s version of the event. According to Luke, Then Satan entered into Judas called Iscariot, who was one of the twelve; he went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers of the temple police about how he might betray him to them. They were greatly pleased and agreed to give him money. So he consented and began to look for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present [emphasis added].43

In this version, before Judas agreed to betray Jesus, Satan possessed him. In this sense, Judas was not acting on his own accord. The devil made him do it. Luke then continues with Mark’s version of what happened. Again, there is no initial request by Judas for money. It is a reward bestowed upon him after an agreement is reached. John appears to back up Luke’s satanic intervention. Once we get past John’s first set of inserts, “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father.”44 At this point, John says, “The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him [emphasis added].”45 John and Luke both agree that the devil possessed Judas before he went to the authorities. Mark omits that fact. Because John and Luke agree against Mark in including the scene, I am adding this satanic possession to the proposed common source. An interesting problem arises from the fact that John never actually shows Judas plotting with the priests to betray Jesus, although his language implies that this was the case. However, in John’s preceding “anointing at Bethany,” which originally would have been the scene that immediately preceded Judas’ decision to betray Jesus, John depicts Judas accusing Jesus of wasting money that could be used to feed the poor and Jesus rebukes him. John adds in a gloss saying that Judas was not concerned with the poor but was a thief who stole from the disciples. John has shifted Judas’s alleged base motives from the betrayal scene to the immediately preceding anointing scene. He may have done this to mitigate the charge against Jesus of callousness towards the poor. By portraying the accuser as the hated Judas with corrupt motives, John diminishes the seriousness of the (embarrassing) accusation. That John leaves the charge in his gospel account of the Bethany scene suggests that the details of the accusation may have been well known within Christian circles. While Luke and John agree against Mark on the Satan issue, John and Mark agree against Luke on the sequential issue. Luke has moved the anointing at Beth-

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 407 any to a much earlier time in the gospel. In his gospel, therefore, the narrative moves from the plot to kill Jesus straight to Judas’ betrayal, without an intervening scene of any sort. The agreement between John and Mark on the sequence of Plot-Anointing-Betrayal- shows that Luke has moved the anointing scene out of its original location in the proposed common source. A question that remains is why Mark would have removed the Satan scene if it was in the source. I suspect he may have been concerned that his audience may have thought that Satan pulled one over on God by having a disciple betray Jesus so that he couldn’t continue his mission. This would imply that God didn’t have full control over all events. Omitting Satan from the scene puts the onus solely on the human Judas as one who freely chose to betray Jesus, giving the sense that everything is proceeding as God planned.

Preparation for the Last Supper with the Disciples (CS15) Following the decision of Judas to betray Jesus, Mark and John proceed to the preparations for the Last Supper but they disagree as to what occurred at this point. The problem is that Mark says the Last Supper was the Passover meal.46 John says the Passover meal was scheduled to take place after Jesus was arrested.47 This is an unresolvable chronological conflict between Mark and John. We won’t explore the issue here but will take a look at the problematic Passover chronology in Chapter 13 and see how the conflicts may have arisen. Because of this disagreement, Mark and John have different descriptions of what took place in preparation for the meal. Mark begins the scene on the day that the lamb is slaughtered.48 The disciples ask, “Where do you want us to go and make the preparations for you to eat the Passover [emphasis added]?”49 Jesus gives instructions to two of his disciples about how to find a location for the meal and they carried them out.50 In Mark, therefore, the preparation scene is a preparation for the Passover meal to be eaten on the day after the lamb is slaughtered. Since John places the meal on the day before the Passover meal, he does not replicate Mark’s instructions about preparing for the Passover meal. Instead, he presents an entirely different dinner setup. In John, Jesus gets up from the dining table and begins to wash the feet of the disciples.51 This results in some give and take between Jesus and the disciples about whether Jesus should wash their feet but Jesus advises them it is necessary. After Jesus washes the feet of the disciples,

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he returns to the dinner table.52 He further instructs them to wash each other’s feet in order to imitate him.53 That John’s foot-washing scene coincides with Mark’s Passover preparation scene can be seen from the fact that in both gospels immediately before the respective scenes Judas planned to betray Jesus and immediately after the respective scenes Jesus announces at dinner that someone will betray him. Who more closely reflects the content of the original source story, Mark or John, depends upon whether you accept Mark’s Passover chronology or John’s. That issue remains a subject of debate among scholars.

The Eucharist Ceremony (CS23) I am taking the Eucharist ceremony slightly out of order. The next scene in the proper sequence should be Jesus’ prediction of Judas’s betrayal (CS16); the Eucharist ceremony should come after that. But Mark, Luke, and John all have small but important differences in their versions of the prediction and it is necessary to first resolve some complicated issues concerning the Eucharist ceremony before we can resolve these other disagreements. The chief problem is that Mark and John have radically different versions of the Eucharist ceremony. John has also moved his version into the much earlier Discourse on Bread and, as we shall see below, replaced the Last Supper Eucharist narrative with a different story that has a similar theme. At the same time, Luke, though similar to Mark in some ways, also has some significant differences from both Mark and John. Our analysis will show that Luke’s version of the Eucharist draws directly from Paul, so much so that he must have had a written copy of Paul’s explanation in front of him. Mark also has similarities to Paul’s version but not as closely matched to Paul as Luke is, and Luke has some variations and extra material. The evidence will suggest that Mark did not know the written version of Paul’s teaching but was familiar with a circulating variation. Luke, as we shall see, appears to have combined Mark’s extra material with Paul’s. A major problem with Paul’s account of the Eucharist ceremony, set forth in 1 Corinthians 11:23–26, is his claim that the teaching came to him in a revelation from the resurrected Jesus.54 He says that Jesus handed down to him certain teachings about his body and his blood. It is generally accepted that Paul probably wrote this letter in the mid-fifties of the first century, about twenty to twenty-five years after Jesus died.55

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 409 The issue is, if Jesus gave these teachings to the disciples at the Last Supper, why didn’t they hand on the teaching instead of Paul, some twenty or more years later. Our analysis will suggest that John’s version of the Eucharist ceremony probably comes closest to the one in the proposed common source and that Paul’s version may have been a reinterpretation of that earlier form.

John’s Version of the Eucharist Ceremony (6:35–58) It is probably best to begin with John’s version of the Eucharist ceremony, which I have already discussed in some detail in Chapter 2. In this way we will see how Mark, Luke and Paul differ from John and how Paul’s version may have evolved. The essence of John’s teaching was that Jesus was the bread of life and that eating him was the path to eternal life. As I explained in the earlier analysis, “eating Jesus” meant taking in his teachings and accepting that he was the one sent by God to bring eternal life. Let me quote some of John’s chief passages and then briefly comment. Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” [emphasis added].56 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. [emphasis added]57 So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” [emphasis added]58

John’s teaching contains several key concepts. Jesus’ body is the bread that came from heaven and it is not like the bread that the ancestors ate (manna). It is not ordinary bread that perishes. His “flesh is true food and my blood is true drink [emphasis added].” And his flesh is given for the life of the world. One must eat his bread/body and drink his blood to obtain eternal life. There is nothing in John’s discourse that equates Jesus with ordinary bread or with a ceremony in remembrance of Jesus. But his flesh, his life, is given for

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the life of the world. This indicates that Jesus’ death will enable people who “eat Jesus”, i.e., take in his teaching that he is the one sent by God to offer eternal life to those who believe in him, to obtain eternal life. With this in mind, let’s turn to the very different versions of the Eucharist in Mark, Luke and Paul.

Mark’s Version of the Eucharist Ceremony (14:22–25) In Mark’s account of the Eucharist ceremony, Jesus breaks a loaf of bread and hands the pieces to his disciples and says, “Take; this is my body.”59 Next, he gave them a cup and asked all to drink from it. As they drink he says, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.”60 Jesus concludes by saying, “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”61 So ends Mark’s account of the Eucharist teaching. Mark has essentially inverted John’s formulation. John says eat Jesus because he is the bread (of eternal life). Mark says eat the bread because it is Jesus. These are not equivalent expressions. John’s Jesus did not say eat ordinary bread. He said eat Jesus because Jesus was a special kind of bread, the bread of life that came down from heaven. In Mark, ordinary bread is offered. As I argued in Chapter 2, “eating Jesus” meant taking in his teachings. A similar principle holds with the wine. John’s Jesus never said drink wine because it is his blood. John’s Jesus said, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”62 There is no direction to eat real bread or drink actual wine. The entire discourse was based on rejecting ordinary bread, bread that perishes. So Mark’s concept of the Eucharist is radically different from John’s. One important problem with Mark’s account is that he never explains why Jesus gives the disciples the bread and says it his body. There is no explanation for what the function of this taking is. On the other hand, when handing out the wine, which Mark identifies as Jesus’ blood, Jesus says it signifies a “covenant” and is “poured out for many.” This latter phrase seems to echo John’s teaching that Jesus’ flesh is given so that the world will have life.

Luke’s Version of the Eucharist Ceremony (22:14–20) Luke has made several significant changes to Mark’s account. To start with, he has a different order of events. Mark begins with the handing over of bread followed by the passing of a cup of wine. Luke begins with a first cup of wine, followed by the handing over of bread, followed by a second cup of wine.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 411 While Luke sometimes uses Mark’s wording, he sometimes alters them and sometimes adds additional information. When Jesus hands the bread to the disciples, Luke adds to Mark’s identification of the bread as Jesus’ body the words “which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”63 Luke provides an explanation that is missing from Mark. The eating of the bread serves as a ceremonial remembrance of Jesus. He also says that Jesus’ body is “given for you.” It is unclear if “you” refers to just the disciples or to people in general, but we have a connection of sorts to John, who says Jesus’ flesh (the bread) was given for “the life of the world.” Luke also alters Mark’s quotation from Jesus upon handing out the wine. Mark says that the wine is “my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.” Luke says, “the cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant [emphasis added].”64 The italicized portions differ from Mark. The latter says the blood is poured out for many, and Luke says it is for “you.” Again, he is unclear whether “you” means just the disciples or people in general. Luke also alters Mark by adding the word “new” in front of “covenant” but says nothing about what he means by “new” or in what way his usage improves upon Mark. Luke does, however, provides a fairly close approximation of Mark’s quotation by Jesus about not drinking wine again until the kingdom of God comes.65 A question that arises from Luke’s variations from Mark is the origin of the information. Is it in the proposed common source? Is it from his own imagination? Or is it from some other source? For an answer we need to go to Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, specifically 1 Corinthians 11:23–26.

Luke and 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 It is generally agreed that Paul’s letters were written earlier than the gospels, although there is some argument over how early the gospels were written. Most scholars would probably date Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians to sometime around the mid-fifties of the first century, approximately twenty to twenty-five years after the death of Jesus.66 In the passage in question, Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. [emphasis added]67

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Luke, as I will show in a moment, incorporates Paul’s phrasing almost word-forword. We see, for example, Paul’s instruction to take the bread in remembrance of Jesus along with a reference to the wine as a “new” covenant. As a chronological aside, Paul clearly places the Eucharist dinner on the day Jesus was betrayed, a fairly strong indication that what appears to be John’s version of the Eucharist has been moved out of its original sequential order. More important though is that Paul claims that what he has said in this passage is a revelation from the Lord to him and that it is a teaching that he, Paul, has handed down. Although Paul says that Jesus made these statements he hasn’t actually identified to whom Jesus made the statements to. Presumably, they should have been made to the apostles. So why weren’t they the ones who handed on this teaching? How is it that Paul first introduced this ceremony? Let me compare Mark, Luke and Paul, and suggest some answers.

A Comparison of Mark, Luke, and Paul Table 8.2, The Eucharist Scene in Mark, Luke, and Paul, aligns all three versions for analysis. Because Luke’s dual passing of the cup causes some confusion, I have moved his account of the first cup of wine after the handing over the bread instead of before. I highlighted those verses in Luke which I have moved out of sequence. For reasons that will be obvious in a moment, I have aligned Paul’s description of the cup scene with Luke’s second passing of the cup instead of with Mark’s passing of the cup. To identify parallel passages in the three texts, I have highlighted certain phrases in the table. Italicized text passages show parallels in Mark and/or Luke to Paul. Bracketed passages show parallels between Mark and Luke that are not present in Paul. I have also highlighted a portion of Luke’s text because I moved it out of Luke’s narrative order. The relocated passage describes Luke’s first reference to a cup. In Luke, that passage precedes the offering of the bread. I did so in order to show more clearly how Luke’s description of the Eucharist closely follows Paul’s. Beginning with the bread scene, we see a near perfect agreement between Luke and Paul, both as to the additions added on to Mark’s quotation and in the actual words attributed to Jesus. They even agree against Mark as to the phrasing of how Jesus blessed the bread. Mark says, “after blessing it” and Luke and Paul both say, “and when he had given thanks.” Both Luke and Paul say that the bread/ body is “for you,” without saying who “you” is. And both use the identical instruction: “Do this in remembrance of me.”

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 413 Table 8.2:  The Eucharist scene in Mark, Luke, and Paul. Source: Author Mark 14:22–25

Luke 22:14–20

he took a loaf of bread, and Then he took a loaf of bread, after blessing it he broke it, and when he had given gave it to them, and said, thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “Take; this is my body.” “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” [Then he took a cup, and [Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks] he after giving thanks] he said, gave it to them, and all of “Take this and divide it them drank from it. He among yourselves; said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, [which is poured] out for many.” “Truly I tell you, [I will for I tell you that from now never again drink of the on [I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until] that fruit of the vine until] the day when I drink it new in [kingdom of God] comes.” the [kingdom of God].” And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that [is poured out] for you is the new covenant in my blood.”

Paul 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 the Lord Jesus … took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”

Italicized passages in Mark and/or Luke indicate parallels with Paul. Bracketed passages indicate passages in Luke parallel to Mark but not to Paul. The highlighted cells in Luke’s column belong before the passing of the bread but have been repositioned for convenience of analysis.

If we omit Luke’s first cup scene and go from his bread offering directly to his second cup scene, again we see almost perfect agreement between Luke and Paul concerning the passing of the cup. Both refer to taking the cup in the same manner (with a trivial difference in phrasing), and Mark makes no mention of taking the cup “in the same way.” Both indicate that the cup was taken “after supper,” a

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note missing from Mark. Both say that the cup “is the new covenant in blood,” adding in the “new” that is missing in Mark. Luke, however, has inserted a phrase into Paul’s statement about the cup. He adds “that is poured out for you.” This partially corresponds to Mark’s reference to the cup being “poured out for many.” As noted above, Luke uses “you” and Mark says “many.” Luke appears to have modified Mark’s wording to coincide with Paul’s earlier statement that the bread/body is “for you.” Note that Luke’s altered quote is introduced by the statement “he did the same with the cup.” Luke followed Paul’s use of “for you” with the bread, and doing “the same” with the cup required that he again identify the beneficiary as “for you.” Turning now to Luke’s description of the first cup, we find that he has almost perfectly followed Mark’s description of the cup scene, with one key exception. Mark says the covenant was poured out for many, and as we saw, Luke moved that description of the covenant to his parallel of Paul’s description of the covenant. But Luke retained the rest of Mark’s account of the cup scene in connection with Luke’s first cup scene. Luke, in agreement with Mark, says that Jesus said a blessing over the cup, handed it to the disciples, the disciples all drank from the cup, and Jesus made a commitment not to drink wine again until the kingdom of God arrived. Luke’s arrangement can then be reduced to this. Everything Mark said in the cup scene that wasn’t related directly to the covenant was aligned with Luke’s first passing of the cup, prior to handing the bread. Luke’s second passing of the cup combines everything Paul said about the cup/covenant with what Mark said about the cup/covenant. In this manner, Mark, Luke, and Paul place the cup/covenant notice after the passing of the bread. It seems quite obvious that Paul’s letter serves as a template for Luke and that he follows it almost exactly word for word. Given how precisely Luke preserves all of Paul’s words, we should assume that he had a copy of Paul’s letter in front of him when he wrote out his gospel. Mark has similarities to Paul’s description of the Eucharist, and appears to be familiar with it, but his variations in language and omission of phrases, such as “do this in remembrance of me” suggest that Mark didn’t know Paul’s precise phrasing and relied on some circulating variant of Paul’s message, either oral or written. At the same time, both Mark and John omit the explanation that eating the bread was a way to remember Jesus. This strongly suggests that whatever version of the Eucharist that appeared in the proposed common source, it did not include that teaching in the Eucharist ceremony.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 415 Another piece of evidence in support of John’s version of the Eucharist story over Mark and Luke is that both Mark and Luke say that Jesus declared that he would not drink wine again until the Kingdom of God comes. John has Jesus drink wine just before he dies on the cross while Mark and Luke say wine was offered but Jesus didn’t accept it. There seems to be no good theological explanation for why John would have added in that Jesus drank the wine unless it was part of the original story. I’ll discuss this further in Chapter 12.

The Original Version of the Eucharist Ceremony It now remains to reconstruct the original Eucharist ceremony and its evolution. In John’s version of the story, which he almost certainly moved from its original place in the Passion narrative into John 6, he identified Jesus’s body as the bread of life and said that his followers had to eat his body and drink his blood in order to obtain eternal life. In my analysis of that scene in Chapter 2 I concluded that “bread” was a metaphor for teaching. In Mark’s parallel to John 6 we saw that he had a similar teaching when he warned his followers against eating the yeast of the Pharisees, i.e., John’s bread that perishes. Matthew, in order to clarify the situation, specifically noted that the warning against the yeast of the Pharisees was a warning against their teaching.68 It is my contention that the original formulation of the Eucharist formula consisted of the instruction that the disciples should eat (take in the teachings of ) Jesus because he was the “bread” (knowledge). John enhanced this to make Jesus the “bread of Life” (knowledge of eternal life). There is no handing over of bread and wine in the original Eucharist discourse. There is no eating bread in remembrance of Jesus. The disciples are asked to “eat my flesh and drink my blood” in order to “have eternal life.” At the Last Supper, Jesus would have told the disciples that he is the bread (knowledge) and that they should eat him. A similar remark was made regarding Jesus’ blood and the granting of eternal life. The Eucharist ceremony, in its original form, was about handing over the teachings of Jesus to the apostles and granting them the authority to continue in his name. While “remembrance” wasn’t a specific part of the ceremony, the fact that they were to continue in his name would keep Jesus’ memory alive among the followers. Paul appears to have taken over the original symbolism of eating the bread— taking in the knowledge of Jesus’ teachings—and concretized it into a physical ritual designed to remember Jesus through his teachings. Mark’s version of the

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Eucharist appears to be adopted from a general knowledge of Paul’s account, but without having the specific wording before him. In the earlier version of the Eucharist, Jesus offered his flesh for the life of the world. Mark retained the idea that the covenant was for the masses (“many”) while Paul, appears to have reduced it to a commitment to the disciples (“for you.”) Luke appears to have accepted Paul’s exact written version of the Eucharist and integrated it with Mark’s. Although the original version of the Eucharist story can probably be subdivided into separate scenes, the alterations by all three authors make it difficult to recover the original version of the story with any degree of confidence. So I treat it as a single scene for our analytic purposes and it also serves as something of a chronological marker for the flow of the narrative.

John’s Substitute Story (13:31–35) Since John moved his Eucharist story from the Last Supper to the Discourse on Bread, we should anticipate that John might have replaced it with another story at the same (or very close) sequential location and that it would serve a similar purpose. He does appear to have done so. Immediately after declaring that one of his disciples would betray him, Mark has the story of the Eucharist ceremony. At that same sequential location, after Jesus says that one of the disciples will betray him, John has a different story, in which he gives the disciples a commandment. According to John, Jesus made a little speech to the disciples, telling them “I am with you only a little longer,”69 and he gave them “a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”70 Jesus adds, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”71 John’s identification of this new commandment, which he seemingly directs only to the disciples, seems to parallel the story (discussed in Chapter 7) that appears in Mark’s Temple confrontation sequence. According to Mark, one of the scribes listening to Jesus’ arguments with the other scribes came over to him and asked, “Which commandment is the first of all?”72 Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself [emphasis added].’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”73

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 417 The first part of the answer, derived from Deuteronomy 6:4, constitutes one of the most fundamental Jewish prayers. But I draw your attention to the italicized portion above. Jesus says that the second commandment is that you must love one another. This is essentially the same teaching Jesus imparts in John when he addresses the disciples at the Last Supper. But John has elevated the nature of the commandment. He says that if the disciples engage in this behavior people will know that they are the ones teaching on Jesus’ behalf. This makes a reasonably decent fit for the replaced Lord’s Supper scene, which I interpreted as originally being a scene about handing over the teachings from Jesus to the apostles. In John’s replacement scene, he explains how people will know that these are the apostles designated by Jesus to carry on after he is gone. In essence, this commandment explains how Jesus’ teachings are to be handed on, i.e., remembered.

Jesus Predicts That a Disciple Will Betray Him (CS16–22) We can turn now to the differences in Mark, Luke, and John as to how Jesus announces that he will be betrayed by one of the disciples. Mark positions the scene between the preparation for the Passover meal and the Eucharist ceremony. Luke departs from Mark and positions it immediately after the Eucharist ceremony. John, consistent with Mark, positions it between his substitute scenes for the Passover meal preparation (i.e., washing the feet of the disciples) and the Eucharist ceremony (i.e., a new commandment). In this arrangement Mark and John agree against Luke as to the sequential placement. Although it is clear that all three versions stem from a common story, each of the three has significant differences from the other two. I believe the differences can best be explained by Mark and Luke both departing from what I suggested above was the original form of the Eucharist ceremony. Keep in mind that in my proposal there was no passing of bread to the disciples during the original Eucharist ceremony.

John’s Version of the Prediction (13:21–30) Since John comes closest to what I believe was the original form of the Eucharist ceremony, I’ll begin with his version of Jesus’ betrayal announcement. He has two connected references. After Jesus explained to the disciples why he should wash their feet and before he asked them to wash each other’s feet, he told them

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“ ‘you are clean, though not all of you.’ For he knew who was to betray him.”74 At this point, though, Jesus makes no public statement to the disciples about the impending betrayal. After he and the disciples finish washing each other’s feet, they return to the dinner table and Jesus announces, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.”75 The disciples want to know which of them it is and Peter asks the Beloved Disciple to inquire.76 Jesus responds, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.”77 Jesus dips the bread and hands it to Judas.78 This is the only occasion in the course of John’s Last Supper where Jesus hands bread to any of the disciples. After the bread was passed to Judas, John says that Satan entered into the indicated disciple.79 However, John had already told us this earlier.80 Since Luke and John agree that Satan entered into Judas earlier, prior to his meeting with the Jewish authorities, this second satanic reference in John appears to be a doublet and suggests some possible reworking of the source material. Nevertheless, Jesus then says to Judas “Do quickly what you are going to do.”81 Despite what Jesus said about handing the bread to the one who will betray him, the disciples did not understand what was going on. They thought that because Judas was the group treasurer he left to either to buy supplies for the next day’s Passover meal or give money to the poor.82

Mark’s Version of the Prediction (14:17–21) Mark says that when Jesus and the disciples arrived at the indicated site for the Passover meal and began eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.”83 One after the other, the disciples said, “Surely, not I?”84 Jesus responded, “It is one of the twelve, one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.”85 He added, “It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”86

Luke’s Version (22:21–23) In Luke, Jesus announces, “But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table [emphasis added].”87 This occurs immediately after Jesus has already handed bread to all of the disciples for the Eucharist ceremony. Luke next follows Mark’s warning of woe to the one who betrays him.88 Finally, the disciples ask each other who it could be.89 No answer is given.

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The Three Versions Compared In Mark and Luke, Jesus doesn’t indicate who the betrayer is. In John, Jesus says it is the one to whom he hands the bread and he hands it to Judas. Both Mark and John mention dipping the bread but in John only Jesus dips; in Mark, Jesus and the disciples all dip bread but the dipped bread is not handed over to anyone. In Mark, the disciples each deny being the betrayer but make no inquiry as to who the betrayer is. In Luke and John, inquiries are made about the betrayer’s identity. In Luke, they discuss among themselves who the betrayer might be. In John, Peter asks the Beloved Disciple to make inquiry. The agreement between Mark and John against Luke as to dipping the bread, and the agreement between Luke and John against Mark as to the disciples making inquiries about the identification of the betrayer, suggest that those two sets of agreements were part of the original source story. The main and most important disagreement has to do with John handing the bread to Judas, which is absent in the other two versions. Mark has the dipping but not the handing of bread. Luke has neither the dipping nor the handing of bread. Luke has also changed the order of the scene. Can we identify which version comes closest to the original? I think the best answer has to do with the alterations to the Eucharist story. As I argued above, John’s version of the Eucharist comes closest to the original and it does not include any handing over of bread. The passing of bread to the disciples is a later addition to the story based on Paul’s modification. In Mark and Luke, the bread is the body of Jesus and handing it to the disciples would be one of the most important elements in the story of the Last Supper. Therefore, the handing over of bread to just Judas as a sign of betrayal would be highly problematic and could cause confusion with the Eucharist ceremony. With that in mind, I suggest, Mark retained the dipping of the bread but omitted the handing over of the bread to just Judas. Luke went further, he eliminated both the dipping and the handing over of the bread. Then he placed the prediction after the Eucharist, making doubly sure there was no connection between the handing over of bread to Judas and the prediction of betrayal. I suspect, however, that Mark correctly preserves Jesus’ message about the betrayer as it appeared in the proposed common source. “For the Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.”90 Jesus would have said this while handing the bread to Judas. But, I have omitted it from my collection of scenes in the proposed common source because John provides no corroboration for those words.

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Here is my summary of how I think the prediction episode unfolded. (Although, I frame the story in terms of Jesus betraying Jesus, I have argued in my book, The Judas Brief, that the earliest followers of Jesus did not see Judas as a betrayer and still considered him a loyal follower of Jesus.91 The claim of betrayal was from a later phase in the development of the Jesus movement.)

• • • • • • •

Jesus predicted someone would betray him. One or more disciples asked who Jesus was referring to. Jesus says it is the one to whom he gives the bread that he dips in the bowl. Jesus dipped bread into a bowl. He handed the bread to Judas. He told Judas to go do what he has to do. Judas left.

Jesus Predicts Peter Will Deny Him Three Times Before the Cock Crows (CS24–26) Mark and John each follow immediately after the previous scene with a prediction by Jesus that Peter will deny him three times before the cock crows. Luke has an intervening scene in which the disciples argue over which of them is greatest.92 Luke’s additional scene appears to be a relocated version of an earlier scene in Mark a little before the last visit to Jerusalem in which there is an angry dispute among the disciples.93 We should look at some of the differences among the three accounts.

Mark’s Version (10:26–31) Mark begins by saying that “After they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.”94 Mark doesn’t say what hymn he is referring to. It is at that location that Jesus predicted Peter’s denials. In Luke and John, the prediction takes place while everyone is still at the dinner table. When they arrived at the destination in Mark, Jesus first predicted that all of the disciples will become deserters and cited Zechariah 13:7 as the basis of this prophecy.95 After the citation, he said to them that when he rises up he will meet up with them in Galilee.96 Peter responded to the prediction by saying, “Even though all become deserters, I will not.”97 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”98 Peter challenged the prophecy by saying that even if he were to die with Jesus, he still wouldn’t deny him.99 On that note Mark ends the scene.

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Luke’s Version (22:31–34) Luke structures his narrative quite differently from Mark. There is no change of location from the previous scenes at the dinner table and he has no specific prophecy that the disciples will desert Jesus. He starts off with Jesus directly addressing Peter. “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”100 Luke seems to be saying that Satan will challenge all the disciples and that Peter’s faith may fail him, but that Peter will return to the fold and strengthen the other disciples. Peter reaffirms his faith and says he is ready to go to “prison and to death!”101 Some, I suspect, will read this as a prophecy that the disciples will flee due to a crisis of faith and that Peter will lead them all back to the true path. On the other hand, later, when Jesus is arrested, Mark shows the disciples fleeing102 and Luke has no such scene. This suggests that Luke was not predicting that the disciples would flee. Luke’s warning may actually be nothing more than a sanitized version of the scene in Mark where Peter recoils from Jesus’ prediction that he will die and Jesus rebukes the disciple by saying “Get behind me, Satan!” Luke omitted that scene from his version of Mark’s original story.103 Moving it here in this softened version presents Peter in a better light In any event, Jesus responds, “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me.” (Note the shift in the chief disciple’s name from “Simon” to “Peter.” This is further evidence that the preceding Satan warning was not originally part of this story.) Luke’s phrasing is different than Mark’s but it says the same thing, except that Luke only talks about the cock crowing once and Mark has the cock crow twice. Luke ends the scene at that point and follows it with another small scene that appears only in his gospel. In it, Jesus predicts troubled times, including the need to obtain swords, and the disciples see that they have two swords available.104 At the conclusion of that inserted scene, Jesus leaves for the Mount of Olives. So Luke differs from Mark as to where Jesus predicted Peter’s denials.

John’s Version (13:36–38) In John’s version, the scene opens with “Simon Peter” asking Jesus where he is going.105 Peter’s question implies some sort of movement away from the table but not yet from the house or grounds. In this regard Luke and John agree against

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Mark as to where the prediction took place. Jesus replies, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.”106 Peter asks, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”107 Jesus questions Peter’s commitment. “Will you lay down your life for me?”108 To which, Jesus appends the prophecy of Peter’s denial. “Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.” John, like Luke, says the cock will crow only one time, while Mark says twice. But, John’s form of the prediction is nearly identical to Mark’s while Luke exhibits a substantial verbal departure from Mark’s phrasing. Let’s look at all three versions. I have placed in brackets that part of Mark’s quote that differs from John. • Mark: Truly I tell you, [this day, this very night,] before the cock crows [twice,] you will deny me three times.” • John: Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times. • Luke: “I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you have denied three times that you know me.”

Clearly Mark and John have almost identical verbal agreement as to how the prediction is expressed. Mark’s first insert about day and night seems to be just an editorial emphasis to highlight the prediction. Luke does contain traces of that emphasis, but he uses Mark as a source so that is not surprising. The more important difference between Mark and John is that Mark says the cock will crow twice while both John and Luke say the cock will crow once. This suggests that there was only one crow by a cock in the source material. John also has no hint that Jesus predicted that the disciples would desert him as a group and does not show the disciples fleeing at any later point. If such an allegation was in the source John would have had eliminated, it. One of his principles, as we saw, was not to depict the disciples in a negative light where he could avoid it. However, Luke also eliminates the prediction that the disciples will flee and also does not depict disciples feeling from the scene. So, on the present evidence, I won’t include in the proposed common source Mark’s prediction that the disciples will flee or his showing that they did flee. Luke and John also have several instances in this incident where they agree against Mark on the details.

• Both agree against Mark that the cock would crow only once, not twice. • Both appear to agree against Mark that there was no prediction that the disciples as a group would desert Jesus. • Both appear to agree against Mark that the prediction was made while the parties were still by the dinner table. However, Mark has a later verse,

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 423 immediately after the prediction of denial, saying that everyone departed to Gethsemane.109 So, to that extent, Mark agrees with John and Luke that after the prediction everybody went to another location.

On the other hand, subject to the disagreement over how many times the cock crowed, John and Mark seem to agree against Luke on the basic wording of the prediction. For the purpose of reconstructing the scene I will take the agreements of John and Luke against Mark as elements of the source story, including the prediction of only one cock crowing. At the same time, I will take those areas of agreement of Mark and John against Luke as to the wording of the prediction to also be part of the original source story.

John’s Second Insertion into the Narrative Structure Following the prediction of Peter’s denials, John has a lengthy set of teachings to the disciples that run from John 14:1 all the way through 17:26. Pursuant to our methodology we will skip over speeches that appear only in John. Luke also has a speech to the disciples after the prediction of Peter’s denials but it is much shorter than John’s and it has few verbal or thematic touch points with John other than both might be considered a form of “farewell” speech.110 Mark, on the other hand, moves immediately to the location where Jesus will be arrested111It is possible, therefore, that some sort of additional teaching by Jesus may have appeared in this location, possibly the short one used by Luke, and Mark omitted it while John transformed it into a lengthy Farewell Discourse. But given how unalike the two speeches are, I am not including a farewell speech at this point in the proposed common source.

Jesus Goes to the Mount of Olives with His Disciples (CS27) Mark picks up the story by telling us that Jesus went to a place called Gethsemane.112 Previously he told us that Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, so Gethsemane is probably on the Mount of Olives. Luke follows the brief speech by saying Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, confirming a connection between Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives.113 John says they went across the Kidron valley, where there was a garden.114 The valley separates Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives, so John is probably describing a similar location. All three gospels seem to

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converge on the Mount of Olives. Only John specifically describes the assembly place as a garden.

The Cup the Father Gave Jesus (CS28–31) While in the garden, Mark and Luke describe a scene that would have been offensive to John if he found it in the proposed common source. It indicates that Jesus suffered great anguish at his coming fate and prayed to God to see if there might be a change of plan possible. John’s Jesus would have no such hesitation. The evidence below suggests that John knew the scene, broke it in two with some modifications, and moved both parts out of the original sequence. According to Mark, Jesus asked most of the disciples to wait for him at a particular spot.115 He then took Peter, James and John with him “and began to be distressed and agitated.”116 After walking a little distance, Jesus said to the three disciples, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.”117 Moving off from them, he fell to the ground and prayed for relief from what was to be imposed upon him.118 “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”119 Mark shows Jesus going through great anguish at the fate that awaited him. Jesus agreed to accept whatever plan God has for him but asked if there was an alternative that could avoid his fatal outcome. Luke has a fairly similar version with some minor variations. He doesn’t separate Peter, James, and John from the other disciples but Jesus does go a distance away from the group and prays.120 “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.”121 The words are slightly different from Mark’s but convey the same concern as the ones in Mark. Can the Father alter Jesus’ fate or must it go on as planned? Jesus agrees to whatever decision God makes. John doesn’t show this scene as depicted. I want to look at two separate scenes from his gospel that when taken together indicate that John knew the scene in Mark and Luke and broke it up. First, we jump forward in John to the scene where the arresting party comes for Jesus. Peter draws a sword and strikes the High Priest’s slave, cutting off the right ear.122 Jesus turns to Peter and says, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me [emphasis added]?”123 John is obviously familiar with the imagery in Mark and Luke about drinking “the cup”

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 425 that the Father has given Jesus. But in John, there is no hesitation whatsoever. He unflinchingly accepts his fate and makes no request to the Father to have the cup removed. Now, go back to John’s extended version of the Triumphal Entry scene. While Jesus was holding court near the Jerusalem gate, a group of Greek pilgrims who had presumably come for the Passover festival meet with Jesus and he says, “Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour [emphasis added].”124 These two passages in John are a negative version of Mark’s anguished Jesus episode. John first shows that Jesus is suffering anguish but specifically says he is not going to pray to the Father for relief. Later, he uses Mark’s imagery of drinking from a cup as a metaphor for the fate that has been laid out for him. But where Mark’s Jesus prays that the cup be removed, John’s Jesus accepts his cup and makes no request for its removal. It is my view that Mark’s version of the scene is the one that comes closest to the proposed common source and that John has altered it. I cannot see any reason for Mark to have taken the two parts of John’s heroic Jesus and combined them into a single account of a frightened Jesus asking to be relived from his fate. Additionally, it has been my frequent argument that when John sees an offensive story he breaks out and modifies the offensive elements, relocates them, and places them in a non-offensive context. That is what John has done here. The reference to prayer and the element of the cup are separated from each other and placed into different contexts. The final effect is that John has no prayer that the cup given Jesus by the Father be removed. I should note that although both parts of John’s “cup” passage are out of sequential order with Mark and the proposed common source, the later reference that actually contains the “cup” portion of the verse is only slightly out of narrative order and is part of the short continuum leading up to Jesus’ arrest.

The Angel Problem Although Luke closely followed Mark’s version of Jesus’ prayer for relief from the cup given to him by the Father, there is some controversy over what appears next in Luke’s gospel. Although Luke doesn’t initially say Jesus was distressed by the cup he was given, he does show Jesus praying for relief. So, though unsaid up to that point, it is obvious that Jesus is troubled by the fate he has been handed. But the ancient copies of Luke’s manuscript disagree on what happens next. In some versions the text says,

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Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.125

Scholars can’t agree as to whether or not these words belong to the original manuscript. On the one hand, they show Mark’s anguished Jesus but on the other it adds in the appearance of an angel. Bart Ehrman argues against the verses on the broad principle that the depiction is at complete odds with how Luke portrays Jesus throughout the gospel and says that they were interpolated into Luke’s text sometime during the second century.126 The New Revised Standard Version of the New Testament places the passage in brackets, indicating that the editors reject these verses as original to the text. The New English Bible includes the verses. Turn back now to the passage in John just discussed, where Jesus talks about his soul being troubled but chooses not to ask for relief. Immediately following that passage, as part of the same speech, Jesus says, “Father, glorify your name.”127 Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine [emphasis added].”128

In this part of the text, a voice from heaven appears. Jesus says, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.” This is problematic in that the voice didn’t appear to convey anything verbally intelligible in that many “said that it was thunder.” That doesn’t sound like much of a verbal declaration if it was confused with thunder. The more important part to me is that others in the crowd said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Again, this suggests that the crowd didn’t understand what the voice said and took it as a direct communication to Jesus that only he understood. What strikes me about this passage is that it uses language about an angel appearing to Jesus at the same point that the controversial angel passage appears in Luke, immediately after Jesus expressed troubled feelings about his fate. It also has the sense of some alteration in that John makes sure to say that the angel was there for the crowd’s sake, not Jesus’. From John’s perspective, an angel shouldn’t be needed to assist Jesus and if a source story said it did, John would have a motive to change it. And if the voice was there to help the crowd, and not Jesus, it didn’t do very much. The crowd had no idea what had taken place.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 427 Although the voice was allegedly that of the Father, saying he had glorified his name, nobody seems to have gotten the message. Whatever sound the voice made, people in the crowd thought it was thunder. Others speculated that maybe an angel spoke. But nobody seems to have thought that God had spoken about glorifying the Father’s name. The texts suggest a link in both John and Luke to an angel’s appearance in connection with Jesus having a troubled soul over his fate. But we still have something of a problem. As I noted above, this passage exists in some ancient manuscripts but not others. This has led to a substantial division among scholars as to the presence of this passage in the original gospel. As Ehrman has convincingly argued, the passage as it stands now is at complete odds with everything else Luke says about Jesus. I think, however, there is a way to thread this needle such that we can recover a piece of the original source material here. Luke’s controversial passage has two parts: 1) An angel appears to give Jesus strength and he prays more fervently (Luke 22:43–44a) and 2) Jesus’ sweat turns into great drops of blood (Luke 22:44b). If we examine Luke’s earlier portion of the cup incident, we see that he has omitted Mark’s direct reference to Jesus being “distressed and agitated.” But, we find after referencing the angel, “in his anguish [Jesus] prayed more earnestly [emphasis added].” So Mark’s indication of “anguish” makes its appearance here, and an angel comes to provide relief. Mark and John both describe the anguish before discussing the removal of the cup, so Luke appears to have simply changed the order of events concerning Jesus’ anguish. One of the arguments against Luke’s inclusion of this angel passage is that by omitting Mark’s earlier description of anguish and because it is inconsistent with Luke’s other portrayals of Jesus, the claim of anguish must have been interpolated. Yet, we see that some sort of anguish must have appeared in the source. Even John acknowledges that Jesus had a troubled soul. At the same time Luke does show Jesus praying to have the cup removed, which, at least implicitly, shows that Jesus is distressed by the cup he has to drink. So it would appear that Luke incorporates the anguish and places it in a slightly different order than Mark does. The more controversial part is the appearance of the angel to give Jesus strength. Yet, John seems to be working from a similar source story. He, too, in connection with Jesus’ expression of anguish, says some thought an angel appeared and spoke to Jesus. John and Luke are telling the same story about Jesus’ anguish with different words and emphasis. This suggests to me that in the original source story, after Jesus’ prayer to have the cup removed, an angel appeared to give him strength. This suggests that Mark removed the angel scene from his

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version of the text and John modified the details so that it wouldn’t look like Jesus needed any help. This leaves the second part of Luke’s controversial passage about sweating great drops of blood. There is no corroboration in either Mark or John for this passage and it does seem quite inconsistent with how Luke would depict Jesus. Further, the description of the drops of blood doesn’t seem narratively consistent with the surrounding events. The absence of any comment by the disciples further suggests that the blood drops are a later addition to the story. What I propose, therefore, is that Luke and John, consistent with the proposed common source, included variations of the angel scene and Mark removed it. A later Christian scribe probably interpolated the drops of blood verse. And then, in a subsequent reaction against the drops of blood verse, it and the angel scene to which it was related were both removed by another Christian scribe. While there is still much to debate about both verses, and I am open to argument on the issue, I am including the angel scene (but not the drops of blood) in the proposed common source.

The Hour Has Come In Mark’s account of the garden scene, when Jesus and his disciples first arrive, he takes Peter, James and John with him and tells the others to remain behind.129 He turns to the three disciples who accompanied him and tells them that he is “deeply grieved, even to death” and that they should remain at this location and “keep awake.”130 At this point, Jesus steps away and issues his prayer that the “cup” be removed. When he returned, he found the disciples asleep and chastised them.131 In the course of this first chastisement he said, “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak [emphasis added].”132 Jesus left the scene and repeated his prayer about removing the “cup.” When he returned he found the disciples asleep again. This also happened a third time.133 On the third occasion he awakened them again and said, “Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand [emphasis added].”134 Luke has made a number of alterations to Mark’s account. When Jesus arrived at the garden, he stepped away from all of the apostles, leaving Peter, James and John with the others.135 When he separated himself he issued his prayer for relief, after which the angel appeared, if you accept my version of the events. After

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 429 the Angel appeared, Jesus prayed more fervently, presumably repeating the same prayer, as Mark has it.136 This is followed by the later interpolated reference to the drops of blood. When Jesus returned, he found the disciples asleep.137 In Luke, this is the only instance in which the disciples appear to be asleep and instead of showing Jesus chastising them, he tells us that they slept out of grief over Jesus’ fate.138 Jesus woke them up and told them to pray that they don’t get into trouble.139 Luke’s alterations to Mark suggest significant discomfort with the latter’s depiction of the disciples. Luke has also altered the final declaration to the disciples when Jesus awakened them. Mark says that Jesus told them his hour had come and that the betrayer is at hand, at which point Judas and the arrest party appear. Luke substitute’s a direction that the disciples pray that they avoid trouble. As we saw in Chapter 2, Luke, like John, alters details and settings that place the disciples in a negative light. John omits the sleeping incident but he does appear to preserve a remnant of Mark’s story. Sandwiched in between John’s Jesus saying his soul is troubled and the appearance of the voice from heaven, he includes the following: “No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour [emphasis added].”140 Contextually, he is saying that drinking the cup given to him is the reason he has come to this hour. John keeps scenes CS28–31 together as a single narrative but has moved them from just before Jesus’ arrest to John’s version of the Triumphal Entry narrative. John objects to negative depictions of the disciples, always altering, disguising or omitting such scenes. That the scene would have been troubling to John is reinforced by Luke’s significant alteration to the story, eliminating the chastisement and attributing the sleep to grief. So it is not surprising that such a scene is missing from John. But we can’t overlook the fact that John places the reference to the hour coming, a claim integrated by Mark into the third chastisement of the disciples, at just the place where he incorporates the reference to Jesus’ troubled soul and just before the voice from heaven, which corresponds to Luke’s encouragement from the angel. John’s terminology also indicates that he has moved the scene out of its original chronological location. He places it five days before Passover but I have already connected John’s references to Jesus’ troubled soul and the voice from heaven to the garden scene in Mark leading up to Jesus’ arrest. His statement in connection with the cup that “he has come to this hour” further indicates that the scene belongs chronologically at the point where Jesus is about to be arrested, just as Mark has it.

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The story of the sleeping disciples and Jesus’ claim that the hour has come are integrated but not necessarily connected. John omits the sleeping incident and Luke has significantly modified it. Therefore, I cannot currently include the sleeping scene in the proposed common source. I do include, however, the reference to “the hour has come” since John corroborates that portion of the incident.

Jesus Arrested (CS32–39) Mark and Luke both depict the arrest of Jesus following the prayer in the garden and the sleeping incident. John has no sleeping incident and has reordered the cup prayer. But he does move from the arrival in the garden to the arrest of Jesus. Mark says that Judas arrived with a crowd armed with swords and clubs “from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders [emphasis added].”141 The use of “from” suggests that none of the parties named were actually present. Luke says a “crowd” came but doesn’t say who sent them.142 John has a somewhat different description. He says the crowd consisted of “a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees.”143 Since Mark and Luke didn’t have Jesus identify Judas as the betrayer at the Last Supper, both tell us that Judas was present and this Judas was “one of the twelve.”144 John’s description of the arrest posse raises some problems. He describes two separate groups in the crowd. One comes from the chief priests and Pharisees; the other is a “detachment” of soldiers.” John is the only one to refer to the participation of Pharisees in the arrest process. More importantly, what is this “detachment of soldiers?” The underlying Greek word behind “detachment of soldiers” is speira, derived from a Latin term signifying a military “cohort,” a group of about 600 people.145 John implies a large Roman military unit participated in the arrest. This would be consistent with John’s earlier claim that the Romans would be upset by Jesus’ popularity and that steps would have to be taken to appease Rome. Some have tried to get around this Roman dilemma by saying that the term could have also applied to Jewish military units, but there were no Jewish military units in Jerusalem and the Romans would probably not have allowed one. Jerusalem was part of the Roman province of Syria and the High Priest was the equivalent of the local mayor appointed by Rome. He administered a police force but no army. On the Passover holiday the Roman governor moved military units into the city to make sure there were no anti-Roman protests.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 431 The situation was different in Galilee, which was an independent kingdom under Roman domination. As Tetrarch of the region, Herod had his own army. It is certainly possible that he had a contingent of body guards when he came to Jerusalem for the holiday celebrations, but his troops would have been loyal to him and to Rome. There is no indication in any of the gospels that Herod participated in arresting Jesus, nor would he have had any military authority in Jerusalem to do so. Luke appears to be straddling the fence between Mark and John. In his version he has said only that a crowd had arrived without identifying who sent them. This differs from Mark’s description and could just as well be applicable to what John said as what Mark said. Luke’s ambiguity might be considered as an attempt to compromise between Mark and the proposed common source as to the presence of Roman soldiers It will be my argument in discussing the proceedings before Pilate that Mark went out of his way to minimize Roman responsibility for the execution of Jesus. Therefore, I believe Mark had a substantial motive for covering up Roman involvement in the arrest of Jesus and may well have deleted references to the participation of a Roman contingent. We have to, therefore, consider the very real possibility that the underlying source indicated that a Roman cohort participated in the arrest of Jesus. However, I am not satisfied that Luke’s ambiguity sufficiently corroborates John’s claim. So I have omitted reference to the Roman soldiers in the proposed common source. But it wouldn’t take much more to convince me otherwise. Mark says that Judas and the head of the arrest team had worked out a signal to indicate which person at the scene was Jesus. The person the disciple kissed would designate the target.146 According to Mark, Judas kissed Jesus and members of the crowd began to place him under arrest.147 As the arrest was taking place Mark says that one of Jesus’s disciples drew a sword and cut off the ear of the High Priest’s slave.148 Despite the assault no attempt is made to arrest anybody but Jesus, who then says, Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But let the scriptures be fulfilled.149

At this point in Mark all the disciples flee, just as Jesus had predicted earlier.150 Mark adds a very curious fact to the episode that has puzzled a number of scholars. “A certain young man was following him [Jesus], wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.”151 Who this young man was we don’t know.

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Luke says that when the crowd appeared Judas approached Jesus to kiss him, but Luke never actually depicts Judas as planting the kiss. Instead as Judas approaches, Jesus says, “Is it with a kiss that you are betraying the Son of Man?”152 Since the kiss is not executed, it is not clear here that Luke sees the kiss as a signal to arrest Jesus. Luke’s references to the betrayal may mean that he is chastising Judas for pretending to be friendly and loyal when he is actually involved in selling Jesus out. Luke’s language implies that all of the disciples were armed with swords and they asked Jesus if they should attack the approaching force.153 (Recall the earlier episode in Luke where the disciples found two swords.) One unidentified disciple cut off the right ear of the High Priest’s slave.154 Jesus ordered them to stop the violent response, after which, he placed his hand on the slave’s ear, and healed it.155 This healing is missing from Mark. Jesus then said, Have you come out with swords and clubs as if I were a bandit? When I was with you day after day in the temple, you did not lay hands on me. But this is your hour, and the power of darkness! [emphasis added]156

The italicized portion above replaces Mark’s language about letting “the scriptures be fulfilled.” Luke has also indicated that violent resistance was much more widespread on the minds of the disciples than Mark does. The more militant attitude of the disciples in Luke is inconsistent with Mark’s prediction of desertion. As we noted above, Mark had Jesus predict that the disciples would desert him and Luke omitted that prophecy. In Luke the disciples did not flee. John handles the story differently. Judas is present but there is no Judas kiss and no signal. When the crowd approaches, Jesus stepped forward and asks who they are looking for.157 They said, “Jesus of Nazareth” and he said that he was that person.158 Jesus’ admission as to who he was caused the crowd to step back in awe and fall to the ground.159 Jesus repeated his question; they replied again that they are looking for Jesus of Nazareth; and again he said that was who he is.160 He added at this time, “So if you are looking for me, let these men go.”161 At this point John says that Peter drew his sword and cut off the right ear of the high priest’s slave.162 John adds that the slave’s name was Malchus.163 In response to Peter’s action, Jesus said, “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me [emphasis added]?”164 John’s Jesus quote varies significantly from Mark and Luke. I have already shown that the cup reference was moved slightly out of order from its original

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 433 location, during the prayer for relief and just before the arrest party arrived. But John also omits the claim in Mark and Luke that there was no reason to come after him with swords and clubs because he came out to the Temple day after day. As has been noted in Chapter 7, John’s Jesus did not come to the Temple day after day. He had gone into hiding when the council issued an arrest warrant for him. So, consistent with his revised chronology and alternative theory about the plot to kill Jesus, John has omitted the passage indicating that Jesus had been coming to the Temple day after day. However, as I will observe below, John appears to have inserted a variation of the quote slightly later, into the encounter between Jesus and the High Priest. The other part of Mark’s quote was, “Let the scriptures be fulfilled.” John has replaced it with the cup quote, but that cup reference functions in manner similar to Mark’s reference to scripture. John’s Jesus uses the altered version of the cup imagery to say for all practical purposes, “Let God’s plan [as opposed to scriptures] be fulfilled.” John’s Jesus functions under God’s direction, not scripture. John’s change coincides with his theological agenda. So John has basically eliminated Mark’s reference to daily coming into the Temple but retained the idea that “scripture/God’s plan” be fulfilled. This suggests that Mark’s final quote comes closer to the source version than the alternative versions of John and Luke. John and Luke share a couple of points in agreement against Mark. Both refer to the slave’s “right ear” and Mark just says “ear.” Both also say that Jesus told his disciples to stop the violence and Mark omits that detail. Both show that the disciples did not flee the scene and Mark says otherwise. Both omit the Judas kiss and Mark includes it. This agreement between John and Luke suggests that their agreed upon details adhere more closely to the source material than Mark’s version. John also added that the slave’s name was Malchus, but we don’t know where John got the name from. The following summary shows some of the essential elements of the original arrest story.

• Judas arrived with the arrest party. • There may have been Roman soldiers involved. • Judas approached Jesus, perhaps to kiss him in greeting, acting as if he wasn’t part of the arrest crowd, but Jesus stopped him before he completed the act. • One of the disciples cut off the right ear of the High Priest’ slave. • Jesus ordered the disciples to hold back their weapons. • None of the disciples fled the scene. • Jesus complained about the actions of the arresting party. • Jesus was placed under arrest.

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Jesus Taken to the High Priest Following the arrest of Jesus, all three gospels say that Jesus was taken to the High Priest. Mark says that when Jesus was taken to the High Priest there was a council assembled but doesn’t specify where that location was.165 However, the next verse describes Peter following after Jesus and entering the courtyard of the High Priest.166 Luke very specifically says that they took him to the High Priest’s house. Historically, the High Priest at the time was Caiaphas but neither Luke nor Mark give the Priest’s name at that point. John adds a small complication. He says, “First they took him to Annas, who was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, the high priest that year.” The phrasing is confusing. Is Annas the High Priest or is it Caiaphas? In what follows it is clear that Annas is present and Caiaphas is not.167 Yet, here, too, the location is the house of the High Priest.168 Annas was a former high priest and very influential. Several of his sons became high priests. Metzger observes that some ancient scribes had problems with John’s verse and interpolated 18:24, which says that Annas sent Jesus to Caiaphas, into it, so that the subsequent interrogation would appear to be Caiaphas’s rather than Annas’s.169 The term “High Priest” may also be a little vague. James L. Mays notes that the Greek word used here, archiereus, “is sometimes used in the plural to designate “leading priests” (e.g., Mark 14:1, 10, 43, 53, 55), but some confusion remains.”170 Luke, for instance, refers earlier in his gospel to “the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas”171 and in his later work, Acts, refers to Annas as the High Priest and Caiaphas as a member of his family.172 It is also possible that “High Priest” was an honorific used of former High Priests. That both Luke and John refer to both Annas and Caiaphas as having a joint priesthood, albeit in different parts of their respective gospels, suggests that such language appeared at least in some locations in the source material. Mark, surprisingly, never mentions the High Priest by name, despite his key role in the Passion account. This may have been due to his inability to make sense out of the coupling of Annas and Caiaphas and/or his lack of knowledge as to who the High Priest actually was.

Peter Denies Jesus Three Times (CS40–42, 45–49) All three gospels say that after Jesus was placed under arrest, Peter followed behind to see where Jesus was taken. In all three accounts he winds up in the courtyard of

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 435 the High Priest. Luke adds that Jesus and Peter had visual contact with each other while Peter was still in the courtyard.173 John adds the additional facts that Peter was with a second unnamed disciple who was known to the High Priest and who arranged for Peter to be let into the courtyard. Could this have been Judas, who, as far as we know, is the only disciple to actually have worked with the High Priest? John sometimes uses disciple in a more inclusive manner than just the twelve apostles, so it is not clear if this second disciple was one of the twelve. At this point we encounter a sequential problem. Mark places all three of Peter’s denials in a scene that follows after his account of the nighttime proceedings and after the guards strike Jesus.174 Luke omits the nighttime proceedings and places all three denials before the guards strike Jesus.175 John divides Peter’s denials into two separate scenes, one in sequential agreement with Luke,176 before a guard strikes Jesus, and the other in sequential agreement with Mark,177 after the guards strike Jesus. John has the first denial in the first segment and the last two denials in the second. Mark places his first cock’s crow after the first denial. That Mark inserts the first cock’s crow at the same narrative location where John places other matters between the first and second denials, suggests that in some literary manner there was a separation between the first and second denials. John’s division has the effect of making him consistent with the sequential order in both Mark and Luke, even though the latter two disagree with each other. Such a coincidence suggests that John’s two-part arrangement may more accurately reflect the original source account of Peter’s denials. On the other hand, John may have found this division a more dramatic way to tell Peter’s story. Whether Mark, Luke, or John has the correct sequence of denials is interesting for the purpose of closure, but the difference among them is trivial from an editorial perspective. It is obvious from a full analysis of all three versions that they are describing the same story about Peter’s denials. For now, I will treat John’s two-part arrangement as the most likely to correspond to the proposed common source. However, even if this correspondence does not hold true, that would have no meaningful impact on impact on the sequential agreements between Mark and John, since John does align some of Peter’s denials at the same sequential narrative location as Mark does. All three versions of Peter’s denials share the following elements.

• Peter followed the police after they arrested Jesus. • Peter entered into the courtyard of the high priest.

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• Peter warmed himself by a fire. • A servant girl was the first person to elicit a denial from Peter. In Mark and Luke, she directly accuses Peter of having been with Jesus. In John, she asks if Peter was a disciple of Jesus. • Peter’s first denial came in response to the statement by the servant girl. • The second denial came in response to a question as to whether Peter was a disciple of Jesus. In Mark and Luke someone directly accuses Peter of being one of the disciples. In John Peter is asked if he was a disciple. • At the conclusion of the third denial a cock crowed.

There are also some differences among the gospels. Most importantly, Luke and John differ from Mark in that Mark said the cock will crow twice and the other two said only once. In the actual unwinding of the denials, John and Luke have only one cock crow and Mark has two. John chronologically separates the first denial from the second, inserting different scenes where Mark has the first cock crow. This may be consistent with the source document showing a literary division of some sort between the first denial and the second two denials, as John has it. This is not to say that there were two separate cock crows, but just that there seems to be some reason to think there was a narrative arrangement in which the first denial was separated from the second denial. Mark may have added in the second cock crow as an editorial effort to achieve some sort of symmetry between the two scenes. Another instance where Mark differs from Luke and John is in the identity of the second questioner. Mark says it was the servant girl again. Luke and John say it was someone else. In Luke it is a single individual. In John it is an unidentified “they.” What is particularly interesting is that in all three versions, Peter’s three denials all unfold in different ways. While the specific response to each of the prompts differs in all three, some of the words in one particular response appear as an answer to a different response in one of the other gospels. Peter’s three denials in Mark:

1. “I do not know or understand what you are talking about.”178 2. “But again he denied it,” with the actual words omitted.179 3. “But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know this man you are talking about.’ ”180 Peter’s three denials in Luke: 1. “Woman, I do not know him.”181

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 437 2. “Man, I am not!”182 3. “Man, I do not know what you are talking about!”183 Peter’s three denials in John: 1. “I am not.”184 2. “I am not!”185 3. “Again Peter denied it,” with the actual words omitted.186

Mark’s first response looks very much like Luke’s third response. Mark’s third response looks very much like Luke’s first response. The second response in Mark and Luke are at odds, but this may be little more than an editorial adjustment in which Luke simply substituted specific language for Mark’s missing words of denial. Other than the order, the three responses seem to broadly agree. John’s third response matches Mark’s second response. The agreement between Mark and John against Luke indicates that at least in one response in the prosed common source, the actual words weren’t set forth. This implies that Luke amended the wordless denial by adding in the specific words. John’s second response matches Luke’s second response but that is the answer that I just suggested was Luke’s own creation, substituting actual words for the description of the words. At the same time, John’s first and second denials represent the minimalist form of the denial. Mark and Luke give longer answers. Mark has Peter say in one response he has no idea what the woman is talking about and in another Mark says he cursed and did not know the man. Luke omits the cursing but has Peter answer with similar themes. This is the only significant incident in which John shows Peter in a negative light and we should probably assume that this story was so well known in Christian circles that there was no way John could get away with a complete disregard. But he does appear to minimize Peter’s failing. John’s three responses are very short. Two are repetitive and one is wordless. In each case, Peter only denies being a disciple. Contrast that with Mark and Luke. In Mark, Peter said he didn’t know or understand what the woman meant by being with Jesus. He even swore an oath that he didn’t know who Jesus was. In Luke, also, Peter denies knowing who Jesus was and that he didn’t know what the speaker was talking about. These are much more severe forms of denial than those in John. I see John’s minimalist responses as an effort to partially rehabilitate Peter and disassociate him from the substantial forms of denial preserved in Mark and Luke. John removes from Peter’s mouth the statements that he didn’t know who Jesus was, that he had no idea what the woman was talking about, and curses at being

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questioned. He also eliminates the more damning oath that Peter made. I suspect all of those responses were more than John could bear, and he stripped the answers down to the shortest least-damning form of denial possible. This all suggests that Mark comes closest to the original form of the three questions and three denials as it would have been portrayed in the common source. But the agreement of John and Luke as to the number of times the cock crows indicates that Mark may have added a second cock crow to the story.

Nighttime Proceedings Before the High Priest (CS43) Putting aside John’s split account of Peter’s denial, Mark and John follow Peter’s appearance in the courtyard of the High Priest with an account of a nighttime proceeding but they have very different versions of what happened. Mark has a full-blown trial;187 John has what comes across as little more than a casual conversation between the High Priest and Jesus, an inquest at most if you really want to push the envelope.188 In John’s account, the entire inquiry is described as follows. “Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching.”189 Jesus answered, I have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all the Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I said to them; they know what I said.190

That is as far as the interrogation went. Jesus’ response to Annas—“I have always taught …. in the Temple”—seems verbally similar to the words John omitted from Mark’s response to the arresting party, about teaching in the Temple every day. Jesus’ suggestion that the priest get witnesses to his teachings may relate to Mark’s claim at Jesus’ trial that the witnesses couldn’t agree as to what Jesus said. I will look at the trial proceedings in Mark and Luke in depth in Chapter 9, when I explore the issue of whether John knew of a trial scene in the source material and made editorial changes that hid it from view.

Authorities Strike and Mock Jesus Immediately after Mark’s nighttime proceedings, following a condemnation to death, Mark says, “some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, ‘Prophesy!’ ”191 This scene is missing in both Luke and John.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 439 While it might be argued that this is due to Luke and John omitting any nighttime trial and verdict, it is also missing from the conclusion of Luke’s daytime proceeding, which has some similarities to Mark’s nighttime trial.192 Given the absence of this scene in both Luke and John, I am inclined to omit this scene from the proposed common source and will treat it as an insertion by Mark.

Guards Strike Jesus (CS44) After Mark’s account of the authorities striking Jesus, he adds, “The guards also took him over and beat him.”193 Luke and John have parallel scenes. According to Luke, Now the men who were holding Jesus began to mock him and beat him; they also blindfolded him and kept asking him, “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” They kept heaping many other insults on him.194

Compare this to Mark’s account of the Jewish authorities abusing Jesus. The key passage in both incidents is that Jesus was blindfolded, struck, and asked to prophesy who hit him. Mark attributes this behavior to the Jewish authorities and Luke to the guards holding Jesus in custody. Luke omits any direct mention of spitting but that might be subsumed under his allegation that the guards heaped many other insults on him. The problem here is whether Luke, by omitting a nighttime proceeding left in this artifact and attributed it to the guards who were holding Jesus, or whether Mark took behavior by the guards and attributed it to the Jewish authorities. Since Luke continues to omit such behavior by the authorities even after his daytime proceedings I am inclined to see Mark as making the change. John has a very different take. After Annas asked Jesus about his teaching and Jesus told him to go ask those he taught, one of the guards slapped Jesus across the face because he thought Jesus was being rude to the High Priest.195 Jesus responded to the guard’s behavior, “If I have spoken wrongly, testify to the wrong. But if I have spoken rightly, why do you strike me?”196 The High Priest then sends Jesus over to Caiaphas.197 In John there is no mocking or physical abuse. There is one slap of Jesus by a guard because the guard thought Jesus wasn’t speaking to the High Priest in a respectful manner. John’s much diluted depiction of Jesus’ treatment at the hands of the guards reflects his very different theory of why Jesus was arrested and sentenced to death.

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Morning Proceeding Before High Priest (CS50) After Peter’s denials, Mark says, “As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council.”198 That is the full extent of Mark’s description of what took place. Luke, who did not parallel Mark’s nighttime trial, has what appears to be more of an inquiry before the council rather than a trial, but he incorporates much of what took place in Mark’s trial proceeding.199 I will provide a full discussion of the Jewish trials and inquiries in Chapter 9. John says that after being questioned by Annas, Jesus was sent to Caiaphas.200 But he is vague as to the time. What took place after he was brought to Caiaphas John doesn’t say. As it stands, John’s context suggests that the transfer happened at night. It is followed by his account of Peter’s second set of denials and those ended with the cock crowing, signifying that morning has come. It is my view that John’s transfer to Caiaphas corresponds to Mark’s morning consultancy. Both Mark and John show Jesus appearing in front of two different proceedings. And both withhold any information about what took place at the second meeting. It strikes me that there is no sensible reason to bring Jesus to the house of Annas for a minor tête-à-tête only to be shipped off to Caiaphas a few minutes later. Also, Peter is outside the house watching and waiting and remains there until the cock crows in the morning. Although we are told that Jesus was sent off to Caiaphas and then Peter denied Jesus for the second and third time, there is no indication that Peter saw Jesus being moved from the house while he was watching the house through the morning hour. If I am correct, then we have a trivial variation in the sequential order. John puts his one-line account of the second proceeding immediately before Peter’s denials and Mark puts his one sentence account of the second proceeding immediately after the denials.

Jesus Taken to Pilate (CS51) After the morning consultancy Mark says, “They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate.”201 At the conclusion of Luke’s morning trial, he says, “Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate.”202 John says, “Then they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover.”203 Note John’s chronological marker

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 441 here, which makes clear that the Roman proceedings and coming execution of Jesus take place before the Passover meal. Mark, who portrays the Last Supper as a Passover meal, obviously disagrees with John on this point. I’ll review the chronological issues in Chapter 13.

Summary In this chapter we looked at a relatively long narrative arc running from the plot to kill Jesus, through the events of the last supper and the arrest of Jesus to the handover of Jesus to Pilate. On the assumption that my identifications of John’s foot-washing story and commandment to love one another story serve as substitutes for Mark’s Passover meal preparation story and Eucharist ceremony (see below) I have extracted fifty-one scenes that I believe can be traced back to a common written source, with at least some story overlap between John and Mark in every one of the several episodes that makes up the narrative sequence (excluding speeches). You may want to keep Table 8.1 in view for purposes of this summary. The sequential agreement between Mark, John, and Luke is quite strong. Mark has forty-one scenes, counting the implicit agreement with John’s statement that Judas departed from the disciples during the Last Supper (CS22). Each one has a counterpart in John. Of the forty-one scenes in Mark, only three vary from the proposed sequential order, and the variances are trivial. The first variance is at CS38, where his placement of the arrest of Jesus is slightly out of order from that in John and Luke, but the scene is part of the same story as the one in John and Luke and the order of this detail is trivial. The other disagreements are due to the problem of the three denials of Peter and whether or not all three are part of the same contiguous narrative or broken into two parts as in John. For reasons explained above I have accepted John’s order of the scenes. Mark’s solid sequential alignment is slightly undermined by the fact that I usually follow his order of events when there is no agreement between John and Luke as to the correct placement of a scene or story. John has forty-nine scenes in the narrative with one major sequential disruption and two trivial disagreements. The major disruption occurs in scenes CS28– 31, revolving around the stress Jesus feels over his fate and his prayer to the Father to take the cup away. John found the details offensive, altered the narrative and shifted the scenes into a different context. The original sequence takes place just before the arrest party arrives but John has moved almost all the references into

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his extended account of the Triumphal Entry story and placed one piece after the arrest party has arrived. John’s first trivial change is the reversal of scenes CS11–CS12. The latter refers to the ointment being intended for Jesus’ burial, and Luke omits that scene, so I followed Mark’s order. The other change involves John placing the morning proceeding (CS50) before Peter’s second and third denials of Jesus instead of after. If we ignore John’s two inconsequential sequential alterations, then the only important sequential difference between Mark and John concerns the placement of scenes in the story of Peter’s three denials of Jesus. John and Luke also agree against Mark that the cock crowed only once, not twice. This means that for the forty-one scenes where John and Mark interact there is virtually no meaningful difference between the two as to the sequential order of events throughout this lengthy narrative. John also has five scenes that have parallels with Luke but are missing from Mark. These include: CS6, where the woman who anoints Jesus wipes his feet with her hair; CS13, where Satan enters into Judas; CS30, where an angel comforts Jesus; and CS35–CS36, where the two authors say that it was the right ear of the slave that was cut, and Jesus tells the disciples to stop the violence. This leaves three scenes that appear only in John, CS18, CS20, and CS21. All three scenes appear in the story of Jesus predicting that a disciple will betray him. The unfolding of this story in the three gospels was severely complicated by its contiguous connection to the Eucharist story, which involved the handing of bread to the disciples. It was the argument above that John had a more accurate version of the Eucharist story as it appeared in the proposed common source than the other two gospels, which relied on the later version of Paul’s account of the Eucharist ceremony. Luke has forty-three scenes in the list, two of which are unique to Luke. Luke has a few variations in sequential order, all of which are departures from his Markan source. The most significant divergence is the story of the anointing at Bethany, which was radically different from the versions in Mark and John. Luke moves this well out of sequential order, placing it very much before the last visit to Jerusalem. His two extra scenes, which for reasons explained above I have accepted as part of the proposed common source, fall into that story. They include the woman weeping (CS4) and her tears falling on Jesus’ feet (CS5). Luke also appears to have had some problems integrating the story of Jesus’ prediction of betrayal with the explanation of the Eucharist narrative in that he has switched around some scenes and omitted some scenes. The primary diffi-

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 443 culty concerned Jesus handing bread to Judas as a sign he is the betrayer and Jesus handing bread to the disciples as a ceremonial reminder. Mark and John also agree on four scenes missing from Luke. These include: The value of the ointment was three hundred denarii (CS9); Jesus dipped bread into the bowl during the prediction of betrayal (CS19); the occurrence of a nighttime proceeding after Jesus’ arrest (CS43); and the notice of Jewish guards striking Jesus prior to being handed over to Pilate (CS44). In reconstructing the narrative arc, I faced a few difficulties. One problem concerned the holiday chronology. John says the last supper occurred on the night before the Passover meal and Mark and Luke say the last supper was the Passover meal. This introduced the problem of what occurred in preparation for the last supper. In Mark and Luke, we have the story of the disciples arranging for the Passover meal. In John we have the story of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples before the meal. Both Mark and John place the respective scenes precisely in between Judas’ decision to betray Jesus and Jesus’ prediction that one of the disciples will betray him. Given the narrow narrative constraints of the story it appears that either Mark replaced the foot-washing scene with the Passover preparation or John replaced the latter with the former. Which comes closest to the proposed common source depends upon whose holiday chronology you accept. I don’t take sides here and only describe the scene as a preparation for the last supper. A second difficulty revolved around the Eucharist ceremony. To begin with, what passed as John’s version of the Eucharist story was moved out of its location and into the Discourse on Bread. As to its content, John’s version is radically different from Mark and Luke. I argued above that Luke had a precise copy of Paul ‘s formulation that he integrated with Mark’s version, and Mark’s version was actually a less precise approximation of Paul’s version. I argued that John’s version represented a variation on the original version and that the original did not involve the handing over of bread whereas Paul’s version did involve the handing over of bread. This problem spilled over into the Eucharist narrative. In John’s account of the last supper, Jesus hands bread to Judas but does not hand over bread to the other disciples. Mark and Luke have no separate scene that shows Jesus handing bread to Judas but does show Jesus handing bread to all the disciples. Compounding the problem, John had to substitute a different ceremony for the Eucharist ceremony that he moved elsewhere. I proposed above that John modified the teaching of Jesus at the Temple about the second most important commandment, to love one’s neighbor, and used it as a substitute for the Eucha-

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rist ceremony, commanding the disciples to love each other as a sign that they carry on the teaching of Jesus. John’s commandment falls precisely at the point where the Eucharist ceremony takes place in Mark, and serves a similar propose, a method by which memory of Jesus will be preserved after his death. In the course of the analysis above I only briefly and cursorily treated the nighttime proceeding against Jesus after his arrest. John and Mark have very different versions. Luke omits the scene but has a fuller daytime proceeding than either Mark or John. I indicated that I will take a much more extensive look at the problem of the nighttime proceedings in Chapter 9. Despite the difficulties outlined above, the evidence clearly shows that Mark and John worked off a common written source that told several stories over a long narrative account. Either John copied Mark or the two knew a common written source. However, John and Luke agree against Mark on at least five occasions as to story content, which hints that John did not use Mark as a source. An argument might be made that maybe John copied from Luke rather than Mark. But that wouldn’t explain how John agrees with Mark on the sequential order of stories where Luke departs from Mark’s account, such as the anointing in Bethany. To argue that John used Luke would require us to argue that John used written versions of Mark and Luke rather than that John, Mark and Luke relied on a common written source.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Mark 14:12. John 18:28. Mark 14:1–2; John 11:45–53. Mark 14:1–3. John 12:1. Luke 22:2. Mark 14:2. John 10:40–11.1. John 11:47–48. John  11:53. John  11:54. Mark 14:3–9; John 12:1–8. Luke 7:36–50 Mark  14:3. Luke  7:40.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 445 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56.

John 12:2–3. John  12:4. Mark  11:1. Mark  14:3. Mark  14:5. Mark  14:.3. Mark  14:5 Mark 14:6–7. Mark 14:8–9. Mark  14:12. John  12:3. John  12:5. John  12:4. John 12:6–7. John 12:7–8. (Keener 1993), s.v., Mark 14:5. Mark  14:3. Mark  14:8. Luke 7:36, 40. Luke  7:37. Luke  7:39. Luke 7:44–47. Luke 7:48–50. John  12:11. Mark  14:10. Mark  14:11. Matthew  26:15. Luke 21:3–6. John  13:1. John  13:2. Mark  14:12. John  18:28. Mark  14:12. Mark  14:12. Mark 14:13–16. John  13:5. John  13:12. John  13:14. 1 Corinthians 11:23. (Brown 1997), 512. John  6:35.

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57. John 6:50–51. 58. John 6:53–58. 59. Mark  14:22. 60. Mark  14:24. 61. Mark  14:25. 62. John  6:56. 63. Luke  22:19. 64. Luke  22:20. 65. Luke  22:18. 66. (Brown 1997), 512. 67. 1 Corinthians 11:23–26. 68. Matthew  16:12. 69. John  13:33. 70. John  13:34. 71. John  13:35. 72. Mark  12:28. 73. Mark 12:29–31. 74. John 13:10–11. 75. John  13:21. 76. John  13:24. 77. John  13:26. 78. John  13:27. 79. John  13:27. 80. John  13:2. 81. John  13:27. 82. John  13:29. 83. Mark  14:18. 84. Mark  14:19. 85. Mark  14:20. 86. Mark  14:21. 87. Luke  22:21. 88. Luke  22:22. 89. Luke  22:23. 90. Mark  14:21. 91. (Greenberg 2007), reprinted as The Judas Brief: a critical investigation into the arrest and trials of Jesus and the role of the Jews, Pereset Press, 2014. 92. Luke 22:24–30. 93. Mark 10:41–44. 94. Mark  14:26. 95. Mark 14:27. “You will all become deserters; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.’ ”

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 447 96. Mark 14:28. 97. Mark 14:29. 98. Mark 14:30. 99. Mark 14:31. 100. Luke 22:31–32. 101. Luke  22:33. 102. Mark  14:50. 103. Compare Mark 8:31–38 with Luke 9:21–27. 104. Luke 22:35–38. 105. John  13:36. 106. John  13:36. 107. John  13:37. 108. John  13:38. 109. Mark  14:32. 110. Luke 22:35–38. 111. Mark  14:32. 112. Mark  14:32. 113. Luke  22:39. 114. John  18.1. 115. Mark  14:32. 116. Mark  14:33. 117. Mark  14:34. 118. Mark  14:35. 119. Mark  14:36. 120. Luke  22:41. 121. Luke  22:42. 122. John  18:10. 123. John  18:11. 124. John  12:27. 125. Luke 22:43–44. 126. (Ehrman 1996), 187 ff. 127. John  12:28. 128. John 12:28–30. 129. Mark 14:32–33. 130. Mark  14:34. 131. Mark  14:37. 132. Mark  14:38. 133. Mark 14:39–40. 134. Mark 14:41–42. 135. Luke 22:39–41. 136. Luke  22:44.

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137. Luke  22:45. 138. Luke  22:45. 139. Luke  22:46. 140. John 12:27–28. 141. Mark  14:43. 142. Luke  22:47. 143. John  18:3. 144. Mark 14:43; Luke 22:47. 145. (Strong 2001), Greek, 4686. 146. Mark  14:44. 147. Mark 14:45–46. 148. Mark  14:47. 149. Mark 14:48–49. 150. Mark  14:50. 151. Mark 14:51–52. 152. Luke  22:48. 153. Luke  22:49. 154. Luke  22:50 155. Luke  22:51. 156. Luke 22:52–53. 157. John  18:4. 158. John  18:5. 159. John  18:6. 160. John 18:7–8. 161. John  18:8. 162. John  18:10. 163. John  18:10. 164. John  18:11. 165. Mark  14:53. 166. Mark  14:54. 167. John  18:24. 168. John  18:15. 169. (Metzger 1994), 215. 170. (Mays),  1072. 171. Luke  3:2. 172. Acts  4:6. 173. Luke  22:61. 174. Mark  14:66. 175. Luke  24:54. 176. John  18:17. 177. John  18:25.

The Plot to Kill Jesus | 449 178. 179. 180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186. 187. 188. 189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195. 196. 197. 198. 199. 200. 201. 202. 203.

Mark  14:68. Mark  14.70. Mark  14:71. Luke  22:57. Luke  22:58. Luke  22:60. John  18:17. John  18:25. John  18:27. Mark 14:55–64. 18:19–21. John  18:19. John 18:20–21. Mark 14:65a. Luke 22:66–71. Mark 15:65b. Luke 22:63–65. John  18:22. John  18:23. John  18:24. Mark  15:1a. Luke  22:66. John  18:24. Mark  15:1b. Luke  23:1. John  18:28.

Bibliography Brown, R. (1997). An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Doubleday. Ehrman, B. D. (1996). The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. New York: Oxford. Greenberg, G. (2007). The Judas Brief: Who really killed Jesus? New York: Continuum. Keener, C. (1993). The IVP Bible background commentary: New Testament. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Strong, J. (2001). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

9

The Jewish Trial of Jesus

In Mark’s gospel, the authorities wanted to put Jesus to death because they feared his popularity and saw him as a rival to their power base. From this perspective they couldn’t simply grab him and kill him. They needed a legal excuse. So, “the whole council were looking for testimony against Jesus to put him to death.”1 After Jesus’ arrest, Mark depicts a full-scale trial. The council called witnesses; it took testimony; it considered legal issues; it had Jesus cross-examined; it issued a verdict of blasphemy; and it handed down a death penalty. John, on the other hand, says that the council met before Jesus’ arrest and it had determined that unless Jesus was put to death, the Roman would destroy the Temple and the nation. It considered no legal issues, called no witnesses and handed down a death sentence without Jesus even being present to defend himself. The decision was based on national survival. After the arrest of Jesus, John depicts a temporary holding action prior to delivering Jesus to Pilate. As far as we can tell, no other council members were present. At most, if you really stretch the point, the High Priest Annas conducted a brief inquiry into Jesus’ beliefs. Annas called no witnesses, did not declare Jesus a blasphemer, and issued no verdict. In this post arrest preceding, there was no death sentence imposed. That had already been handed down earlier. Annas simply shipped Jesus off to the Romans.

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Mark and John place these post-arrest actions at night. Luke, on the other hand, has no nighttime proceeding. But he does show Jesus appearing before the council on the following morning. On the surface, Luke’s proceeding looks something like Mark, but it differs in several ways. In Luke, the council called no witnesses; the High Priest made no (direct) accusation of blasphemy; the council did not issue a verdict; and no death sentence was mentioned. The council did inquire into who Jesus claimed to be, as in Mark, but Luke’s Jesus gives different answers than does Mark’s. Luke seems to be describing more of an inquiry than a trial, and in that regard, his proceeding has more in common with John than Mark. But, as we shall see below, the matter of parallels is a bit more complex than that. In this chapter, I am going to take a closer look at the Jewish proceedings against Jesus in all three gospels. It will be argued that Mark, Luke and John all knew a longer version of the story from the proposed common source and each edited it in accord with their own editorial agendas. More significantly, I will argue that John, pursuant to his altered plotline, took the original narrative about the plot and subsequent council proceeding and broke it down into smaller portions and redistributed the pieces in a disguised format to hide their original nature. When we put John’s pieces back together and cross reference them with Mark and Luke we will be able to broadly reconstruct the story of the plot against Jesus and the subsequent nighttime proceeding.

The Jewish Proceedings in Mark and Luke Compared Mark’s trial proceeding appears to have taken place in the High Priest’s home, with Peter outside in the courtyard. According to Mark, the council sought out testimony from witnesses that would lead to a death sentence, but they ran into problems.2 The witnesses did not appear to be reliable.3 The chief piece of evidence was an allegation that Jesus said “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.”4 But the witnesses couldn’t agree as to what Jesus actually said about this matter or any of the (unspecified) other testimony.5 Frustrated, the High Priest (whom Mark never identifies by name) turned to Jesus and asked him to comment on the various statements made about him by the witnesses.6 Jesus remained silent.7 The High Priest followed up with the key question that concerned the council. “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”8 (For “the Blessed One” we should read “God.” Mark’s usage is odd under

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 453 the circumstances.) The question combines two separate concepts, “Messiah” and “Son of God,” each of which can have multiple meanings, but in Mark they are treated as a single entity. John also treats “Messiah” and “Son of God” as the same entity but in a much different setting. After Jesus’ resurrection, John writes, “But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.”9 During what I will argue below is John’s disguised version of the Jewish trial, his equivalences are ambiguous. Jesus responded with a surprising answer. He said, “I am; and ‘you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power,’ and ‘coming with the clouds of heaven.’ ”10 This comes across as an admission by Jesus that he is “the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One [i.e., God]” and that seems inconsistent with Mark’s larger theme that no one knew who Jesus really was until after he was crucified. It also could open up an argument that the Romans had a basis for putting Jesus to death for claiming to be king of the Jews. Despite the appearance of an admission, though, the answer is still actually vague as to what Jesus is truly admitting to. On one level, “I am” is a simple admission to being what the High Priest asked about. But the High Priest’s question involves two terms that can have multiple meanings, “messiah” and “Son of God.” On another level, “I am” is the biblical name of God, an association frequently used in John. Is Jesus claiming to be God in the manner that John’s Jesus uses the term? We don’t know. Because Mark’s question has two different titles involved, “I am” could also be considered an admission to only one of those titles. He might be admitting to be being the messiah and not the Son of God, or the Son of God and not the messiah. Jesus also qualifies the answer by adding in two scriptural references that suggest secondary definitions of who Jesus is. He first refers to the “Son of Man, presumably (but not necessarily) a self-identification by Jesus, and says this individual will be “seated at the right hand of the Power” and “coming with the clouds of heaven,” The first quote is based on Psalm 110.1. Mark used this psalm during the Temple confrontations to prove that the messiah could not be a descendant of David. So, whatever Jesus admitted to, from Mark’s perspective, it was not to being a Davidic messiah. The second quote is based on Daniel 7:13, describing the “one like a son of man.” This suggests that Jesus may have admitted to being a messiah in the sense of “one like a son of Man” but we have no good documentary evidence for the nature of such a messiah. Is “one like a son of Man” actually a messiah, or some other type of authority? Is he also the “Son of God”?

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Jesus’ response seems to incorporate a number of ideas about his nature. Whatever the answer was meant to convey it triggered a furious reaction from the High Priest. Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “Why do we still need witnesses? You have heard his blasphemy! What is your decision?” All of them condemned him as deserving death.11

With the verdict in, the Jewish council had a legal reason to declare a death sentence. At this point Mark moves to the next stage of the narrative, the mockery of Jesus and Peter’s denials. Luke’s council proceeding differs from Mark in several ways.12 As a starter, he places the council proceeding on the next morning.13 He does not specify where the proceeding took place. The council called no witnesses; it took no testimony; it made no finding of blasphemy; it issued no verdict of death; and nothing was said about the Temple’s destruction. Luke focuses almost solely on the interrogation of Jesus and his version of the interrogation differs substantially from Mark’s. As soon as Jesus comes before the council “they” say, “If you are the Messiah, tell us.”14 In Mark, only the High Priest questioned Jesus; in Luke it was the council as a whole. Note here that the council asked only about being the messiah. They say nothing yet about being the Son of God.15 Jesus responded, “If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God [emphasis added].”16 The italicized part replaces Mark’s “I am.” The remaining portion of the answer is a redacted version of the rest of Mark’s indicated answer, preserving the quote from Psalm 110.1 but omitting the portion from Daniel 7:13. In this manner Luke eliminated Mark’s problematic admission. Jesus did not directly claim to be the messiah but did say something about the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power. Jesus’ quote could be considered a prophetic statement about something that will happen in the future without directly saying that Jesus is the Son of Man. It could also be an admission that he is that person. Again, we have ambiguity. This leads the council to ask, “Are you, then, the Son of God?”17 This is the other part of Mark’s single question. The council seems to be trying to clarify the previous answer, which had suggested that Jesus was the Son of Man who will be seated at the right hand of power. Does that mean, they ask, that Jesus, this spe-

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 455 cial Son of Man, is the Son of God? On the other hand, it may be a new line of inquiry. Luke is unclear, perhaps deliberately so. In either event, Jesus replies, “You say that I am [emphasis added].” Luke has changed Mark’s “I am” to “You say that I am.” This is a classic non-denial denial. Jesus doesn’t say he isn’t the Son of God, just that the council accuses him of being the Son of God. but the council never previously made that charge. Luke has arranged his interrogation in a manner contrary to Mark. The latter has an admission that Jesus was both the messiah and the Son of God. Luke separates the two out and avoids any admission to either identity. To summarize Luke’s interrogation: He replaces Mark’s “I am” with “You say I am” and makes that answer a response only to the second question, as to the Son of God. As to the initial Messiah question, the answer has several parts. Luke has moved Mark’s “I am” out of the way and inserted some material not present in Mark, and attached to it a redacted version of Mark’s secondary description about the Son of Man. The non-Markan material consists of two parts. The first part indicates that if he answered the question the council wouldn’t believe him, but he doesn’t say what answer Jesus would give, continuing to provide an ambiguous framework as to what Jesus admits to. The second part of the answer indicates how Jesus would prove who he is, to wit, he would interrogate the council. But, he adds, the council wouldn’t respond. Sequentially, Luke’s interrogation has the following format. Q1. Are you the Messiah? A1. You wouldn’t believe. A2. You won’t answer my questions. A3. Mark’s redacted description of the Son of Man. Q2. Are you the Son of God? A1. You say I am (i.e., an altered version of Mark’s “I am.”)

Luke has broken up Mark’s response by Jesus and changed the order of the clauses. Mark has “I am” at the beginning and followed by the secondary description. Luke places the “I am” response at the end of the interrogation, after Mark’s secondary description. Following Luke’s interrogation, the council declares, “What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips!”18 This declaration seems to apply only to the second answer, in which Jesus makes no admission. It is possible, though, that the “Son of Man” statement could be interpreted as a messianic admission, but it is vague in Luke’s context. And even if that was the case, claiming to be the messiah would not be a blasphemous statement.

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Implicitly, the council thinks that Jesus has blasphemed but Luke doesn’t specifically say that this was the case. It is only from Mark that we can draw this specific conclusion. Luke also omits any specific declaration that Jesus was condemned to death. He jumps from the council’s declaration to the handover to Pilate. There is a troubling aspect to Luke’s version of Jesus’ council proceeding. While Luke’s Jesus never makes any direct admission to being the messiah while in front of the council (unless you interpret the Son of Man description as a messianic admission, which Luke appears to be avoiding,) when Jesus appears before Pilate, the Jewish authorities tell the governor that Jesus claimed to be “the Messiah, a king.”19 This is either clumsy editing by Luke, reflecting the original “I am” in Mark (and/or in the proposed common source) or it is an attempt to make the Jewish authorities appear to be lying to Pilate about what Jesus said. Since Luke knows, at a minimum, that Mark had this admission in his gospel, I will charitably accept clumsy editing by Luke. Like Luke, Matthew also seems to be bothered by Mark’s Jesus saying “I am.” He broadly follows Mark’s account but makes some enhancements. He accuses the council of deliberately seeking false testimony.20 He also has the High Priest place Jesus under oath before asking Mark’s combined question.21 In addition, he replaced Mark’s “I am” with “you have said so;”22 the same sort of non-denial denial used by Luke, and completed the answer with the same two biblical citations used by Mark.23 In an interesting variation, Matthew says two witnesses came forward and testified to the same statement about Jesus saying something about the Temple being destroyed, but his version of the testimony varies from Mark’s. In Matthew, the witnesses say only that Jesus claimed he was “able to destroy the temple [emphasis added]” and rebuild it in three days.24 Unlike Mark’s Jesus, Matthew’s doesn’t say he will tear down the Temple. In Matthew, the statement seems to have no criminal impact. That both Luke and Matthew reject Mark’s “I am” suggests that the answer was somewhat controversial within early Christian circles. Such an admission could be understood in a manner that would have justified a Roman governor executing Jesus for treason. Separate and apart from the questions about Jesus’ identity, Mark also depicts the High Priest asking Jesus to respond to the (contradictory) witness testimony and Jesus declining. Since Luke omits the witnesses, that question and response is also missing. I’ll return to this matter later, during a discussion of parallels with John.

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The Interrogation in John Although John has no explicit trial or inquiry setting similar to that in Mark or Luke, I have identified a part of John that seems to preserve the interrogation of Jesus by the council. It occurs at John 10:22–39, the last segment of John’s account of Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. It takes the form of a confrontation between Jesus and some Jews over whether or not he is the messiah. The passage begins with an announcement that the Festival of Dedication (Hanukkah) had come and that Jesus was walking around the Porch of Solomon at the Temple. Jews gathered around him and asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”25 Jesus responded, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me [emphasis added].”26 This is followed by additional Johannine rhetoric about Jesus’ sheep and eternal life and then concludes with, “The Father and I are one.”27 Compare the initial question and italicized part of John’s answer to the first question and answer in Luke’s trial. Luke: “They said, ‘If you are the Messiah, tell us.’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer.’ ” John: “ ‘If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.’ Jesus answered, ‘I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me.’ ”

Luke and John begin with the same question. The only difference between the two is that John adds the word “plainly” to the request, which is of no editorial significance. Both also have a fairly similar response in the first part of Jesus’ answer, but there is one important difference between the two. In John, Jesus said he already answered the question and they didn’t believe him. In Luke, Jesus said if he answered the question they wouldn’t believe his answer. John is past tense; Luke is future tense. However, contra John’s assertion, John’s Jesus did not previously answer the question. Nevertheless, it is obvious that John and Luke both know similar versions of both the question and first part of the answer. After the initial response Luke and John diverge as to what Jesus says next. Luke’s Jesus says that the council would not answer any questions he would ask on his own behalf. If this response were in the proposed common source John would have been offended. John’s Jesus never debates theological questions with the authorities or interrogates them. He lectures, teaches, or tells them they don’t understand their own scriptures. But he doesn’t engage in debates or arguments.

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If John encountered such a statement, he would replace it. That appears to be what John has done. John says that his “works” testify to his credibility. While John’s statement is very different from Luke’s they both have a common theme. Each explains how Jesus will prove his case (whatever that may be) before the council, but again, the tense differs. John, again, bases the defense on his past actions (works that testify) and Luke, again, refers to future actions (questions he would ask if the council would answer). John concludes the answer with “The Father and I are one.” That phrase is missing in Mark and Luke. It is a Johannine expression. But, it functions in the same manner as Luke’s final portion of Jesus’ answer to the first question. At the conclusion of Luke’s messiah response, Jesus talks about the Son of God appearing at the right hand of power. This is a secondary characteristic of Jesus, which, if in the proposed common source, would also be offensive to John. It posits a split between God and Jesus as separate entities. That John opposes this view is evident from his parallel response that “the Father and I are one.” John simply substitutes unity for duality. Comparing the response in Luke and John to the messiah question, we appear to have a precise thematic parallel.



• The interrogator asked Jesus if he is the messiah. • Jesus says he did (John) or would (Luke) answer the question but that the authorities didn’t or wouldn’t believe. • Jesus offered proof of his identity (whatever that may be). In Luke, Jesus said he would question the council but they wouldn’t answer. John, rejecting the idea that Jesus would debate the authorities, says that Jesus’ works “testify” on his behalf. • Jesus concluded with a secondary description of Jesus’ identity. In Luke, Jesus says that the Son of Man (presumably Jesus) would sit at the right hand of God. John, rejecting that duality of Father and son, has Jesus say that “the Father and I are one.”

That we have a tight four-point parallel seems clear. But who comes closer to the proposed common source? Since the second and third parts of the response involve Johannine overlays, I am inclined to accept Luke over John as more likely to preserve the original source as to these two responses. As to the first part of the response, past tense versus future tense, given what I believe to be John’s alterations for the last two parts of the response, including a tense change in the second part, coupled with the fact that John does not show Jesus making such a statement earlier in the gospel, I am going to accept Luke’s version of Jesus’ initial response.

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 459 For the purpose of reconstructing the proposed common source, based on the thematic agreements between John and Luke, I will accept that, contra Mark, Jesus was initially asked only if he was the messiah. Luke’s three-part answer represents Jesus response, subject to the amendment that he has shortened Mark’s description of the Son of Man and that Mark’s fuller expression probably (but not necessarily) better represents the third part of the answer. Immediately after John’s Jesus said that he and the Father are one, the Jews made ready to stone him. He responded, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?”28 To which, the Jews respond, “It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you, but for blasphemy, because you, though only a human being, are making yourself God [emphasis added].”29 In Mark and (implicitly in) Luke the blasphemy accusation comes after the second question is asked. It is possible, though, that Mark, in combining the two questions may have moved the blasphemy accusation from after the first question to after the second question. But this seems unlikely as the verdict should follow after the interrogation is concluded. So, what about the second question in John? We find that John has an anomaly. In response to this accusation, John’s Jesus teaches that there is a statement in scripture that “[God] said, ‘You are Gods.’ ”30 He explains, “If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’—and the scripture cannot be annulled—can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’ [emphasis added]?”31 John’s Jesus is chastising the crowd for not understanding the law in relation to Jesus being a blasphemer. But, more importantly, note that John’s Jesus says, “I said ‘I am God’s son.’ ” John’s Jesus, as in Mark but contra Luke, says openly to the crowd, that he is the son of God. Interestingly, though, he says it in the context of saying he already said it earlier. Only, he didn’t say it earlier. John admits that the admission to being the Son of God does occur before the blasphemy accusation and admits that the blasphemy accusation is in relation to his having claimed to be the Son of God. John has, however, omitted the actual scene in which Jesus makes the admission. Those who want to argue the point might claim that the admission that Jesus and the Father are one constitutes the earlier admission that Jesus is the Son of God, and that may be the case. It is that statement that triggers the initial blasphemy charge and John’s reference to being the Son of God does reference that charge

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Nevertheless, John’s Jesus specifically says that he previously used the words “I am God’s son” and John quotes Jesus to that effect. I believe that John has attempted to reformulate the earlier version of the story in which Jesus admitted to being the Son of God and was accused of blasphemy. He has reworked the narrative, equating the two separate statements as a single expression of the same thought, to show that the Jews don’t understand the law. Having accepted that John and Luke followed a common narrative regarding the first question and response, I follow Luke in putting forth the second question about being the Son of God. Contra Luke, though, John agrees with Mark that Jesus answered, “I am,” or at least used some variation in which he admitted to being the Son of God Following Jesus’ scriptural lecture about the Son of God, John says that the Jews tried to arrest Jesus but he escaped, leaving Jerusalem for the Jordan River. This is followed by John’s setup for the raising of Lazarus. In John 10:22–38, despite the lack of a specific trial setting, we have found virtually all of the elements of the interrogations of Jesus in Mark and Luke. Here is a summary of the findings.









• John and Luke (contra Mark) show that the first question asked of Jesus was just if he was the messiah. • John and Luke (contra Mark) both use nearly identical language in the first part of Jesus’ response, saying that the interrogators wouldn’t (or didn’t) believe the answer. • John and Luke use different language in the second part of the answer but express the same theme, how Jesus would prove himself innocent of wrongdoing before the Jewish council. Luke says he would ask the council questions if they would answer them. John says his past works testify on his behalf. • John and Luke agree that the third part of the answer involved a secondary description of Jesus. Luke had a duality in which Jesus and God are separate, Jesus at the right hand of God; John had a unity in which Jesus and the Father are one. • John appears to agree with Luke against Mark that the council asked a second and separate question about being the Son of God, although John’s corroboration is implicit and depends upon how you explain his claim that Jesus previously told the council that he was the Son of God when no such earlier statement appears. • Mark and John (contra Luke) show Jesus admitting to being the Son of God. • Mark and John (contra Luke) show Jesus being accused of blasphemy for claiming to be the Son of God. • Mark and John (contra Luke) show an attempt to punish Jesus for blasphemy.

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 461 For all practical purposes, John’s narrative arc includes all the essential parallel elements of the interrogation of Jesus in Mark and Luke, including parts of Mark missing from Luke and parts of Luke missing from Mark, although John occasionally uses parallel Johannine themes as a replacement for some of the underlying source details. This evidence strongly suggests that Mark, Luke and John all knew the same basic story of the interrogation of Jesus by the Jewish council and each made changes. The most significant alteration was in John, who disguised the narrative to hide its relationship to the original proceeding before the Jewish council.

Additional Hidden Trial Scenes in John The closest John comes to depicting a Jewish trial is the brief tête–à–tête between Jesus and the High Priest Annas but it bears little resemblance to the more intense proceedings in front of the full Jewish council as described in Mark and Luke. Since John previously had a Jewish council hand down a death sentence—not for blasphemy but rather to prevent Rome from destroying the Jewish nation—John had no need for a trial. Jesus had to be executed in order to save the nation. But, as we have just seen, John 10:22–38 preserves both the aggressive interrogation of Jesus and a blasphemy accusation in connection with the interrogation, consistent with both Mark and Luke. This suggests that John is hiding aspects of a Jewish trial. As with John’s disguised interrogation scene, I believe John has also embedded and disguised additional proceedings before the council within his account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. The two chief narrative segments I will look at are John 7:45–52 and John 8:12–20. At this point I should remind you that, as I pointed out in Chapter 7, John 7:53–8:11, the story of the adulterous woman, is widely accepted as a late addition to John’s gospel and not part of the original document. This means that John 8:12–20 follows immediately after 7:45–52.

Nicodemus and the Council (John 7:45–52) John 7:45–52 is tightly integrated with the various messiah debates that occurred in the beginning of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. In the midst of those debates, when the Pharisees and Chief Priests heard that people were arguing over whether Jesus might be the messiah they sent the Temple police to arrest him.32The directive is followed by a scene in which Jesus delivers a Johannine-style speech.33 This is followed by renewed debates as to Jesus’ messianic status, this time over

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the David issue.34 After the debates, we are told that some of the crowd wanted to arrest Jesus but no one laid hands on him.35 The John 7:45–52 segment follows right after the attempted arrest. When the Temple police return to the council the authorities ask them why no arrest took place.36 They reply, “Never has anyone spoken like this!”37 So while some of the crowd allegedly wanted to arrest Jesus, the Temple police were not among them. Upon hearing the police explanation, the Pharisees accused the officers of being deceived, just like the ignorant crowd that doesn’t know the law.38 They remark in part, “Has any one of the authorities or of the Pharisees believed in him?”39 At this point, Nicodemus, a member of the council whom we met at the beginning of Jesus’s mission, says, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?”40 To which, the Pharisees replied, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you? Search and you will see that no prophet is to arise from Galilee [emphasis added].”41 Suddenly the story ends. Nicodemus’s request for a hearing raises some issues. It implies that the council seeks to punish Jesus without any inquiry. The matter is important enough for Nicodemus to complain about the process and he cites Jewish law that allows for a hearing. The council, despite an initial arrest order based on the messiah debates, seems to be concerned only with the issue of whether Jesus is a prophet, not whether he is a messiah. This last point may be the result of an editorial amendment by John as part of his continuing effort to downplay the issue of political rivalry between the priests and Jesus. Although, according to John, this confrontation took place during the Festival of Booths, Jesus remained in Jerusalem for another two months, through the Festival of Dedication, and despite several confrontations, no further effort was made by the council to arrest Jesus. What happened after Nicodemus said the council shouldn’t act without first holding a hearing where Jesus could present his side of the story? Something seems to be missing. I think it has to do with an editorial change by John. Prior to this council meeting there was an earlier order by the council to arrest Jesus because of the stir over the messiah debates, but the police, after hearing a Johannine speech, chose not to arrest him, even though other Jews wanted him to be arrested. Given Nicodemus’ argument that the council shouldn’t act without first giving Jesus an opportunity to be heard, John’s police notice seems out of place. Given opposition on the council to summary action, John’s observation that the police were initially sent out first and returned empty-handed as a result

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 463 of a Johannine speech by Jesus, doesn’t seem credible. The police wouldn’t have been sent to fetch Jesus until after the council had argued over what to do. Therefore, I suggest that only after Nicodemus raised his objection, did the council send police to fetch Jesus for a hearing. When the police went to the Temple, Jesus was already gone. That is why no arrest was made. Below, I will propose that after Jesus’ arrest, following Nicodemus’s (or some other council member’s) argument, the High Priest initially gave Jesus an opportunity to explain his teachings before the council moved forward.

An Argument Over Legal Testimony (John 8:12–20) Passing over the story of the adulterous woman, we move from the argument over Nicodemus’s request for a hearing to what appears to be a debate between Jesus and the Pharisees over the rules of evidence. According to the opening verse, “Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ ”42 This is John’s enunciation of Jesus’ gospel. The Pharisees respond, “You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.”43 This response is not the kind of argument you would expect to hear in a street debate over theological issues. It suggests some sort of legal proceeding is in progress but Jesus doesn’t appear to have raised any legal issues. Still, John positions this story as a public encounter of some sort. In response to the Pharisee argument, Jesus offers some Johannine arguments about the nature of Jesus’ testimony. Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or where I am going. You judge by human standards; I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is valid; for it is not I alone who judge, but I and the Father who sent me. [emphasis added]44

Jesus, within the Johannine framework, seems somewhat concerned about how his testimony should be judged as to credibility. Again, this rhetoric doesn’t seem like a typical public give-and-take but rather a response to persons in a position to judge the validity of his arguments. It is Jesus’ next remark that seems to suggest that John is reframing legal arguments at a trial in terms of just a Johannine street argument about Jesus’ credibility. “In your law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is valid. I testify on my own behalf, and the Father who sent me testifies on my behalf.”45

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Put aside John’s use of “your” law instead of “our” law. Jesus here cites legal rules for a dispute at trial. His argument proceeds from Johannine principles about who Jesus is and seeks to place Jesus’s testimony within the framework of trial law through the use of Johannine arguments about Jesus’ credibility. That we are involved in some sort of legal proceeding seems apparent from the next question by the Pharisees. “Where is your Father?”46 Contextually, Jesus has said his Father is one of the two required witnesses needed for his defense. John, of course, is referring to God but, as usual, the authorities don’t understand the true meaning of what Jesus says. They appear to think he is talking about his human father, and they apparently want to know where he is, presumably to offer testimony on Jesus’ behalf. This does not sound like any street debate. This is a disguised legal proceeding. Jesus responds by telling them they know neither him nor the Father,47 implicitly indicating if they knew God, they would know why their question about the Father was foolish. John wraps up the segment by telling us Jesus said these words in the Temple treasury but no one arrested him because his hour had not come.48 This last remark by John places Jesus outside of a trial setting, again in the confines of the Temple. It seems apparent that John is describing some sort of legal proceeding and questions about the validity of testimony are being raised. But John’s descriptions are wrapped in Johannine rhetoric and he has the evidence issue backwards. Jesus doesn’t have to prove he is telling the truth about who he is; the prosecutors would have to prove that he is guilty of violating the law. It is the prosecutors who would need two valid witnesses to the same evidence. And this brings us to the problem of Mark’s trial witnesses who couldn’t agree on what it was that Jesus said.

The Witness Testimony Mark’s account of the Jewish proceedings against Jesus includes a scene in which witnesses are called to testify against Jesus but can’t agree about a specific statement Jesus allegedly made on an earlier occasion. Ultimately, the lack of agreement leads to the exclusion of the witness evidence and the verdict in Mark is based solely on the interrogation of Jesus and the answers he gave. Implicitly, the problem here is that the prosecution couldn’t find two witnesses who agreed as to what Jesus said. The prosecution case was falling apart and at that point they begin the interrogation of Jesus in the hope that they could get Jesus to say something damning. Hence the questions about being the messiah and the son of God.

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 465 John and Luke have no witness testimony in their versions of what took place. But John alludes to the presence of witnesses on his behalf, (himself and his Father). Further, when he is arrested and brought before Annas, the High Priest asks Jesus to explain his teaching. At this point, the High Priest asked no questions about Jesus being a messiah, a prophet, or the son of God. Jesus responded by telling the High Priest that he should call witnesses who would testify to what Jesus has openly and publicly taught. Additionally, and most importantly, John seems to know something about the statement attributed to Jesus by witnesses at Mark’s trial. The key part of Mark’s witness scene is the testimony about a statement made by Jesus and the inability of the witnesses to agree upon what was said. According to Mark, witnesses heard Jesus say something to the effect of, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands”49 but they couldn’t agree on what he actually said. Mark does not provide any prior occasion on which Jesus said such a thing. He does have Jesus say, when he and the disciples came out of the Temple and admired the buildings, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”50 This seems to be talking about the Temple being destroyed but there is no statement about Jesus raising it up. I’ll come back to this passage later. John, on the other hand, does have an earlier occasion on which Jesus made a statement similar to what the witnesses testified to. After chasing the moneychangers from the Temple, authorities asked Jesus where his authority came from. Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”51 John, therefore, says that witnesses heard Jesus make a statement about tearing down and rebuilding the Temple. Let’s compare the statements in Mark and John a little more closely. Mark: [I will] destroy this temple [that is made with hands,] and in three days I will build another, [not made with hands.] John: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

If we remove the bracketed portions from Mark’s statement, the remainder is virtually identical to that in John. Either John deleted Mark’s extra phrases or Mark added them in. John, however, has added some spin. In a gloss to Jesus’ remarks, John says that when Jesus said this he was referring to his body, not the actual Temple. Whether or not John is accurate, from his perspective, the statements in brackets would be problematic to John.

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First, John’s Jesus did not say “I will” destroy the Temple; he only said if it were destroyed (by anyone), he would raise it up. Second, if the Temple symbolized Jesus’ body, then Jesus wouldn’t have said it was made by human hands. Third, if the Temple language symbolized Jesus’ body, he wouldn’t say he’d raise up his body/ Temple; he would say that the Father would. (Recall that John has three occasions on which he says that the body of Jesus will be lifted up, that is, some other entity will lift up Jesus.) All of Mark’s extra phrases are precisely what John would have omitted if Jesus had said something like what the witnesses testified to. At the same time, however, Mark only presents an erroneous version of the statement. It is my suggestion that in the proposed common source Jesus had previously made the correct version of that statement and if we eliminate the first bracketed part of Mark’s witness statement (i.e., “I will”) the balance would be what Jesus originally said earlier. There are several reasons why I think Mark comes closer to the original phrasing in the proposed common source than John does. First, there is the matter of context. John uses the statement as a reply to the question about where Jesus gets his authority. John objects to any indications that Jesus’ authority is in any way limited to a particular type of action. As we saw in John 5, “The Father judges no one but has given all judgment to the Son.”52 When John comes across stories that discuss Jesus’ authority in only a single context, leaving open the possible interpretation that Jesus has authority on this issue but not necessarily on all other issues, John edits the story to eliminate any such misunderstanding. In this case, John frames the answer such that Jesus has the power over life and death (kill Jesus and he will rise up in three days), and, implicitly, judgement over all moral matters. Second, as argued above, John has disguised elements of the Jewish proceeding against Jesus because he doesn’t want there to be any indication that the priests were looking for a legal reason to put Jesus to death. He has framed the priestly opposition as one that arises from Jesus’ power over life and death and how Rome would destroy the Jewish nation and the Temple if he weren’t put to death. Since it appears that Mark presents the original plot line, it is likely there was a trial in which witnesses were called in order to testify against Jesus. So, if the witness scene were in the proposed common source, John would have removed or altered the witness scene. Third, if John is correct that in the proposed common source Jesus made this statement in response to the question about authority to chase the moneychangers, it would mean that Mark invented an entirely different and lengthy response to the same question. Mark uses a question about the authority of John the Baptist to deflect attention away from Jesus’s authority. Luke follows Mark on

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 467 this response and while it doesn’t prove that Mark has correctly copied from the proposed common source, it does mean that Luke provides no corroboration for John’s usage. Fourth, I don’t see any good reason why Mark would add in the bracketed material (other than “I will”) to John’s version of the statement, but I do see very good reasons, as explained above, why John would eliminate the bracketed material. Fifth, if we remove “I will” from the statement at trial we have a very good statement by Jesus consistent with his image in the proposed common source. If Mark’s version of the statement better reflects the words spoken by the witnesses in the proposed common source than John’s version of the statement, then it raises the question of whether Jesus, in the proposed common source, had said something similar prior to his arrest. I think that is the case and I suggest on an earlier occasion that Jesus had made the statement that Mark quotes but without the words “I will.” There are several reasons why I think this is so. First, the witnesses are testifying to a statement that comes so close to something Jesus might have said, there should have been an occasion where such a statement was made. This would enable the audience to know that the witness statement was in error when it alleged that Jesus would tear down the Temple. Second, John specifically says that witnesses heard Jesus say something similar. If Jesus had made no such statement or something similar, why would John place it in his gospel and then add a gloss saying that witnesses to the statement existed but misunderstood what Jesus meant. It is my view that whenever John adds a gloss to something he is usually trying to eliminate a problematic issue found in the proposed common source. This suggests that such a statement did exist in the source material. Third, the witnesses, even if garbling the testimony, appear to be commenting on something they had heard. This issue so upset Matthew that he amended Mark’s account by saying the priests sought “false testimony” from witnesses.53 Fourth, the witness testimony plays no role in what the council ultimately decides to do. The testimony is disregarded because at least (in theory, according to the law) two witnesses couldn’t be found to confirm what Jesus said. So, why bother presenting it? Fifth, Mark says the witnesses couldn’t agree on what Jesus said. John says witnesses existed but misunderstood what Jesus said. Yet, in John, they are not called as witnesses at a trial. Sixth, Mark appears to have an altered version of Jesus’ statement at an earlier time. According to Mark, after the Temple confrontations, Jesus said, “Do you

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see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”54 Although Mark doesn’t specifically say any of the buildings in question was the Temple, Luke does.55 Herod’s rebuilt Temple was considered one of the most beautiful buildings to have ever been built. The Babylonian Talmud says, “He who has not seen the Temple of Herod, has never seen a beautiful building.”56 Mark’s statement about the buildings being torn down seems consistent with what the witnesses say Jesus said, but, admittedly, it is different from the testimony. I think there is a reason why the statement differs so much. I believe the proposed common source was probably written before the Romans destroyed the Temple. The gospels were probably all written after the Temple was destroyed.57 For the gospel authors, then, a claim that Jesus would restore the Temple in three days if it were destroyed would be quite problematic. Why didn’t he do so? The failure to raise the destroyed Temple could undermine Jesus’ credibility as the messiah. So, Mark said the witnesses misquoted Jesus and he, perhaps, inserted an amended version of the quote that only predicted destruction, but not rebuilding. Luke omitted both the original quote and the witness testimony. John said the witnesses to the earlier statement misunderstood what Jesus was talking about. Additionally, because John didn’t want to depict a Jewish trial in the first place, he had no witness testimony as to what Jesus said. The evidence convinces me that in the proposed common source Jesus made a statement prior to his arrest in the form, “destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” This is a redacted version of the statement at Mark’s trial in which the words “I will” at the beginning have been removed. I would place the statement at the end of the Temple encounters where Mark has Jesus predict the buildings destruction. At the same time, I also believe that there was a witness testimony segment in the proposed common source and John has substantially altered it. Witnesses misquoting Jesus and asking Jesus to comment on such statements would be highly offensive to John. His Jesus doesn’t engage in arguments and debates with others and John alters source stories where that is an issue. He also wouldn’t want to provide evidence possible for opponents of the Jesus movement to argue that Jesus was less than honest. In John, Jesus is truth, and nothing must appear to challenge that notion. Additionally, the witnesses would be testifying to actions that, if believed, would create legal issues as to Jesus’ behavior, justifying some sort of death sentence. John has carefully constructed his gospel to avoid the appearance that

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 469 priests sought to put Jesus to death for violating Jewish law. So John would have to eliminate or alter the narrative. Therefore, I think the John 8:12–20 segment about legal arguments and witnesses and the validity of testimony is John’s way of presenting an alternative version of the witness story. There are no witnesses testifying against Jesus. Jesus points out that his testimony is true because it is supported by valid witnesses who testify for Jesus, both himself and the Father. This is a Johannine construct. As I pointed out above, John has reversed the evidentiary issue. It is the prosecutors who need two witnesses to agree. John has substituted Johanninestyle witnesses on Jesus’ behalf for the anti-Jesus witnesses in the proposed common source. Mark doesn’t specifically raise the “two witness” rule but is implied in his version of the story. Otherwise, the priests could have accepted just one incriminating version of the statement allegedly made by Jesus and accept it as true. John’s use of the “two witness” rule suggests to me that the rule was used in the proposed common source to dismiss the witness testimony against Jesus. While the rule is implicit in Mark, I suspect he deliberately omitted reference to the rule because he didn’t want to show the priests following Jewish law to the benefit of Jesus, so he left the contradictions hanging without resolution. He wanted a negative aggressive anti-Jesus view of the priests throughout the gospel, culminating in their later efforts to bully Pilate into executing Jesus. For purposes of reconstruction I will include the reference to a two-witness rule in the proposed common source and place it right after the contradictory witness testimony. Either Jesus or, more likely, a member of the council (Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus?) would have raised the rule in order to dismiss the testimony.

The Other Questions by the High Priest After the witnesses testify in Mark, without agreeing, the High Priest asked Jesus, “Have you no answer? What is it that they testify against you?”58 Jesus remained silent.59 It is at this point that I think the two-witness rule was raised. Jesus may have remained silent but I suspect that is because a member of the council sympathetic to Jesus may have pointed out the lack of agreement and, therefore, the lack of valid testimony and that Jesus didn’t have to respond. Deliberate silence on Jesus’ part seems inconsistent with his aggressive response to questions immediately afterwards. The lack of valid testimony led to the questioning about who Jesus claims to be.

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John almost seems to have a parallel to Mark’s question prior to the main questioning of Jesus, but there are a few issues that need to be explored. After Jesus was arrested he was brought to the High Priest or a High Priest, probably Annas. The High Priest asks Jesus for an explanation of his teaching. Initially, Jesus balks. He says that he has always spoken publicly and that Annas should call witnesses to find out what Jesus taught. However, as you may recall, this passage seems to be a variation of the scene in Mark at the arrest of Jesus, where Jesus complains about the arrest procedure given that he was in the Temple day after day. Since John appears to have substituted a different response by Jesus from a different story, we have to remove the speech and see if we can compete the narrative. What, if anything, happened after the High Priest asked Jesus to explain his teaching. John’s transfer of Jesus’ complaint at the arrest scene to this location suggests that something was either deleted or moved to another location. Since John has also eliminated the witness testimony narrative, we have a sequentially floating question by the High Priest. Did it follow after the witness testimony or before? Does it coincide with Mark’s question by the High Priest after the witness testimony? For answers I go back to John 8:12–20, which, I have suggested above, acts as a substitute for the witness testimony narrative. John 8:12 starts off with a statement of John’s gospel. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” If we except that what follows is John’s version of the witness testimony story, then this explanation of the gospel makes a very good fit with the High Priest’s request that Jesus tell him about his teachings. John 8:12–20 should be considered the follow-up to the High Priest’s question. The High Priest asked for Jesus to explain his teaching, and Jesus recited his gospel. Here I need to interject a note. John inserts a statement as to what his version of the gospel is, and the evidence suggests that John’s gospel doesn’t agree with the one depicted in the proposed common source or in the synoptic gospels. So, if John built this scene around a parallel account in the proposed common source, he almost certainly replaced the original words that Jesus spoke at this point with a summary account of the Johannine gospel. While we can only speculate about what that original statement may be, I strongly suspect that Luke has preserved its essence, although the words appear in a different part of his gospel. In Luke’s account of the Hometown Rejection, Jesus says to the crowd, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 471 of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.60

In my analysis of this story in Chapter 5, I proposed that this passage was probably original to the Hometown Rejection story, so I don’t think Luke has moved it out of its original position. As such, I think it reflects the nature of the gospel in the proposed common source. Therefore, if the proposed common source had a scene in which Jesus appeared before the council and testified as to his gospel, he would have said something similar to what Luke 4:18–19 records. Since John disagreed with any gospel that based its credibility on Jesus’ healing powers, he would have replaced the original version of the gospel statement with his own. Whether we rely on Luke’s gospel or John’s as stated in John 8:12 above, neither version suggests criminal or illegal behavior on the part of Jesus and it would probably have been frustrating to the priests looking for an excuse to have Jesus put to death. They would need better evidence. So, following Jesus’ statement of the Gospel, the council would have called in the witnesses to testify about what Jesus has said. In John, following the gospel statement, John 8:13–20 continues with John’s alternative version of the witness story. Since John went to a significant editorial effort to separate the High Priest’s request for Jesus to explain his gospel, which precedes John’s variation on the witness story, I would conclude that the proposed common source included a request by the High Priest that Jesus explain his teachings and that Jesus delivered his gospel message, but that this teaching was insufficient to charge Jesus with any crimes. The council then proceeded to hear the witnesses. This leaves us with a question. In Mark, the High Priest (not the council as a whole) invites Jesus to comment on the testimony against him. In John the High Priest asks Jesus to explain his gospel prior to the witness testimony segment. I have accepted the latter as part of the proposed common source. Therefore, I have to ask if Mark’s question is a variation on John’s question that was moved out of order or if it is an additional question omitted by John? The problem is that Mark and John would each have had reasons for eliminating the other’s question. John would have had a theological motive to omit Mark’s question because it placed Jesus in the position of having to argue over whether he was telling the truth and John wouldn’t place that in his gospel. Mark wants to depict the priests as hostile to Jesus as a political rival, with no interest in hearing what Jesus’ gospel is. Additionally, as I suggested above, Jesus didn’t have to answer the question because the witness’s testimony would have been dismissed pursuant to the two-

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witness rule. So there appears to be an impasse as to whether we have two extra questions or one extra question. Since I can’t corroborate Mark’s use of the postwitness question I am not including it in the proposed common source. I have already concluded that John’s question appears to come from the proposed common source and I have included it in my final summary.

Summary In this chapter we reviewed the evidence for a proposed common source account for the appearance of Jesus before a Jewish council. The evidence above shows that John knew about the Jewish trial of Jesus but has broken the narrative into pieces and redistributed the parts into different contexts that disguises the story. He did so because he didn’t want to show the priests putting Jesus on trial for violating Jewish law and then issuing a death sentence. As I have said above, John changed the plot so that the priests decided that Jesus had to be put to death because raising Lazarus from the dead made him so popular that Rome would destroy the Temple and the Jewish nation. Political rivalry is not an issue in John. With that in mind, let’s see what we can say about the original version of the Jewish trial story in the proposed common source. I began the demonstration by showing that John 10:22–39 contained a disguised account of the council’s questioning of Jesus about his identity. Ultimately, the evidence showed that the council asked Jesus two questions: Are you the messiah? Are you the Son of God? Mark presented a single combined question; Luke two separate questions. John followed Luke’s division and his three-part response to the first question tracked Luke’s three-part response to the first question, although John replaced some of the material with Johannine overlays. As to the second question, John agreed with Mark against Luke in that John and Mark both show Jesus admitting to be the Son of God. It is not possible for John to have come up with the indicated parallel to Luke if he relied solely on Mark as a source. As to the admission to being the Son of God, the evidence suggested that John was manipulating a source text that contained that description but that it couldn’t be Luke. Either John knew written versions of both Mark and Luke, highly unlikely, or the three knew a common written source. An analysis of John 8:12–20 strongly suggested that John had a heavily disguised and redacted account of legal arguments over the credibility of witnesses. Mark, but not Luke, includes scenes in which witnesses erroneously testify to incriminating statements by Jesus but none could agree with others as to what Je-

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 473 sus said. Since John doesn’t want to show a trial based on violations of Jewish law as an excuse for executing Jesus, and John doesn’t want to show Jesus confronting hostile witnesses masking false statements about what Jesus said, John has altered the story. In his version, the witnesses are Jesus himself and his Father and their testimony is valid under Jewish law because the two witnesses agree. No witnesses testify against Jesus. That John 8:12–20 appears to be a direct follow-up to John 18:19, in which the High Priest, post-arrest, asks Jesus to explain his teaching and John 8:12 has Jesus explain his gospel, followed by the legal arguments over the validity of witness testimony, I suggested that John must be working from written source material that had the High Priest first ask about Jesus’ teaching and Jesus then explaining his gospel. While Mark has witnesses giving inconsistent testimony about a statement Jesus made earlier, having to do with tearing down and rebuilding the Temple, he does not tell us whether or not Jesus made any such statement or anything similar to it. John, however, explicitly shows that Jesus made a similar statement in front of several witnesses. Since Mark presents a specifically inaccurate version of the statement Jesus allegedly made there are some differences between the statement Jesus made in John and the testimony given by the witnesses in Mark. John’s inclusion of this statement, along with a gloss to explain it away, suggested to me that it came from the proposed common source. Luke omitted both the statement and the witness testimony, so Luke couldn’t be a source for John’s knowledge of the statement. Mark appears to have what may be a truncated version of the original statement in which Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple but not its rebuilding. It was my suggestion that the proposed common source may have been written before the destruction of the Temple and the gospels written after the destruction of the Temple, making the original statement of Jesus problematic. If he could rebuild the destroyed Temple, why didn’t he do so? Based on the analysis above, I have identified the following scenes as belonging to the proposed common source. Before Arrest

• Jesus made a statement to the effect, “destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” • The council feared that Jesus’ popularity made him a political rival and it wanted him put to death. • A member of the council argued that under the law, Jesus had a right to defend himself before any action is taken.

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• Police were sent to fetch Jesus. • Jesus had left the scene before the police arrived. After Arrest







• Jesus was brought to Annas, a chief priest. • Annas asked Jesus to explain his teachings. • Jesus explained his gospel but the explanation wasn’t sufficient to justify charges against Jesus. • Witnesses were called to testify to incriminating statements made by Jesus. • The witnesses testified to statements suggesting that Jesus would tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days • The witness statements didn’t agree with each other as to what Jesus said. • The testimony was declared invalid under Jewish law because of the lack of two corroborating witnesses. • Members of the council asked Jesus, “If you are the messiah, tell us.” • Jesus responded (following Luke), “If I tell you, you will not believe.” • Jesus added (following Luke) a remark about how he would prove his innocence by asking questions of the council but that the council would not answer the questions. • Jesus added on a secondary description of his nature (following Mark), to wit, “you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven.” • The interrogator asked, “Are you, then, the son of God?” • Jesus said, “I am.” • The interrogator accused him of blasphemy. • The council voted to put Jesus to death.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Mark 14:55. Mark 14:55. Mark 14:56. Mark 14:58. Mark 14:59. Mark 14:60. Mark 14:61. Mark 14:61. John 20:31. Mark  14:62.

The Jewish Trial of Jesus | 475 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51.

Mark 14:63–64. Luke 22:66–71. Luke  22:66. Luke  22:67. Luke  22:67. Luke 22:67–69. Luke  22:70. Luke  22:71. Luke  23:2. Matthew  26:59. Matthew  26:63. Matthew  26:64. Matthew  26:64. Matthew  26:61. John  10:24. John  10:25. John  10:30. John  10:32. John  10:33. John  10:34. John 10:35–36. John  7:32. John 7:33–39. John 7:40–43. John  7:44. John  7:45. John  7:46. John 7:47–48. John  7:48. John  7:51. John  7:52. John  8:12. John  8:13. John 8:14–16. John 8:17–18. John  8:19. John  8:19. John  8:20. Mark  14:58. Mark  13:2. John  2:19.

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52. John  5:22. 53. Matthew  26:59. 54. Mark  13:2. 55. Luke 21:5–6. 56. Baba Batra, 4a; Shemot Rabba 36:1. 57. This is the view of a large majority of New Testament scholars, although a number of scholars still adhere to the view of an earlier authorship for at least some of the gospels. 58. Mark  14:60. 59. Mark  14:61. 60. Luke 4:18–19.

10

The Lazarus Conundrum

I have argued above that the chief disruption to the narrative and chronological sequential agreement between John and Mark arises from John’s efforts to make the raising of Lazarus, the bringing back of someone from the dead, the central reason for the Jewish authorities to seek Jesus’ death. But where does this story come from? It is time now to take a closer look at the Lazarus cycle in John and how it interacts with Mark and Luke. It is widely recognized that John’s reliance on the Lazarus story is somewhat problematic from a source-critical perspective. The chief problem is that while John makes the story of Lazarus central to the Passion account, the raising of Lazarus is absent in Mark, Luke and Matthew. At the same time, Mark has a story about the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead1 and Luke has an additional story about raising from the dead the son of a widow in Nain,2 but John has no mention of either of those prior resurrections and in none of the synoptic gospels does the raising of the dead lead to the kind of problems depicted in John. Since the raising of Lazarus serves as the final focus of Jesus’ mission, it shouldn’t be surprising if John omitted any other resurrection stories he found in the proposed common source. But why would both Mark and Luke omit the Lazarus story if it were part of the proposed common source, especially if it had as prominent a role as set forth in John?

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Another problem is that neither Mark nor Matthew mention anybody named Lazarus in their gospel nor do they appear to know anything about two sisters named Martha and Mary, whom John features prominently and depicts as Lazarus’s sisters. Luke, on the other hand, has a parable about a man named Lazarus who has died3 but his parable looks nothing like John’s Lazarus story. He also has a story about two sisters named Mary and Martha in a story that seems similar to what John says about these two sisters in his account of the Anointing in Bethany, but they appear in a different context and have no apparent connection to anyone named Lazarus.4 Nevertheless, Luke’s story about sisters named Mary and Martha, together with his Lazarus parable and his widow of Nain episode, have led some to suggest a connection of some sort between Luke’s stories and John’s Lazarus cycle, although few think that either one knew a written version of the other’s gospel.5 Raymond Brown contends that John 11–12 (containing the entire Lazarus cycle) was not part of the original gospel.6 There are, he says, “peculiarities which suggest that they are an editorial addition to the original gospel outline.”7 The text, he notes, exhibits typically Johannine features and vocabulary.8 The main cause of doubt as to the legitimacy of John’s story, he argues, is precisely the importance John attaches to it when considered in light of Mark’s very extensive coverage of Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem.9 Von Wahlde says John’s Lazarus narrative “is long and there is considerable editing.”10 John describes Lazarus as someone whom Jesus loved.11 This leads some to identify Lazarus as John’s unidentified Beloved Disciple. A number of scholars have suggested that Lazarus is a symbolic character, representing all Christians who followed Jesus. In support of that latter view, Brown points out that in 3 John 5, a product of the Johannine community, the term “beloved” (philoi in Greek) designates the Christian community and that John uses the singular form “philos” in connection with Lazarus. The Lazarus cycle weaves its way through John 11–12. John 11 encompasses the following events: the raising of Lazarus (11:1–44), the meeting of the Jewish authorities that authorized the death of Jesus (11:45–54), a brief transitional notice about the coming Passover (11:55–56), and a directive by the authorities that any Jesus sightings be reported so that he can be arrested (11:57) The Lazarus cycle continues immediately thereafter in John 12, with the risen Lazarus making an appearance in the Anointing at Bethany scene (12:1–8) and the council issuing an arrest order for Lazarus (12:9–10). Lazarus then disappears from John’s gospel, never mentioned by name again. The balance of John 12 is taken up with John’s

The Lazarus Conundrum | 479 expansive account of the Triumphal Entry, the announcement that Jesus went into hiding, and some Johannine rhetoric about the teachings of Jesus. In this chapter I am going to look at John’s Lazarus cycle, Luke’s similar stories, and what I think are unrecognized connections in Mark. I will argue that John adapted the Lazarus story from several incidents originally relating to lepers and that the resurrection of Lazarus was a Johannine creation.

The Raising of Lazarus in John 11:1–44 The Lazarus cycle begins with a notice. “Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.”12 This is our first mention of Lazarus. Immediately after we are told that this Mary is the brother of Lazarus and was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume,13 but this anointing in Bethany doesn’t occur until later in the narrative. This suggests something of a sequential disorder in the narrative and the verse is widely thought to be a later addition to the gospel for the purpose of linking this Mary to the Mary in the anointing scene.14 Following the identification of Mary, we are told the sisters sent a message to Jesus, telling him, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”15 This message strikes me as somewhat inconsistent with the opening verse, in which Lazarus is identified in somewhat of an innocuous manner with no apparent relationship to Jesus. This suggests that this notice about the one whom Jesus loved may be an insertion into the original source story. In any event, Lazarus is still alive at the time the message is sent and this opening sets the stage for what follows. The start of this story is somewhat similar to the opening of John’s story about the royal official’s son who was also near death. “Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum.”16 In both instances we are told that Jesus is in one location and that an individual in a named village in a different location was ill. In both stories the ill person is near death and a request is made that Jesus come to the ill person’s aid. In the case of the royal official’s son, Jesus is able to save the child from a distance, without having to leave from where he was. In the case of Lazarus, however, the story takes a bizarre turn. Although Jesus has previously demonstrated his ability to save someone from death without having to be present at the scene, here Jesus took no action and chose to dawdle for a couple of days.17 Subsequently, Jesus told the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”18 The disciples understood this to mean that the fever had broken and that Lazarus was getting better. Jesus clarified his meaning. “Lazarus is dead. For your sake

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I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”19 There can be no doubt that, according to John’s narrative, Jesus has allowed Lazarus to die so that Jesus can later demonstrate his power over life and death. This conversation about death and sleep brings to mind Mark’s account of the raising of Jairus’s daughter from the dead.20 In Mark’s story, Jairus’s daughter was near death, ill with a fever. On his way to the child someone told Jairus that the child died but Jesus responded, “The child is not dead but sleeping.”21 Mark’s usage introduces a potential ambiguity. Did Jesus heal a fever or did he raise the child from the dead as the community believed? As you may recall, I discussed this story in detail in Chapter 6 and argued that John’s account of the healing of a fever in the royal official’s son had been adapted from Mark’s story of Jairus’ daughter as a partial substitute for Mark’s story of eliminating the fever in Peter’s mother-in-law through the use of an exorcism. John’s variation also uses ambiguity as to whether the royal official’s child was simply healed of a fever or raised from the dead. John uses the phrase “your son will live.”22 As I pointed out in the earlier discussion, Brown says that the expression “will live” is ambiguous and could mean either that an illness was cured or that a person was raised from the dead. The ambiguity arises from the fact that the Semitic language didn’t have a word for “recover” and that the phrase could mean, and had been used elsewhere, in both senses.23 Although John doesn’t use the ambiguous term “sleep” in his account of the royal official’s son—he uses a different ambiguity, “will live”—he does use Mark’s ambiguous sleep terminology in his account of the raising Lazarus. The disciples, we are told, understood it as ordinary sleep. But this time, John says Jesus used the term specifically to mean “dead.” John wants the reader to be sure that Jesus has raised a dead person to life. This may indicate that John, aided by ambiguity, not only borrowed part of Mark’s story of the raising of a dead child for the story of the royal official’s son, but also separated out the “sleep” imagery for his own story about raising Lazarus from the dead. According to John, Jesus arrived at Bethany four days after Lazarus had been placed in a tomb.24 When Martha learned that Jesus had come to town, she went out to meet him and tell him that if he had come earlier Lazarus wouldn’t have died. But, she added, she has faith in Jesus’ ability to bring him back.25 Note the emphasis here on Martha’s faith in the ability of Jesus to bring the dead back to life despite the lack of any prior demonstration of this power in John’s gospel. Per John, arousing such faith is the purpose of Jesus’ mission and the expression of such faith encourages Jesus to use his miraculous powers on behalf of the faithful.

The Lazarus Conundrum | 481 Jesus assured her that Lazarus would rise.26 Martha thought Jesus was talking about resurrection “on the last day”27 but Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”28 Martha re-confirmed her faith and called him “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”29 (Note John’s description of Jesus as both the Son of God and the messiah, the issue that was raised in the trial of Jesus by the Jewish authorities.) This is followed by a scene in which Mary, Martha’s sister, came to see Jesus and she, too, said that if he had come earlier Lazarus wouldn’t have died.30 In this encounter there is no discussion of her faith in Jesus to bring Lazarus back. Mary was in tears and, moved by her emotions, Jesus wept and asked where Lazarus was buried.31 Some in the crowd who saw this display wondered, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man [as related in John 9] have kept this man from dying?”32 At the tomb, Jesus directed that the stone covering be moved.33 When done, he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!”34 Lazarus emerged, “his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth [emphasis added].”35 Jesus said, “unbind him, and let him go.”36 With Jesus’ instruction to remove the bindings, the story ends abruptly. We learn nothing about how Martha and Mary reacted to the emergence of Lazarus but we are told that many of the witnesses became believers and other observers went to the Jewish authorities and told them what happened.37 This led to the meeting of the council that laid plans to put Jesus to death. John’s positioning of the story leaves the impression that the council acted because of the popularity due to raising Lazarus. But as I observed in Chapter 8, there is no reference to the Lazarus incident in the council’s deliberations, a rather odd omission. This probably explains why a little later on, after the anointing at Bethany scene, the council also decided to put Lazarus to death, “since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.”38 This later explanation for Lazarus’ death sentence betrays John’s knowledge of the original reason for why the Jewish authorities wanted to put Jesus to death. It was not because of concerns about Rome but fear that the Jews “were deserting” the authorities for Jesus.

Observations on John’s Story In describing the appearance of Lazarus, I emphasized certain parts of the description, to wit, “strips of cloth” and “face wrapped.” The underlying Greek word be-

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hind “strips of cloth,” keiria, is considered very rare in Greek usage and of uncertain meaning.39 Von Wahlde says that in Proverbs 7:16 it implies some sort of bed clothing40 and Brown suggests we are to think of John’s usage as implying some sort of bandaging.41 The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon gives similar meanings.42 With that in mind, let me now turn to some of the instructions regarding a leper in Leviticus 13:45. “The person who has the leprous disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head be disheveled; and he shall cover his upper lip [emphasis added].” This matches almost exactly the appearance of Lazarus in John’s story. Lazarus appears wrapped in strips of clothing and has a cloth wrapped on his face. This suggests some disguised literary connection between Lazarus and leprosy. Leviticus 13:46 follows up with some additional information about rules for lepers. They “shall live alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp.” If John has converted a leper healing into a resurrection from death, then Lazarus’ bandaged presence in the cave would not be due to his death but because he is a leper who must live in isolation from the community. These scriptural references place some additional focus on John’s Anointing in Bethany scene, which had close parallels to Mark’s version of the story. In Mark, the house belonged to Simon the Leper and that character is missing from John’s story (see below). In John’s story, though, Lazarus appears to be a substitute for Simon, with any reference to leprosy being dropped. Brown makes some additional observations about John’s Lazarus story. He refers us back to John 5:28–29, a portion of the John 5 Sabbath violation story. Do not be astonished at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and will come out—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation. [emphasis added]43

Here Jesus says there will be a time when there will be a call to come out of the grave and those who have done good (i.e., accepted Jesus as the source of eternal life) will receive “resurrection of life.” (Note for later when we discuss the parable of Lazarus in Luke that the evil are subject to condemnation.) In John’s Lazarus story, Jesus describes himself as the “resurrection of life” and he calls Lazarus to come out of the grave. Brown says that the Lazarus story acts out the promise made in John 5:28–29.44 He says that the parallels between John 5 and John 11 are so close that some have suggested that John 5 was the original locus of the Lazarus story.45

The Lazarus Conundrum | 483 This last suggestion is particularly intriguing. John 5 incorporates a sequence of stories beginning with the healing of the paralytic on the mat, which story has its parallel in Mark 2:1–12. That story in Mark takes place immediately after Mark’s account of healing a leper.46 In that incident, after Jesus cured the leper, Jesus “could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country.47 Similarly, as a result of raising/curing Lazarus, Jesus “no longer walked about openly among the Jews.”48 That John’s Lazarus story has roots in John 5 creates a close sequential relationship to the healing of a leper in Mark.

Luke’s Lazarus Parable (Luke 16:19–31) Although Luke does not have a story about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, he does have a parable about a Lazarus dying and going to heaven. Luke’s parable relates the story of a poor man named Lazarus and a rich (unnamed) man, and what happens to them after they die. It has no direct parallel in the other gospels but because it deals with a dead man named Lazarus there has been substantial speculation as to whether there is any literary connection between Luke’s Lazarus and John’s. A number of scholars accept that Luke’s story may have influenced John but there is no widespread agreement that this is the case, and even among those scholars few would accept that John knew a written version of Luke. One issue we have to explore is whether this parable appeared in the proposed common source. Brown accepts that there may be a connection between the two stories but he suggests that the influence may have been in the other direction, with Luke somehow being familiar with John’s Lazarus story but not necessarily with a written version of John.49 In that regard he sees a potential literary seam in Luke’s parable such that the last part may have been tacked on to an already existing shorter version of Luke’s episode.50 In this analysis I will divide Luke’s parable into three parts, which I will call the Set-up (16:19–22), the Lesson (16:23–26), and the Aftermath (16:27–31). My separation of the last two parts coincides with where Brown suggests the literary break may fall. Brown says the parable would be complete if it ended at 16:26.51 In the Set-up, we learn that there was a poor man named Lazarus and a rich man, who lived a wealthy luxurious lifestyle; Lazarus, a down on his luck poor man covered with sores stayed by the rich man’s gate. “Even the dogs would come and lick his sores.”52 While the rich man feasted regularly on the finest food, Laz-

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arus barely survived on the crumbs that fell from the man’s table. Both men died. Angels carried Lazarus “to be with Abraham,” i.e., in heaven, and the rich man was buried.53 By itself, the break point seems to be a good place to end. The poor man who suffered was raised from the dead and went to heaven and the rich man who failed to help him out remained dead in his grave. The lesson should be obvious. But the story continues. The Lesson portion begins with “In Hades,” which is followed by a parenthetical indication that this is “where [the rich man] was being tormented.”54 This insert has the sense of “Oh, by the way, I should have mentioned that the rich guy went to hell.” This suggests a literary seam between the death notices in the Setup and the Hades notice in the Lesson portion. The second part of the story may have been a later attachment to the Set-up portion. This Lesson portion expands on the Set-up. The Set-up merely said that the rich man died and was buried but did not go to heaven. The Lesson section says that not only didn’t he go to heaven, he went to hell. This is, presumably, an even greater punishment than just moldering unconscious in a grave. From his perch in hell, the rich man looks up and sees Abraham, with Lazarus at his side. The rich man begs Abraham for mercy and asks that he send Lazarus down to him with a drop of cool water because he is so parched from the flames. We have here a role reversal; in life, Lazarus wanted sustenance from the rich man and in death the rich man wanted sustenance from Lazarus. Abraham tells the rich man, “Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”55 While the rich man voluntarily chose not to aid Lazarus in life, Lazarus, because of his location, can’t aid the rich man in death even if he wanted to. So ends the Lesson portion. If you do not help the poor while you are alive then not only don’t you go to heaven, but you will suffer in hell, and there is no way to get redemption. This is the end point where Brown suggested that a literary seam may exist. Certainly the lesson of the parable is clear. The first part of the parable provides one lesson. The second part of the parable treats that lesson as inadequate and imposes a new lesson on the narrative. This brings us to the third portion, the Aftermath. Recognizing his wretched fate, the rich man asks that Abraham send Lazarus to the rich man’s home, where he has five brothers, and have Lazarus warn them

The Lazarus Conundrum | 485 about what they should do. Abraham says that the brothers should take their guidance from “Moses and the prophets.”56 The rich man says that if someone goes to them from the dead they will repent. But Abraham responds, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”57 On this note the parable ends. It is in this last stage of the parable that Brown sees a parallel between John and Luke. In the parable, the rich man requests that Lazarus come back from the dead and walk among the living. Brown sees this as a parallel to Jesus calling Lazarus to come out of his tomb and walk among the living.58

Observations on Luke’s Lazarus Parable The first thing we need to note is that if this parable appeared in the proposed common source, John would have rejected its main story line. Luke’s message is that if you treat the poor well you will be granted eternal life. John’s message is that the only way to achieve eternal life is to accept that Jesus was the one sent by God to make eternal life possible. If John was influenced by and/or inclined to include some variant of this parable in his own gospel he would have to have stripped out almost every part of the story involving the theme of how to get to heaven and either omit them or reframe them. That said, can we find any stripped-down traces of Luke’s story in John’s gospel? We can. I’ll begin by recalling Browns reference to John 5:28–29, which, he suggests, foreshadows the story of Lazarus. In that passage, those who have done good (“to the resurrection,” i.e., accepted the Johannine gospel) will receive “the resurrection of life”, as Lazarus did in the parable, and those who do evil (to the Johannine gospel) receive “the resurrection of condemnation.”59 This is precisely what happened in the middle portion of Luke’s parable. The good poor man went to heaven and the rich man who refused to help the poor man went to hell. John, in his typical fashion, repositioned the offensive elements and placed them in a new context. In his arrangement, eternal life isn’t based on whether the rich helped the poor, but on whether you accepted the words of Jesus. This is made clear in a later passage in the same John 5 speech that I suggest parallels the third portion of Luke’s parable. At the conclusion of that speech, Jesus says, Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father; your accuser is Moses, on whom you have set your hope. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe what he wrote, how will you believe what I say? [emphasis added]60

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Compare this to the Aftermath portion of Luke’s parable. Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’61

These are nearly identical arguments. John, changing contexts, has substituted Jesus for Abraham, and made the argument one between Jesus and the Jews rather than a symbolic argument between Abraham and the rich man. Both address identical ideas. Moses has told you what you need to know in order to obtain eternal life; if you do not believe what Moses said, how can you be convinced by any other evidence? However, John and Luke disagree as to what Moses directed. Luke implies that Moses told us to aid the poor in order to get into heaven and that if you don’t do what Moses told you, a resurrection of the dead won’t convince you to do what he tells you; John implies that Moses told us to believe in Jesus as the way into heaven and if you don’t believe Moses, you won’t believe in the words of Jesus. John has altered the parable’s message about how to get into heaven by substituting his own theology of how to get into heaven for that in the proposed common source. So, in this one John 5 speech we have connections to John’s later account of calling Lazarus from the tomb, as well as parallels to all of the essential teachings (from John’s perspective) in Luke’s parable. There is another important part of the puzzle in Luke’s parable that I need to mention. Luke says that Lazarus was covered in sores. Some scholars accept that Luke’s Lazarus suffered from leprosy.62 Subsequent traditions also accept that Luke’s Lazarus was a leper.63 In the medieval period, Leper houses were known as Lazaries.64 It is not inconceivable that if John knew a variation of Luke’s parable he would have identified the disease with leprosy.

Mark and Lazarus We have seen above that a portion of Jesus’ final speech in John 5 foreshadows the raising of Lazarus. We have also seen that there appear to be connections between parts of that same John 5 speech and Luke’s parable of Lazarus. We have already demonstrated in Chapter 3 that John 5 is an amalgam of a three-story sequence from Mark, beginning with the curing of the paralytic on a mat. In Mark, the story about the paralytic follows immediately after the story in which Jesus heals a

The Lazarus Conundrum | 487 leper and can no longer go about openly. In Chapter 6 we saw that John omitted the leprosy story and changed the explanation for why Jesus could no longer go about openly. He said that it was due to the fear of the authorities over the success of his mission. That explanation is essentially the original reason why the authorities wanted to put Jesus to death, which explanation John replaced with the story of Lazarus. John appears to have switched places between Mark’s original leprosy story that preceded the curing of the paralytic on the mat with Mark’s original explanation for why the authorities wanted to put Jesus to death, which came after the Temple confrontations. In addition Mark has a story about raising the daughter of Jairus from the dead. We looked at that story in Chapter 6 and saw that John adapted part of the story as a substitute for the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law through an exorcism. Mark used ambiguous language to describe whether the child was just ill or raised from the dead. The townspeople thought she was dead.65 But Jesus said, “The child is not dead but sleeping.”66 Mark and John each have only one story about raising someone from the dead. Both use the same ambiguous “sleep” terminology to describe the victim’s state. In the Lazarus story. Jesus initially said that “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep.”67 The disciples understood this to mean that he was sleeping in a normal way. Jesus then advised them Lazarus was dead.68 While Mark was comfortable with the ambiguity, he didn’t want too much publicity for Jesus’ power, John wanted no ambiguity about Jesus’ ability to bring the dead back to life in a public environment. John appears to have bifurcated Mark’s story about raising the dead child to life. He has taken the fever imagery and the cure and moved it into his account of the royal official’s son, and used that story as a substitute for the original story about Peter’s mother-in-law. He has taken Mark’s ambiguous sleep-death imagery and the raising of the dead and transferred it into his Lazarus story. Given the suggestion that John has adapted versions of Mark’s accounts of the healing of a leper and the raising of Jairus’ daughter from the dead for his story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead, let me compare both of Mark’s stories with the Lazarus account.

Lazarus and Mark’s Healing of the Leper (1:40–45) Mark begins the story of the leper with him approaching Jesus and asking to be made clean. In John, Lazarus is initially portrayed as dead or dying so the request

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for a cure comes not from Lazarus but from his sisters, who send a message to Jesus saying, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.”69 John’s story goes through several events before we get to the healing stage. In Mark, Jesus takes pity on the leper, declares him clean, and the leprosy leaves. In John, towards the end of the narrative, Jesus commands Lazarus to come out of the tomb/cave and he comes out risen. In Mark, however, Jesus tells the leper to say nothing. In John, the raising of Lazarus is the all-important focus of the mission and Jesus says before he even cures Lazarus, “For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe.”70 In Mark, the now-clean leper disregards Jesus’ advice and goes around proclaiming what Jesus has done for him. In John, many witnesses saw what happened and some reported it to the officials.71 In Mark, when the officials learned what Jesus did with the leper, “Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country.”72 In John, when the authorities learned what Jesus did with Lazarus, “Jesus therefore no longer walked about openly among the Jews, but went from there to a town called Ephraim in the region near the wilderness; and he remained there with the disciples.”73 John has adopted the frame of Mark’s story. A leper has been healed and as a result Jesus could no longer go about the country. But John has changed the man healed from a leper to a corpse. Within John’s frame, we have a number of details that seem to draw on Mark’s account of the raising of Jairus’s daughter

Lazarus and Mark’s Account of the Raising of Jairus’s Daughter (5:22–24, 35–43) Mark’s account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter takes the form of a Markan sandwich, two parts of a story wrapped around another. In this case, Mark begins with the story of Jairus’s daughter, breaks for a story about a hemorrhaging woman, and then returns to the story of the child. Mark’s account begins with a notice that Jairus, a leader of the local synagogue, had a sick daughter. Jairus asked Jesus, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.”74 In John, Lazarus’s sisters send a message to Jesus telling him that the one he loves is ill.75 John doesn’t use the same words but his reaction echoes the same message. “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”76 John is playing a theological word game. What he is actually saying in his typically cryptic manner, as the story later

The Lazarus Conundrum | 489 makes clear, is that while Lazarus is at the point of death, and will die a natural death, I will raise him to life again so that all will know God’s glory. Mark interrupts the story after the request for help for the other story about the ill woman and then returns to Jairus’s story. Some of Jairus’s friends announce that the daughter has died.77 In John, Jesus deliberately delays his journey to Lazarus so that Lazarus will die and then be brought back to life. Martha says to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”78 In Mark, when Jesus hears the message about the daughter, he says, “Do not fear, only believe.”79 In John, when Martha tells Jesus that Lazarus is dead, Jesus delivers a theological message to her and then says, “Do you believe this.”80 She says that she does.81 In Mark, Jesus next announces that “The child is not dead but sleeping.”82 In John, after getting the message from the sisters, Jesus says to the disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him.”83 The disciples misunderstood the use of “sleep”, thinking it a positive sign that Lazarus was getting better, but Jesus explains, “Lazarus is dead.”84 Both use the image of the dead patient being asleep and to be awakened. In Mark, Jesus goes to the child and says, “Little girl, get up!”85 In John Jesus goes to Lazarus’ tomb and shouts, “Lazarus, come out!”86 Since Lazarus, assuming he was dead, would have been stretched out on a bier of some sort, he paralleled the girl’s behavior by getting up out of a bed and walking. Mark ends with an instruction that the girl should be given something to 87 eat. John ends the story with Lazarus coming out of the tomb, but the next time we meet Lazarus he is seated for a meal in the house at Bethany, where the anointing scene takes place. Coincidence?

Observations John appears to have created his version of a Markan sandwich. He has taken a variation of Mark’s story about healing a leper and used it to frame a variation of Mark’s account of raising the daughter of Jairus. But in John’s version, the bread and filling provide a single continuous narrative. In my analysis of John’s leper imagery I noted the presence of the rags and the face covering and the presence of Lazarus in a cave. Mark’s leper story omits those details. While the bandages and cave could be associated with a burial, the face cloth strongly suggests leper imagery. I suspect, therefore, that the leper in Mark’s story was in the vicinity of a cave, as would be expected, and appeared in rags and a face covering, per the Leviticus instructions, and Mark simply omitted

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these details. Mark has a practice of frequently shortening stories by leaving out details. I will add those details, bandage, face covering, and cave, to the proposed common source.

Did Mark Know the Parable of Lazarus? The evidence suggests that John’s Lazarus cycle combines elements of Mark’s story about the healing of a leper, Mark’s story of the raising of Jairus’s daughter, and Luke’s parable of the poor leprous Lazarus rising to heaven. But Mark does not include Luke’s Lazarus parable in his own gospel. The question we face is whether the parable was in the proposed common source and if so, why did Mark remove it? It is my view that the parable was in the proposed common source and that Mark knew it but had some objections. As a result he heavily redacted it. I think Mark was concerned (as was John) that the parable down-played Jesus’ role in bringing about eternal life. The star of the parable is really Abraham. The story adds nothing to the role of Jesus. The parable indicates that one can go to heaven without having any faith in Jesus as the son of God. While Mark designed his gospel so that no one knew who Jesus was while Jesus was still living, he wanted acceptance of Jesus as the son of God as the means of obtaining eternal life. In essence, the Lazarus parable teaches that the rich should help the poor in order to get into heaven. Although Mark doesn’t include the Lazarus parable in his gospel, he does in fact have a story with a similar theme, Mark 10:17–31, which tells of an encounter between Jesus and a rich man. Initially, the rich man approaches Jesus, kneels before him, and asks what he can do to obtain eternal life. Jesus starts off by reciting portions of the Ten Commandments and tells the man that he must do these things, i.e., follow the Law of Moses. The man replied that he had done all these things since he was a youth. Jesus was most impressed with him and “loved him.”88 (We may have here an echo of Lazarus as the one whom Jesus loved.) He looked at the man and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me [emphasis added].”89 Note here that Jesus invited the rich man to become one of his disciples. When the man heard this, “he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions.”90 This is the only instance in any of the gospels where Jesus invited someone to become one of his disciples and was turned down. The balance of the story has Jesus explain how difficult it will be for a rich man to

The Lazarus Conundrum | 491 get into heaven—“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”91—and how much more treasure people will receive, including eternal life, if they follow Jesus because of the good news. Mark’s story in large part is a concretization of the Set-up portion of Luke’s parable. The key message is that for a rich man to get into heaven he must share his wealth with the poor. Mark’s rich man will not go to heaven because he rejected that principle. While Mark omits the dialogue from hell in the Lesson portion of the parable, he replaces it with a parallel teaching. The poor who follow Jesus will receive the good things in the afterlife. The rich who don’t follow Jesus will receive no benefits in the afterlife. Mark also parallels the Aftermath portion of the parable by making clear that one has to listen to Moses (i.e., follow the Ten Commandments) in order to reach heaven. But he adds that one must also aid the poor. This is broadly the same basic story as Luke’s parable about Lazarus. For a rich man to get into heaven, he must do what Moses commands and also aid the poor. The relationship between this story and Luke’s parable seems quite close. At the same time, Luke also includes this story from Mark in his own gospel (although he leaves out the line that Jesus loved the rich man and invited him to become one of his disciples).92 I think what happened here is that Mark redacted the parable to produce the story of the rich man whom Jesus loved and removed the parable form known to Luke. The latter didn’t recognize Mark’s variation as a repeat of the parable but did whole-heartedly approved of the message. Consequently he added Mark’s “new” story to his gospel.

Sequential Placement If we accept that Mark knew the Parable of Lazarus through the proposed common source, where would it fit in the narrative sequence? Luke buries the Lazarus episode towards the end of a very lengthy collection of parables many of which are not present in Mark. Very shortly after the collection ends, Luke has his version of Mark’s story of the rich man. Mark and John, however, appear to have some narrative connection for the placement of the Lazarus parable, on the assumption that each has modified it. John places the raising of Lazarus story immediately after he says Jesus left Jerusalem following his last visit and went to the area of the Jordan. As we saw in Chapter 7, Mark has a parallel visit to the Jordan. In both cases, Jesus never goes back to Galilee. Mark places his story of the rich man in very close narra-

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tive proximity to the arrival at the Jordan. In between the two events, Mark has two incidents that John would have found offensive and would have omitted or altered. In the first incident Mark describes a group of Pharisees who asked Jesus whether it was lawful to allow a man to divorce his wife.93 Initially, Jesus wanted to know what they thought Moses taught. The Pharisees replied that he allowed a man to issue a certificate of divorce. Jesus responded that Moses gave that law because “of your hardness of heart”94 and then said that God opposes divorce and that anyone who divorced a spouse and remarried had committed adultery. Matthew added that divorce was allowed “for unchastity.”95 This story pits Jesus against Moses as to the law. John would have opposed that because he teaches that Moses wrote about Jesus and he wouldn’t want to undercut Moses’ authority. Additionally, John probably would have been opposed to Jesus involving himself in interpreting the law since John’s Jesus is outside the law and can offer eternal life to anyone who accepts his gospel, even if they violate the law. The second incident in Mark’s narrative sequence involves a teaching by Jesus with regard to children.96 “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”97 This clearly contradicts John’s gospel and there is no way he would include such a message in his gospel. If we drop these two stories from Mark’s narrative, Mark has a sequence of a journey to the Jordan followed by the story of the rich man. Since I treat Mark’s story of the rich man as a parallel to Luke’s Lazarus parable, we have a sequence in both Mark and John in which Jesus goes to the Jordan and then we have both gospels introducing respective takes on the Lazarus story. Therefore, I will place Luke’s parable of Lazarus alongside Mark’s story of the rich man, even though Luke has a separate version of Mark’s rich man story and places the Lazarus parable in a different sequence of events.

The Anointing at Bethany In Chapter 8 we have already taken a detailed look at the story of the Anointing at Bethany and I am not going to review in detail here the main agreements. By way of summation, Mark and John agreed closely on many details and Luke had a radically different version of the story that was out of sequential and chronological order. Here I want to focus on some important disagreements between Mark and John. The two areas I want to review are the cast of characters and the serving of a meal.

The Lazarus Conundrum | 493 According to Mark, the house in question belonged to Simon the Leper. Other than Jesus that is the only name mentioned by Mark in the course of the story. John, however, has no mention of Simon the Leper, but he does name several other people. Among those named as present are Lazarus, his sisters Mary and Martha, and Judas, who complains about the waste of money on expensive oil that could be better used for the poor. The fact that Lazarus appears in a house identified by Mark as the house of Simon the Leper, and John omits that notice, suggests a Johannine cover-up of Lazarus’s true illness. John never actually says who the house belonged to. He has previously said that Lazarus, Mary and Martha live in Bethany and that they are all present in the house but he doesn’t say that they were the hosts.98 On the other hand, Martha serves the guests, suggesting that she may be one of the hosts and that she may live there. But she could also just be helping out, as would have been common. In John’s story, a meal is being served. In Luke’s version there are indications that a meal was being served to the guests.99 In Mark, no meal is being served. I explore this issue because Luke has a separate story about two sisters named Mary and Martha and there are several similarities between the events in that story and the events in John’s story, suggesting a possible link between Luke’s Mary and Martha story and John’s Anointing in Bethany scene. According to Luke’s separate story about the two sisters, Jesus “entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.”100 Martha had a sister named Mary.101 There is no Lazarus in this story. According to Luke, Mary sat by Jesus’ feet and listened to him but Martha was too busy with the household chores to participate.102 So she complained to Jesus. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.”103 Jesus responded, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”104 On that note Luke’s story ends. Let’s look at the basic elements of Luke’s story.

• • • • •

Martha and Mary lived in an unidentified village. Martha did the household work. Mary sat devotedly at Jesus’ feet. Martha complained about the hardships caused by Mary sitting at Jesus’ feet. Jesus told Martha she was wrong to criticize Mary because Mary had done a better thing than Martha.

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Compare this to John’s Anointing in Bethany scene. Martha serves a meal (a common household chore) and Mary is at Jesus’ feet. A complaint is made about Mary’s behavior causing hardships (by depriving the poor of financial aid) and Jesus defends Mary as doing a good thing. A key difference is that in Luke, Martha complained about the work load and in John Judas complained about wasting money that could help the poor. Since Luke’s story, as presented, isn’t about the anointing scene, we shouldn’t expect the complaint to be the same. In John’s story, Lazarus does nothing more than sit at the table.105 He plays no role in what goes on. This is quite odd. Lazarus has allegedly just been raised from the dead and here he is sitting at the table and no one says a word about his resurrection. Shouldn’t there be an iota of recognition of this fact, perhaps a teaching moment about what happened? It is the highlight of Jesus’ Johannine mission. The presence of Lazarus as a substitute for the leprous Simon may be due to the fact that his presence may reflect the leprous Lazarus of Luke’s parable. Bear in mind that John has concretized the parable into an historical fact about events happening on earth. In the parable, Lazarus is denied a place at the rich man’s table but receives his reward in the afterlife. John has moved the reward from heaven to earth. Now Lazarus is rewarded after death by sitting at a rich man’s table for dinner. (The anointing scene, as evidenced by the value of the nard and the complaints about its cost make clear that the household is wealthy.) John may be exercising a fine touch of irony here. We also still have no direct evidence for how Mary and Martha reacted to Lazarus coming out of the tomb. Prior to the raising of her brother Martha had already identified Jesus as the messiah, the son of God. There is no such reverence shown in the anointing scene. Neither makes any remark expressing any interest in what happened earlier. This strongly suggests that the connection between the anointing scene and the raising of Lazarus is a Johannine creation. More significantly, I think the connection between the sisters Mary and Martha and a brother named Lazarus is also a Johannine creation. If, as some scholars suggest, Lazarus is a symbolic stand-in for the Christian community then the reputation of Mary and Martha as devoted followers of Jesus may be responsible for identifying them as sisters of Lazarus. John’s anointing story appears to combine elements of Luke’s Mary/Martha story with the anointing scene described in Mark. This raises questions. Was there a Mary/Martha meal scene in the proposed common source? If so, was it a separate scene from the anointing as in Luke or was it part of the anointing scene as in John? If so, why did Mark omit it? Let’s explore further.

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The Mary/Martha Problem Many scholars have seen the similarities between Luke’s Mary/Martha story and John’s anointing at Bethany scene as having enough common features to suggest some sort of literary connection, although there is no strong agreement as to what the connection might be. The presence of such similarities in both Luke and John suggests that the elements of the story were in the proposed common source. This in turn suggests that Mark omitted it. But did the Mary-Martha elements belong to an independent story as presented in Luke or were they part of the anointing scene as in John? The first problem we face is that Luke’s anointing scene looks nothing like that in Mark and John, the latter two having several obvious similarities. Luke has radically reworked the core story reflected in Mark and John. I suspect that this may be due to the fact that the anointing scene may have been highly controversial in Christian circles. There are two reasons for this possibility. First, the anointing scene depicts callousness on the part of Jesus in reaction to the accusation that the money for the nard could have gone to feeding the poor. “For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.”106 Second, the anointing could have been interpreted as an anointing of a king, which would have justified Pilate’s putting Jesus to death. Luke has eliminated both features from his version of the anointing scene while adding in that the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet was a sinner who accepted Jesus into her life. This reworking may have induced Luke to remove the devoted sisters, Mary and Martha, from the embarrassing setting and putting them in a different context. In this regard, I assume that Mary and Martha may have had some reputation in Christian circles as early devotees of Jesus while he was still alive. If Mary and Martha were part of the anointing scene, then Mark may also have been concerned that Mary and Martha shouldn’t appear to be rich people who ignored the needs of the poor in order to buy expensive ointment for Jesus. So Mark could have had an incentive to drop Martha and Mary from the story. Even if the story was independent of the anointing scene, Mark may have been concerned that Mary’s devotional behavior towards Jesus skated to close to a revelation of who Jesus was and that may have been inconsistent with Mark’s theological agenda. Given these various potential motives and problems, we have no direct corroboration for any clear resolution of how the Mary/Martha story played out.

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John integrates the story of Mary and Martha with the story of the anointing at Bethany. Luke presents them as separate events. But Luke has moved the anointing story way out of sequence and radically altered the details. I accept that elements of the Mary-Martha story appeared in the proposed common source and that Mark omitted them. But we have no way to resolve the disagreement between John and Luke and we don’t know if Luke’s setting for the Mary-Martha story is any more reliable than his setting for the anointing story. This makes it difficult to know how to position the Mary-Martha story in the sequential reconstruction. For the time being, for simplicity, I will follow John’s combined narrative structure with the caveat that we don’t really know if the Mary-Martha story was separate from or integrated into the anointing story. The more important development is that the elements of the Mary-Martha story appear to have been in the proposed common source and Mark appears to have omitted them for some reason.

Summary One of John’s editorial practices, as we have seen in earlier chapters on several occasions, is to take similar elements from multiple stories and combine them into a new single narrative that substitutes his own theological twist. The most obvious example was the way in which he combined three separate stories about Jesus’ authority to judge into a single narrative in John 5 that stood for the principle that Jesus had been given all authority to judge on all matters. He also arranges to move offensive story parts into other less offensive contexts. Those practices appear to stand behind the story of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. John’s Lazarus story appears to combine elements of Mark’s story about the healing of a leper and the problems it caused Jesus, elements of Luke’s parable about a leprous Lazarus being rewarded with life after death, and elements of Mark’s story about raising Jairus’s daughter from the dead. The Lazarus parable, combining leprosy and life after death, serves as a fulcrum for balancing the story of healing a leper with the raising a child from the dead. John’s description of Lazarus as he came out of the tomb closely matches the rules governing leprosy in Leviticus 13:45–46. The leper must wear torn clothing (torn strips of cloth in John), wear a covering over his upper lip (a cloth over the face in John) and live in isolation from the community (a cave in John). John’s description clearly echoes the teaching in Leviticus but he has dropped the reference to leprosy. Mark doesn’t provide a leper’s description in his account of

The Lazarus Conundrum | 497 Jesus healing a leper but he tends to shorten stories and eliminate unnecessary or problematic details. I suspect, therefore, that John’s description of Lazarus coming out of the tomb reflects what was in the proposed common source regarding the appearance of the leper healed by Jesus. Subsequently Lazarus appears in a home described in Mark as belonging to Simon the Leper. John has transformed the parable from a symbolic teaching to a concretized event in which Lazarus goes not to heaven but walks on earth. His presence in the Bethany house described in Mark appears to be John’s fusion of Luke’s leprous Lazarus and Mark’s Simon the leper, the former now getting a postresurrection reward, eating at the table of the rich man. To complete the leprosy connection, John has placed into John 5 elements of Luke’s parable and a foreshadowing of John’s raising of Lazarus scene. Chronologically, the main events in John 5 take place immediately after Mark’s story about the healing of a leper. So the John 5 structure can be extended back to include Mark’s leprosy story with only a slight rearranging of the order of events. John’s placement of the Lazarus/leper elements at the end of John 5 instead of the beginning (where it would better parallel Mark’s leper story) may be due to the fact that the Lazarus story signifies the final proof that Jesus has been granted all authority, the primary theme of John 5. While John made use of the Lazarus parable he had significant theological problems with its content. John’s theology held that the only way to obtain eternal life was through faith in Jesus as the one sent by God to bring eternal life. But Luke’s parable said that all you need to do to get to heaven is follow the Law of Moses and help the poor. No faith in Jesus needed. To deal with this John made several changes to the parable structure. First he transformed it from a parable to an historical happening, replacing Abraham with Jesus. Then he eliminated the unnecessary portion (from John’s perspective) about the poor man and the rich man. In place of the teaching about going to heaven by following the teaching of Moses and aiding the poor, he said that Moses wrote about Jesus and in order to follow Moses you had to follow Jesus. This meant that the only way to get eternal life was to have faith in Jesus. Next, he took the middle part of the parable about heaven and hell and transformed them into teachings inserted into John 5. Finally, instead of Lazarus going to heaven after his death, he continued to walk on earth, where as part of his reward in the afterlife life he got to sit at the rich man’s table for dinner. As to Mark’s healing of the leper, viewed by his contemporaries as a sort of walking-dead creature, that immediately preceded the events in John 5, John changed the story into one about raising the dead and, pursuant to his agenda,

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transformed the event from one that had happened earlier to one that would happen in the future by foreshadowing the story in John 5. On the evidence that John used Mark’s healing of a leper as a source for the raising of Lazarus, we made an interesting discovery. In Mark, the healing of the leper led to Jesus being unable to return to the city. In Chapter 6 we saw that John replaced the healing story with a claim that Jesus couldn’t go back to Judea because the authorities thought he was too popular. What we see, therefore, is that John exchanged the leper story with the original explanation of why the authorities wanted to kill Jesus. He placed the original explanation in the place where Mark had the leper story and identified Jesus’ popularity as the reason why he couldn’t go into the community; he placed the leper story (transformed into the Lazarus story) in the narrative where the authorities wanted to kill Jesus because of his popularity, and changed the narrative so that the authorities wanted to kill Jesus because of the raising of Lazarus. The evidence strongly suggests that John’s Lazarus story is a Johannine creation designed to focus attention on his theme that faith in Jesus is the path to eternal life. We also focused in on the issue of a meal during the Anointing at Bethany scene and who was present. Both John and Luke feature a meal during their versions of the Anointing scene but John includes the sisters Mary and Martha during the event and Luke doesn’t. But Luke also had a separate scene involving two sisters named Mary and Martha and the story closely paralleled the sister events in John’s story. Mark has no meal scene during the Anointing incident and makes no mention of Mary and Martha in his gospel. Lastly, we have the question about whether Luke’s parable of Lazarus appeared in the proposed common source. It was my argument that it did, based on what appears to be Mark’s concretizing of the story in his account of the rich man who wanted to know how to get to heaven, who followed the law of Moses, who was loved by Jesus, who was invited by Jesus to be a follower, and who rejected the invitation. While Luke copies that story from Mark, I suggested that he did not recognize it as an historicized version of the parable. As in the parable, the theme was that a rich man needs to help the poor in order to get to heaven, and that it was very difficult for a rich man to get into heaven. For sequential purposes, I will align Luke’s Lazarus parable with Mark’s story of the rich man, even though Luke also includes Mark’s story in his own gospel. It will fall just after Jesus goes to the Jordan and before Jesus makes his third statement about the Son of Man being lifted up (or as Mark has it, dying and rising up on the third day).

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Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

Mark 5:35–43. Luke 7:11–17. Luke 16:19–31. Luke 10:38–42 (Brown R. E. 1966), 428. (Brown R. E. 1966), 427. (Brown R. E. 1966), 414. (Brown R. E. 1966), 427. (Brown R. E. 1966), 427. (Wahlde 2010), 488. John  11:3. John  11:1. John  11:2. (Wahlde 2010), 490. John  11:3. John  4:46. John  11:6. John  11:11. John 11:14–15. Mark 5:21–24, 35–43. Mark  5:39. John  4:53. (Brown R. E. 1966), 191. John  11:17. John 11:21–22. John  11:23. John  11:24. John 11:25–26. John  11:27. John  11:32. John 11:33–35. John  11:37 John  11:39. John  11:43. John  11:44. John  11:44. John 11:45–46. John  12:11. (Brown R. E. 1966), 427; (Wahlde 2010), 506.

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4 0. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

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(Wahlde 2010), 506. (Brown R. E. 1966), 427. (Strong 2001), 3024. John 5:28–29. (Brown R. E. 1966), 437. (Brown R. E. 1966), 437. Mark 1:40–45. Mark  1:45. John  11:54. (Brown R. E. 1966), 429. (Brown R. E. 1966), 429. (Brown R. E. 1966), 429. Luke  16:21. Luke  16:22. Luke  16:23. Luke 16:25–26. Luke  16:29. Luke  16:31. (Brown 1966), 428. John 5:28–29. John 5:45–47. Luke 16:29–31. (Freedman 1992), s.v. Leprosy, B. (Ryken 2000), s.v., Leper. (Ryken 2000), s.v., Leper. Mark  5:35. Mark  5:39. John  11:11. John  11:14. John  11:3. John  11:15. John 11:45–46. Mark  1:45. John  11:54. Mark  5:23. John  11:3. John  11:4. Mark  5:35. John  11:21. Mark  5:36. John  11:26.

The Lazarus Conundrum | 501 81. John 11:27. 82. Mark 5:39. 83. John 11:11. 84. John 11:14. 85. Mark 5:41. 86. John 11:43. 87. Mark 5:43. 88. Mark 10:21. 89. Mark 10:21. 90. Mark 10:22. 91. Mark 10:25. 92. Luke 18:18–30. 93. Mark 10:2–12. 94. Mark 10:5. 95. Matthew 19:9. 96. Mark 10:13–16 97. Mark 10:15. 98. John 11:1, 12:1. 99. Luke 7:36. 100. Luke  10:38. 101. Luke  10:39. 102. Luke 10:39–40. 103. Luke  10:40. 104. Luke 10:41–42. 105. John  12:2. 106. Mark 14:7; John 12:8.

Bibliography Brown, Raymond E. 1966. The Gospel According to John I–XII. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Freedman, D. N., ed. 1992. Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday. Ryken, L., Wilholt, J., Longman, T., Duriez, C., Penny, D., & Reid, D. G. 2000. Dictionary of Biblical Imagery. electronic ed. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. Strong, J. 2001. Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software. Wahlde, Urban C. von. 2010. The Gospel and Letters of John. Vol. 2. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

11

The Roman Proceedings

In this chapter we pick up from the point where the Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to Pilate and continue through his handing Jesus over for crucifixion. Mark is the shortest of the three narratives and is missing many scenes present in both John and Luke. Perhaps Mark’s most significant omissions, ones that greatly intrigues scholars, are Pilate’s three declarations of innocence present in both Luke and John. Mark has no such rulings. Much less explored by scholars are several common details in Mark and John that are missing from Luke. For example, Mark and John both say that there was a Passover custom that a prisoner be released; that Pilate asked Jesus to explain why the Jews brought charges against him; that Pilate offered to release “the King of the Jews”; that the Roman soldiers dressed Pilate in a purple robe. Luke omits all of these and other details from his account of the Roman proceeding. At the same time, Luke and John agree against Mark on several points. In addition, Luke and John each have some material that is unique to their respective gospels. Luke, for example, inserts an episode in which Jesus appears before Herod, an incident not present in any of the other gospels. John has extended dialogues between Pilate and Jesus and between Pilate and the Jews, much of which does not appear within the other gospels.

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The agreements between Luke and John against Mark, as well as the unique material in Luke and John, has led several scholars to explore questions about the source material used in this section of the respective gospels. Brown proposes that “John drew on a tradition similar to the one that came to Mark but more generously endowed with geographical and temporal details.”1 He describes this source as one that includes elements not present in Mark.2 He also accepts that John has deliberately rearranged and expanded upon what has come down through this tradition.3 A number of “respected scholars” also believe that Luke’s version of the Roman trial must have come from a source other than Mark.4 It is, of course, my argument that the underlying source behind Luke, John and Mark is the proposed common source that I have been building up throughout this work. The analysis below will show that all three gospels accounts were built around a common template in which most of the events in all three gospels unfold in the same sequential order. However, within that template we find differences in detail and variations in the sequential order of scenes among the gospels. The primary source of sequential disruption comes from the placement of the mockery of Jesus. Mark, Luke, and John disagree with each other as to where it belongs in the narrative flow. The other major sequential problem comes from John’s handling of the interrogation of Jesus. The evidence below suggests that John had several theological problems with how Jesus was depicted in the interrogation scenes and had to move some verses around and add in some additional material to alleviate his concern. Another sequential problem of much less import arises from Luke, who has Pilate send Jesus to the Jewish Herod for further interrogation and has Herod’s Jewish soldiers mock Jesus, even though Mark and John say it was the Roman soldiers under Pilate who inflicted the abuse. It will be argued below that there was a Herod interlude in the proposed common source but that Luke has enhanced the scene by moving some of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus before Herod and transferring parts of the mockery of Jesus by Roman soldiers to a mockery by Jewish soldiers (or soldiers under Herod’s Jewish command). When we finish reviewing the evidence it will be quite clear that John, Luke and Mark all used a common source for their respective accounts of the Roman proceedings against Jesus.

An Overview of the Roman Proceedings Before Pilate I think it can be reasonably argued that Mark, Luke and John have built their narrative around a common template that can be divided into five major acts.

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I. The Interrogation of Jesus; II. The Barabbas Incident; III. The Mockery of Jesus; IV. The Argument over Crucifixion; V. The Decision.

I have divided these five acts into a collection of forty-two scenes, not all of which appear in all three gospels and some of which appear in only one gospel. One might quibble here and there as to where dividers should be and how many scenes there should be but we don’t have to resolve that issue. Ultimately, I have distilled out from the larger collection a group of thirty-one scenes that I have identified with the proposed common source, not all of which appear in all three gospels. Table 11.1, Overview of the Roman proceedings in Mark, Luke, and John, shows my initial breakdown of the larger group of scenes, organized around the five acts described above. The arrangement into five consecutive acts meant that some decisions had to be made about what verses had to be moved within each gospel to a different sequential location in order to best reflect what the original sequential order was in the proposed common source. The resulting sequential disruption is actually quite minimal and for the most part the scenes flow in a common order. The most important sequential disagreement among the three gospels is the positioning of the mockery of Jesus. All three gospels disagree on this point. The Mockery Act, as I have constructed it, involves the flogging and abusing of Jesus by soldiers. Mark places it after the Barabbas incident and after the decision to crucify Jesus. Luke places most of it before the Barabbas incident and before the decision to crucify Jesus and also places it in Herod’s camp instead of Pilate’s. John places it after the Barabbas incident, agreeing with Mark against Luke as to that point, but before the decision to crucify Jesus, agreeing with Luke against Mark on this point. John’s agreement partly with Luke and partly with Mark makes him the common denominator among the three and I have chosen to follow his sequential arrangement. Therefore, I have moved the verses in Mark and Luke that refer to the mockery alongside the verses where John places the mockery. I have highlighted the verses in Mark and Luke to signify that they appear out of that gospel’s narrative order. The second major sequence problem concerns the interrogation of Jesus. Luke and John both agree that the interrogation should be divided into two parts. Each ends the first interrogation with Pilate’s first declaration of innocence. In Luke, this is immediately followed by a second set of accusations against Jesus.

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Table 11.1:  Overview of the Roman proceeding in Mark, Luke, and John. Source: Author Scene Description I. The Interrogation Jewish authorities accuse Jesus. Pilate ask Jesus if he is the King of the Jews. Jesus asks Pilate how he got his information. Jesus discusses the nature of his kingdom with Pilate. Pilate says, “So you are a king?” Jesus responds, “You say so.” Jesus talks about being born to the truth and Pilate responds. Pilate declares Jesus innocent of wrongdoing. Jews make further charges against Jesus. Pilate wants to know where Jesus comes from. Pilate sends Jesus to Herod. Pilate asks Jesus why the Jews brought charges against him. [Luke doesn’t say what specific question Jesus was asked.] Jesus won’t answer the question. An angry reaction to Jesus’ silence. Jesus says power comes from above. Herod sends Jesus back to Pilate. Herod and Jesus became friends that day II. The Barabbas Incident There is a Passover custom for the release of a prisoner in Roman custody. Pilate wants to release the “king of the Jews.” [Luke omits the phrase “King of the Jews.”] Pilate’s offer motivated by knowledge of the jealousy of the chief priests. Jews call for the release of Barabbas. Barabbas is described as a rebel. III. The Mockery of Jesus Jesus is flogged.

Mark

Luke

John

15:2a

23:2 23:3a

18:29–32 18:33 18:34 18:36

152:2b

23:3b

18:37a 18:37b 18:37c–38a

15:3

23:4 23:5 23:6

18:38b 19:7 19:8–9a

23:7–8 23:9a

18:35

15:4

15:5

23:9b 23:10

19:9b 19:10 19:11

23:11c 23:12 15:6,8 15:9

18:39a 23:16b

18:39b

15:11 15:7.

23:18 23:19

18:40a 18:40b

15:15b

23:16a

19:1

15:10

The Roman Proceedings | 507 Table 11.1:  Continued Scene Description

Mark

Soldiers mock Jesus by dressing him in a mock royal purple robe. Soldiers mock Jesus by placing a crown of thorns on his head. Soldiers mock Jesus by calling out, “Hail, King of the Jews.” [Luke omits the specific words.] Soldiers strike Jesus. IV. The Argument Over Crucifixion Pilate declares Jesus innocent for the second time. Pilate makes a sarcastic remark about Jesus in an effort to get Jewish consent for the release. [Luke omits the sarcastic remark.] Jews call for the crucifixion of Jesus. Pilate asks “Why, what evil has he done?” [John substitutes a different remark with a similar theme.] Pilate declares Jesus innocent for the third time. Pilate wants to release Jesus. Jews criticize Pilate for wanting to release Jesus. Pilate moves to the Judgment Bench. Second call for crucifixion. Pilate asks if should crucify the Jewish king. Jews deny Jesus is their king. V. The Decision Pilate succumbs to Jewish pressure. Pilate releases Barabbas. Pilate hands Jesus over for crucifixion The soldiers replace the purple robe with Jesus’ original clothing.

15:16–17a 23:11b

19:2b

15:17b

19:2a

15:18

Luke

23:11a

15:19

John

19:3a

19:3b 23:13–15

19:4

15:12

23:20

19:5

15:13 15:14a

23:21 23:22a–b

19:6a 19:6b

23:22 c

19:6c

23:22d

19:12a 19:12b–c

15:14b

23:23

15:15a 15:15b 15:15c 15:20

23:24 23:25a 23:25b

19:13–14 19:15a 19:15b 19:15c

19:16a Implied by 19:23

Highlighted verse citations indicate that they have been moved out of that gospel’s original sequential placement.

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The second set of accusations led Pilate to send Jesus to Herod for further interrogation. In John, after the first declaration of innocence, the narrative moves into the Barabbas incident. But later, in the middle of the argument over crucifixion, John depicts Jews making a second set of accusations against Jesus and this is immediately followed by Pilate’s second interrogation of Jesus. I will be arguing below that John’s second set of accusations and second interrogation by Pilate is based on the same source material as Luke’s second set of accusations and second interrogation by Herod. For this reason, I have shifted John’s second set of accusations and second interrogation from its present position to just after Pilate’s first declaration of innocence, forming a sequential narrative parallel with Luke. I have highlighted those verse cells in John’s column to show that they are out of sequence. It is important to note here that even if we don’t move John’s second interrogation sequence back, the events making up the two parts of John’s interrogation will unwind in parallel to Luke’s sequence of scenes for the two interrogation parts. There is one other important scene shift. For reasons argued below, I have moved John 18:35 from its present position in the middle of the first interrogation scene to the middle of the second interrogation scene, more precisely into the middle of John 19:9. Eventually, also for reasons explained below, when I reconstruct the original form of the account of the Roman proceedings in the proposed common source, I will also switch around John’s two sets of Jewish accusations against Jesus (18:30, 19:7), such that each occupies the position where the other is now situated in Table 11.1. On the more trivial level, in the Mockery act, Mark and John disagree on the order of the placement of the crown of thorns and the royal robe. The difference between the two is meaningless as far as the narrative is concerned. But since Luke omits the placing of the crown I have treated the incident as a separate scene and followed Mark’s order. Also, Mark 15:7 places the description of Barabbas near the beginning of the Barabbas incident while John and Luke agree on placing it at the end of the act. Because of the agreement between John and Luke, I followed their order over Mark. This difference is also meaningless. Finally, based on my analysis of Luke’s Herod interlude, in reconstructing the proposed common source I will argue that Luke’s description of the return of Pilate from Herod is presently out of order and belongs before the second interrogation of Jesus by Pilate and before the mockery, not after as he presently has it. However, in Table 11.1, in order to preserve the original sense of Luke’s gospel, I have left it in its original position for now. I will move it to its correct location

The Roman Proceedings | 509 when I reconstruct the proposed common source for the Roman proceedings. With that in mind, let me summarize some of the gospel agreements we find in Table 11.1. Points of agreement in Mark, Luke, and John.

• Pilate asked Jesus if he was the king of the Jews. • Jesus responded to a question about his kingship with “you say so” or ““you say I am a king.” • There were questions asked of Jesus that he declined to answer. • There was a Jewish prisoner named Barabbas in Roman custody. • When Pilate wanted to release Jesus, the Jews demanded instead the release of Barabbas. • Soldiers mocked and verbally abused Jesus. • The mockery included dressing Jesus in a faux royal robe. • On two separate occasions the Jews called for Jesus to be crucified. • Pilate handed Jesus over for crucifixion. Points of agreement between John and Mark against Luke.



• Pilate asked Jesus to comment on the charges brought against him by the Jewish authorities. • Jesus remained silent when asked a question by Pilate. • There was a Passover custom that the Roman governor honor a Jewish request to release a prisoner. • When offering to release Jesus, Pilate referred to him as the “King of the Jews.” • Jesus was flogged immediately before the mockery. • Roman soldiers under Pilate’s command mocked and physically abused Jesus. • The color of the robe placed on Jesus was purple, the color of royalty. • The soldiers also placed a crown of thorns on Jesus’ head. • The soldiers mocked Jesus by shouting “Hail, King of the Jews.” • The soldiers physically struck Jesus. Points of agreement between John and Luke against Mark.



• On three separate occasions Pilate told the Jews he found Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing. • On the first of the two crucifixion demands, the crowd uses the word “crucify” twice. • Prior to Pilate asking Jesus if he was the King of the Jews, there is a scene in which Pilate and the authorities discuss the charges against Jesus.

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• The interrogations of Jesus is divided into two parts, with a declaration of innocence in between.5 • Pilate expressed an interest in where Jesus is from. • There was an angry reaction to Jesus’ refusal to answer questions. • Pilate is specifically depicted as wanting to release Jesus.

Act I. The Interrogation of Jesus In order to analyze Pilate’s inquiry into Jesus’ crimes, we should first take a moment to analyze the structural arrangements in each gospel. Ultimately we will see that Mark, Luke and John worked off of a common sequential arrangement of scenes. Luke and John have divided the inquiry into two segments but not in the same way. Both end the first part of the inquiry with Pilate’s declaration of innocence. In Luke, the declaration leads the Jews to make additional allegations of wrongdoing across multiple territories, including Galilee. This leads to a jurisdictional issue and Pilate sends Jesus to Herod for further interrogation. When Herod sends Jesus back, Pilate announces for the second time that he has found Jesus innocent of any wrongdoing. Luke also places the mockery of Jesus in front of Herod. As I have noted above, I think Luke has moved this act out of its original sequential location. Therefore, I will analyze Luke’s Herod interlude without regard to the mockery. In John, the second part of the interrogation takes place before Pilate but there is considerable narrative distance between the declaration of innocence and the second interrogation. Based on cross references to Luke, it will be shown below that John’s resumption of the inquiry (19:7–11) follows after Pilate’s third declaration of innocence. This means that either Luke or John has moved the second interrogation out of order. Since Luke’s arrangement most closely fits an uninterrupted sequence of five acts, I have opted to treat John as the one who moved the second interrogation out of order. In Table 11.1, I have reflected that decision by moving John’s second segment back, so that it follows immediately after Pilate’s first declaration of innocence. I have also made one other adjustment to John, this time a sequential change. I have moved John 18:35 from its present position in the first part of the interrogation to the middle of John 19:9 in the second part of the interrogation. The reason for that move will be explained below. In Table 11.1 this is the only verse within the interrogation narrative that has been moved out of sequential order.

The Roman Proceedings | 511 This still leaves open the question of whether Luke invented the entire Herod scene or adopted some of it from the proposed common source. I will propose below that there was some Herodian material in the proposed common source but that both the interrogation and the mockery were inserted into the Herodian portion by Luke. Mark has a much shorter version of the interrogation than either John or Luke and does not divide it into two segments. The evidence below shows that Mark has heavily redacted the source material.

The Three Questions Problem My analysis below will largely revolve around three questions asked by Pilate and how those questions are dealt with in each of the gospels. They are, in my proposed sequential order: (1) Are you the King of the Jews? (2) Where does Jesus come from? and (3) What have you [i.e., Jesus] done to cause these charges to be brought against you? Mark and John both have Pilate ask Jesus if he is the King of the Jews. In Mark, Jesus responds, “You say so.”6 After further accusations are made, Pilate asks Jesus, “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.”7 Jesus remains silent. Mark does not have Pilate ask where Jesus comes from. In John, when Pilate asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews, Jesus responds differently. He wants to know if Pilate asked this question on his own or because of what other people told him.8 “Pilate replied, ‘I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done [emphasis added]?’ ”9 This is the verse (John 18:35) that I said above was going to be moved from its present position in John’s first interrogation to a different position in the second interrogation (as indicated in Table 11.1). This question corresponds to Mark’s “Have you no answer?” In response to Pilate’s question, John’s Jesus says something about the nature of his kingdom. So Mark and John both have a question to Jesus about being the king of the Jews and both have Pilate ask Jesus to explain why charges have been brought against him. But Mark and John have significant disagreements as to what responses Jesus gave to these two questions. At the same time, John does have a place where Jesus remains silent in response to a question by Pilate, but not to the same question that Mark has. In John’s second part of the interrogation Pilate asks Jesus where he is from and Jesus remains silent.10 So, John includes variations on all three questions in his account of the interrogation. Luke also has Pilate ask Jesus if he is the King of the Jews and Pilate also asks where Jesus comes from. But in Luke, Pilate asked the latter question of the Jews,

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and they say from Galilee.11 So Luke, like John, shows Pilate interested in where Jesus comes from but the contexts are different. Luke also has a narrative location where he says that Jesus remained silent in the face of questioning but doesn’t tell us what questions Jesus didn’t answer.12 Luke also omits the question in Mark and John about what Jesus did to bring about the charges. In Mark, that was the question Jesus didn’t answer. To sum up the problem: All three gospels say that Jesus remained silent with regard to some particular question. Mark and John disagree as to what question Jesus refused to answer and Luke only tells us that there was some question that Jesus didn’t answer but doesn’t tell us what the question was. Mark and John both have Pilate ask Jesus what he has done, but the question appears in different contexts. In Mark, that question causes Jesus to remain silent. In John, that question is inserted into the discussion about whether Jesus is King of the Jews and, later, Jesus remains silent when asked where he comes from. Mark has no question about where Jesus comes from but Luke does. However, in Luke, the question about where Jesus comes from is asked of the Jews, not Jesus. So it is evident that some sort of manipulation is going on with regard to the three indicated questions. It seems apparent that there is some sort of underlying schema and each of the gospels is giving us partial glimpses from different perspectives. In order to resolve these conflicts, we need to remember that pursuant to John’s editorial practice Jesus is not subject to Jewish law because all judgment has been given to Jesus.13 (I discussed this issue in Chapter 3.) Mark frames Pilate’s interrogation as one in which Pilate asks Jesus to explain what Jewish laws Jesus has violated and Jesus remains silent. This can easily be understood as an implicit admission by Jesus that he has violated Jewish law. If this scene were present in the proposed common source then John would have been highly offended by it and would need to either delete it or rework it, just as he did with the earlier judgment scenes. He would not want to depict Jesus refusing to answer questions about whether or not he violated Jewish law. John, as we shall see, has radically changed the context of the question and answer. Luke also appears to have been troubled by the question and removed it, portraying Jesus as silent in response to an unspecified question. Mark omits the question about where Jesus is from but Luke has such a question. In Luke, it raises a jurisdictional dispute between Pilate and Herod as to who should have jurisdiction over the case. John would have been offended by this theme also as he does not want the fate of Jesus to be resolved over petty haggling over which earthly figure had jurisdiction over him, so he needed to change the context.

The Roman Proceedings | 513 Mark may have dropped the question because it introduced what may have been an unnecessary intrusion of the Herod scene into the story. I’ll argue for the presence of a very brief Herod scene in the proposed common source further below. In John, Jesus doesn’t defend himself under Jewish law. In John’s scheme, the question about what Jesus has done is in relation to the question about whether Jesus is the King of the Jews, and John uses it to divert attention away from the question about whether he is an earthly king. According to John, Jesus asked Pilate why he asked the question and Pilate said he is not a Jew and he doesn’t know why the Jews handed Jesus over. In close reading, Pilate hasn’t raised any question about whether Jesus violated Jewish law. Jesus then launched into a discussion of his kingdom and Pilate misunderstood it, much in the way Peter did earlier in Mark’s gospel. Jesus was talking about a heavenly kingdom and Pilate thinks of it as an earthly kingdom. The setting therefore is one of ignorance by the gentile Pilate rather than a violation of Jewish law. Having changed the “King of the Jews” confrontation from one about Jewish and Roman law to one about the true nature of Jesus’ kingdom, John then had to move Jesus’ silence into another context unrelated to a refusal to explain what laws he violated. And he has done so. Jesus remains silent to a different question, one about where he comes from. Here the context connects to the previous conversation. Earlier, Pilate misunderstood what Jesus said about his kingdom not being from this world, so, now, when Pilate misunderstands who Jesus is, and asks Jesus where he is from, Jesus remains silent. This silence is not in response to a question about Jesus violating Jewish law but about the gentile Pilate not understanding who Jesus is. John’s use of the “where are you from” question has a dual function. First, it transforms the question from one about political jurisdiction to one about the true nature of Jesus. Second, it eliminates the problem of having Jesus remain silent in response to the question about what Jewish laws he violated. Pursuant to this shift in context, John has moved the question about what Jesus did and transferred it to the earlier discussion that shifts the question away from whether Jesus is an earthly king to one in which he is a heavenly king. To summarize the proposed solution: John was offended by having Jesus remain silent in the face of questions about whether he violated Jewish law. He also objected to having earthly rulers engage in a petty jurisdictional dispute over Jesus’ ultimate fate. Following his practice of moving details around to change the context, he moved the questions and answers around to get a different setting for problematic issues. Luke was also offended by the silence of Jesus when asked to

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explain what laws he violated and deleted the specific question, leaving Jesus silent in the face of unspecified questions. Mark, who tends to shorten stories, omitted the question of where Jesus came from because he didn’t want to introduce the Herod interlude.

The First Interrogation in Luke (23:1–4) According to Luke, after the handover of Jesus, the authorities told Pilate, “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.”14 The charges here are violations of Roman law and skip over Mark’s Jewish council finding of blasphemy. In Luke’s version of the council’s decision, there is no actual declaration of blasphemy. We are told only that Jesus’ own words indicated that he was guilty, but not what he was guilty of. If one only knew Luke’s version of the scene, it would appear that the Jewish authorities were lying to the Roman governor. In Luke, Jesus never said he was the messiah. He only said that the council wouldn’t believe the answer that he would give. However, Luke knew from Mark that Jesus did admit to being the messiah. So Luke seems to be dancing around the facts here. Additionally, Luke also knows that Jesus did not advocate tax resistance. In his gospel, following Mark’s narrative, when asked if Jews should pay taxes to Rome, Jesus indicated that Jews should give to the emperor what is his and give to God what is God’s.15 To be fair, Jesus didn’t say what the emperor was entitled to, but, in context, he made the remark after looking at a coin to see whose head and title were depicted.16 The implication was that coins issued by Rome belonged to Rome and if Rome asked for some of them back they should be entitled to them. It is interesting, therefore, that Pilate never asks Jesus about paying taxes, suggesting that Luke invented the charge. Nevertheless, the charge that Jesus claimed to be the messiah was sufficient to bring the matter before Pilate as only Rome can authorize someone to hold political office among the Jews. Upon hearing the allegations against Jesus, Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”17 Jesus responded, “You say so.”18 Following this non-denial denial Pilate turned to the chief priests and said, “I find no basis for an accusation against this man.”19

The First Interrogation in John (18:29–38) John also begins with a preliminary discussion of the charges against Jesus. He introduces the scene by telling us that the Jews couldn’t enter Pilate’s headquarters

The Roman Proceedings | 515 because it was the day on which the lamb was to be slaughtered and they had to remain pure so that they could eat the Passover meal that night.20 Therefore, Pilate came outside to meet with the authorities, at which time he asked, “What accusation do you bring against this man?”21 John’s arrangement here separates Jesus from the Jews. Pilate initially comes outside and then brings Jesus inside. The governor conducts both interrogations of Jesus outside of the hearing of the Jews. In Mark and Luke the questioning occurs in front of other Jews. The Jews respond to Pilate’s question, “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.”22 The Jewish response to Pilate’s question is vague and does not in and of itself justify Roman involvement. Contrast this with Luke’s very specific set of allegations. Pilate responds to this less than forthcoming accusation by telling the Jews to take Jesus and try him according to their own law.23 The Jews replied, “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.”24 This reply serves to confer jurisdiction on Pilate. John adds a gloss that this statement was to fulfill what Jesus said would be the type of death he would suffer.25 This should probably be understood to mean that Jesus had to be crucified and only the Roman governor could authorize such an execution. Whether that is historically correct is a separate question that we needn’t look into. The Jewish explanation is somewhat problematic. It seems to implicitly recognize that Jesus violated some Jewish law—in my reconstruction of John’s Jewish trial the Jews wanted to stone Jesus for blasphemy—but doesn’t say what law he violated that would justify a death sentence. Following the accusation, Pilate returns to his headquarters and asks Jesus if he is the King of the Jews.26 One can see how Pilate might do that as a result of Luke’s explanation, but why would Pilate ask that question based on John’s setup? There is nothing in John’s narrative to suggest that “King of the Jews” is an issue. Luke’s statement about Jesus claiming to be the messiah seems to be the better explanation for Pilate’s question. This is reinforced by the fact that Mark’s gospel showed Jesus admitting to being the messiah during the Jewish proceedings and John implicitly accepting that Jesus made that admission when he responds to the messiah question by saying “I have told you, and you do not believe.”27 In John, Pilate’s question to Jesus sets up a dialogue between the two. Jesus initially responds by asking Pilate where he got that information from.28 Pilate replies, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done [emphasis added]?”29 As I noted above, I believe John has moved this verse out of its original order.

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In John’s present order of events, Jesus responds to this question with a lengthy statement. “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.”30 After Jesus’ discussion about his kingdom, Pilate’ said, “So you are a king?”31 To this Jesus responded, “You say that I am a king.”32 This is followed by additional statements by Jesus about his being born to the truth33 and Pilate famously replying, “What is truth?”34 The debate over being born to the truth appears to be basic Johannine rhetoric. If we strip this dialogue to its essentials we have the following exchange between Pilate and Jesus. Pilate: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus: “My kingdom is not from this world.” Pilate: “So you are a king?” Jesus: “You say I am a king.”

The first and last statements correspond to Luke and Mark. The two in-between statements change the context of Jesus’ response. In Mark and John, the interrogation is over whether Jesus is the earthly king of the Jews. In John, Pilate misunderstands the nature of Jesus’ higher purpose. Therefore, John’s Jesus isn’t dodging Pilate’s initial question, as he does in Mark and Luke; he is dismissing Pilate’s erroneous understanding of what Jesus said. Implicit in John’s altered conversation is that Jesus presents no earthly threat to either Rome or to the Jewish authorities. His kingdom is not on earth. After the questioning is completed, Pilate goes before the crowd and says to them, “I find no case against him.” At this point, John’s interrogation of Jesus breaks off and we have to jump ahead to resume the questioning.

The First Interrogation: Luke and John Compared If we align John’s first interrogation alongside Luke’s we find both gospels agree that the following events took place in the same indicated order



• Jews accuse Jesus of violating the law. • Pilate asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews. • Jesus says, “You say so” or “You say that I am a king.” (Although John has some additional dialogue between the question and answer, the final response in John is to the question of whether he was an earthly king.) • Pilate tells the chief priests that he finds no case against Jesus.

The Roman Proceedings | 517 While John has interspersed additional dialogue into the interrogation, and may have transferred in part of the additional dialogue from the second interrogation, that doesn’t undermine the fact that John and Luke agree that the four core plot points outlined above occurred in the same sequential order, suggesting that they relied on a common source for the narrative sequence.

The Second Interrogation in Luke (23:5–12) In Luke, after Pilate announced that Jesus was not guilty of any wrongdoing, the crowd did not react well. They called out, “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.”35 This constitutes a second set of allegations against Jesus, but they are quite vague, especially when compared to the earlier very specific charges. When Pilate heard this reaction, he asked if Jesus was a Galilean.36 This is Luke’s version of the question about where Jesus was from. Upon learning that Jesus was indeed from Galilee, Pilate decided to send him over to Herod, the Roman-appointed Jewish ruler of Galilee who was present in Jerusalem for the Passover Holiday.37 Galilee was an independent political entity not under Pilate’s jurisdiction and Herod had a higher political rank than Pilate. The fact that Jesus was a citizen of Galilee could, theoretically, create political problems for Pilate if he executed a citizen under someone else’s jurisdiction. As Luke explains just a few verses later, at this point in time Herod and Pilate were enemies.38 A legal conflict with another Roman ruler of higher rank than Pilate would not have been wise. When Jesus appeared before Herod, Luke says that Herod was glad to see him and had hoped that Jesus might perform some sort of sign for him.39 This is somewhat odd as earlier Luke says that Pharisees warned Jesus to get out of Galilee because Herod wanted to kill him.40 Herod had also equated Jesus with John the Baptist, whom he had beheaded.41 Luke also knows that Mark says Herodians wanted to kill Jesus after the Sabbath healing in the synagogue, a fact that Luke omitted from his own account. Despite the desire to see Jesus perform a sign, Luke records no such actual request of Jesus by Herod. Instead, he says Herod “questioned [Jesus] at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer.”42 Luke doesn’t say what any of the many questions were so we don’t know what it was that Jesus declined to answer. But we do know that Luke has omitted Mark’s question from Pilate about what Jesus has done that led to Jesus’ silence. Following Jesus’ silent response to Herod’s lengthy but unrecorded interrogation, the chief priests reacted angrily, “vehemently accusing [Jesus].”43

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At this point Luke inserts the mockery of Jesus although it is less intense than what occurred in Mark and Luke. For reasons stated above I have suggested that Luke’s placement of the mockery is out of sequence. After Jesus is placed in an “elegant robe” Herod sends him back to Pilate.44 Herod apparently enjoyed Jesus’s visit so much that he made peace with Pilate and these enemies now became good friends.45 When Jesus returned to Pilate, the governor called the chief priests together and told them once again that he has “not found this man guilty of any of your charges against him.”46 Pilate adds that Herod also found Jesus not guilty since “he sent him back to us.”47 The implication here is that if the ruler of Galilee wasn’t threatened by a Galilean claiming to be king, he must have been found innocent of the charge. Before looking at John’s second inquiry, we need to break down Luke’s transition to the second inquiry. We will need this information to isolate the second inquiry in John.

• Pilate declares Jesus innocent • Jews react by saying Jesus stirs up trouble from several districts including Galilee. • Pilate asks where Jesus is from.

The Second Interrogation in John (19:7–9a, 18:35, 19:9b–11) John places some distance between the first and second inquiry of Jesus. The break occurs after the first announcement by Pilate that he finds Jesus innocent of wrongdoing. The question is where we should resume the second inquiry narrative. If we can use Luke as a guide, we want to see a declaration of innocence, a Jewish reaction with new accusations, and a question about where Jesus is from. If we jump to John’s third declaration of innocence, we find that sequence in play. John’s third declaration of innocence occurs at John 19:6. This is followed by a Jewish outburst. “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”48 Narratively, this outburst occurs after both the Barabbas Incident and the mockery of Jesus, and falls in the middle of the argument over crucifixion. Note also that where John’s initial set of Jewish accusations against Jesus was vague, here they are very specific. Following these new charges about Jesus claiming to be the Son of God, Pilate “was more afraid than ever.”49 He returned to his headquarters and, instead of asking Jesus if he was the Son of God or the King of the Jews, he asked, “Where

The Roman Proceedings | 519 are you from?”50 Only here he doesn’t mean Galilee. The discussion has moved to a higher spiritual plain. Now this question should be a slam-dunk for Jesus. All throughout the gospel he tells us he was sent by the Father to bring a message. He has already said his kingdom is not of this world. This seems like a good place for him to explain further. But he doesn’t answer the question. He remains silent.51 Jesus’ silence triggers an angry reaction from Pilate, who reminds Jesus that the governor has the power to release or crucify the prisoner.52 Jesus responds that Pilate has no power over him unless it was given from above.53 This ends the second interrogation in John and if we move everything from the second set of charges to the argument over Pilate’s power (John 19:7–11) to after the first declaration of innocence (John 18:38) we have a continuous interrogation narrative closely paralleling Luke.

The Second Interrogation: Luke and John Compared There is a very close parallel between John and Luke as to the unfolding of events for the second part of the inquiry. First, after a declaration of innocence Jews make further accusations against Jesus. In Luke, after declaring Jesus innocent of wrongdoing for the first time Jews, makes further accusations against Jesus, leading to a new inquiry. In John after the first declaration of innocence there is a break before the second inquiry resumes. However, immediately after John’s third declaration of innocence, the Jews make further accusations against Jesus and that leads to a further inquiry by Pilate.54 One would normally expect the Jews to have complained after the first verdict, not the third. But in any event, both gospels show that after a verdict of innocence, Jews make further accusations against Jesus and those accusations lead to a second inquiry. Second, these accusations lead Pilate to express an interest in where Jesus comes from. In Luke, Pilate is concerned with potential opposition from a political rival and asks the Jews where Jesus is from. Luke transfers the second interrogation to Herod’s headquarters. In John, Pilate is fearful of Jesus’ relationship to a heavenly power, returns to his headquarters, and asks Jesus where he is from. Third, this leads to an interrogation in which Jesus fails to answer a question. In Luke, Herod asked Jesus questions (but we are not told what the questions were) and Jesus remained silent. In John, in its present form, Jesus was asked a question and Jesus remained silent. But John has fused the question to the Jews

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about where Jesus is from with the unspecified question in Luke that causes Jesus to remain silent. However, Luke knows from Mark, that the question Jesus didn’t answer was “What have you done?” and he has omitted the specific question from his account. We can reasonably assume that Luke has buried the question, for whatever reason, in the lengthy unrecorded interrogation of Jesus by Herod. If, as I have proposed, we move John 18:35, the question about what Jesus did to bring about the charges, between John’s question about where Jesus is from55 and Jesus’ silent response,56 we have an excellent parallel fit with Luke. Fourth, after Jesus refuses to answer the question(s) there is an angry reaction to his silence. In Luke, the angry reaction comes from Jews, who “vehemently” make further unspecified accusations. (This is a third set of accusations in Luke, but this one occurs in front of Herod, not Pilate.) In John, the angry reaction is from Pilate, who threatens Jesus with possible crucifixion if he doesn’t answer the questions. Allowing for what appear to be Johannine variations in the source material it is quite apparent that in the second inquiry Luke and John have followed the same basic template, a common set of events that unfold in the same sequential order. That leaves a question of whether John has separated an originally unified inquiry into two separate and distinct episodes or Luke has taken two noncontiguous episodes and combined them into a unified narrative. It seems more logical to me that the reaction to the verdict of innocence would have triggered more accusations after the first verdict, as Luke has it, rather than after the third verdict, as John has it. So I will work from the assumption that John has separated the second part of the inquiry from the first part of the inquiry and will move John 19:7–11 so that it follows after John 18:38 and move John 18:35 between John 19:9a and 19:9b.

The Two Accusations Problem Luke and John each show the Jews before Pilate making accusations against Jesus on two different occasions at the same points in each narrative. But there are some interesting differences. Luke begins with specific allegations and follows with vague allegations. John begins with vague allegations and follows with specific allegations. In Luke, the Jews initially make a specific accusation that Jesus claimed to be “the messiah, a king.” In John, the Jews made an initially vague accusation that for some reason causes Pilate to ask Jesus if he is King of the Jews. In Luke, the

The Roman Proceedings | 521 second accusation is vague, a desperate attempt to get Pilate to change his verdict. In John, the second charge is specific; Jesus claims to be the Son of God. Compare John’s initial vague accusation with Luke’s later vague accusation. John: “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” Luke: “He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.” Although the words are different the accusations are essentially the same, vague charges that Jesus is a trouble maker. Now compare the two specific charges. John: “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God [emphasis added].” Luke: “We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king [emphasis added].” If you recall, in Mark’s version of the Jewish inquest, “messiah” and “Son of God” were one and the same thing. John has made the same connection in his gospel. In my reconstruction of John’s Jewish inquiry, Jesus said that he already answered the question of whether he was the messiah but nowhere are we told what answer he previously gave. Yet, he also admitted to previously saying he was the Son of God although there is no indication he ever did so. As I previously noted, John has equated “messiah” with “Son of God.”57 So, basically, Luke and John have the Jews claim that Jesus claimed to be some form of the messiah. If John had placed the specific accusation at the beginning of the inquiry instead of later, it would make far more narrative sense for Pilate to have asked Jesus if he claimed to be the King of the Jews. It is my suggestion that John switched around the two statements for reasons having to do with his editorial reworking of the Roman proceedings. In Luke, the specific charge of claiming to be a king confers jurisdiction on Pilate and leads Pilate to ask Jesus if he is king of the Jews. In Mark and Luke, Jesus answers that question by saying “You say so.” This is a different answer than the one given in both Mark and John during the Jewish inquest, where Jesus basically admitted that this was the case. The answer to Pilate in Mark and Luke could suggest that Jesus was afraid to tell the truth and had dodged the question. Luke has arranged his gospel so that the answer is not inconsistent since his Jesus never admitted to being the messiah before the Jewish council. John, on the other hand, objects to any portrayal of Jesus that shows him fearful or not in control of events. The “you say so” non-denial denial could be considered an expression of fear by Jesus. John has radically altered the context.

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He starts by having Pilate inquire of the Jews what the charges are. The Jews say nothing about Jesus claiming to be King of the Jews. Now when Pilate asks Jesus if he is King of the Jews, Jesus can legitimately ask Pilate what leads him to that question since, in John, there was no such official charge made against him. So far, then, Jesus has not dodged the question. He is exploring its meaning with Pilate. The governor becomes annoyed and says he is not a Jew so how should he know what Jesus has done. He asks Jesus to tell him why charges have been brought. Jesus comes straight out and says his kingdom is not from this earth. He has not dodged any questions. He has given a Johannine response to the question of whether he is King of the Jews. His realm is heaven. He is not an earthly king, and there is no threat to Rome or the Jewish authorities. Pilate didn’t understand the answer and accused Jesus of admitting to being some kind of earthly king. It is to this mistaken understanding by a gentile ruler that Jesus said, “You say I am a king.” There is no dodge here, no fear of answering. Jesus is not an earthly king. That is only Pilate’s interpretation. It is an erroneous understanding of his nature that Jesus dismisses. Now let’s look at John’s specific allegation by the Jews, that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God. In John, Jesus is not present when the charge is made. But when Pilate hears the allegation he goes back to question Jesus, but he asks him nothing about the claim to be being the Son of God. He asks Jesus where he is from. It is to that question that Jesus remains silent. In Mark, it is the question about what Jesus has done that causes him to remain silent. As with the “You say” answer, Jesus’ silence in the face of being asked to explain why charges were brought, might be seen as an admission of guilt to violating Jewish law or as fear of telling the truth. This, too, is something that would offend John. So he moved the question about what Jesus did to bring about the charges from its original location, just before the silence, and moved it into the initial dialogue between Jesus and Pilate about whether he was the King of the Jews. Now when Jesus remains silent it is not from fear or concern about admitting to wrongdoing. It indicates exasperation with Pilate’s failure to understand the earlier discussion about Jesus’ kingdom not being from this earth. This leads to Pilate threatening Jesus and Jesus telling Pilate that he has no power over him unless it came from heaven. The specific allegation about Jesus claiming to be the Son of God has been lost in the Johannine sauce. I have already explained above how John altered the original scenario as reflected in Luke. In Luke, the Jews make a second set of charges but it leads to the

The Roman Proceedings | 523 jurisdictional question about where Jesus comes from, Galilee or elsewhere. That leads to the second interrogation before Herod. When Jesus remains silent before Herod, the Jews react angrily. John has moved away the question to which Jesus remained silent, had Pilate ask Jesus where he was from, and shows Pilate reacting angrily to Jesus’ silence. The evidence suggests that Luke’s two sets of accusations, the specific first and the vague later, better reflects what was in the proposed common source and that John has tampered with the text, switching around the specific and the vague. Therefore, in reconstructing the proposed common source I will align John’s specific allegation with Luke’s specific allegation and John’s vague allegation with Luke’s vague allegation.

The Interrogation in Mark (15:1–5) Mark has the shortest form of the inquiry and is missing several scenes present in both John and Luke, suggesting that Mark has heavily redacted his account. Mark begins by skipping the initial scene in which Jewish charges confer jurisdiction on Pilate. Immediately after Jesus is handed over, Mark jumps straight to Pilate’s first question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”58 Jesus responds, “You say so.” What prompted Pilate’s question? This answer is different from what Jesus said during Mark’s version of the Jewish trial, at which time he admitted to being the messiah and the Son of God. John follows the same pattern but has made alterations by inserting additional dialogue between the question and the answer “You say that I am a king.” John’s alteration switches the admission from one in which Jesus misrepresents his earlier answer to the Jews to one in which he reacts to Pilate’s misunderstanding of the true nature of Jesus’ kingship. Pilate focuses on an earthly king. Jesus spoke about a heavenly king. When Pilate subsequently accuses him of being an earthly king, Jesus’ “You say I am a king” refers specifically to the earthly king of the Jews and not the heavenly ruler. In Luke and John, after Jesus says “You say [that I am the King of the Jews.]” Pilate announces to the crowd that he finds Jesus innocent of the charges and we move into a second interrogation. This declaration is followed by further accusations against Jesus. Mark has no declaration of innocence and no break in the interrogation, but he does follow up the first question and answer with a notice that after the first answer “The chief priests accused him of many things.”59 This suggests that Mark omitted the first declaration of innocence but kept in the negative reaction and the vague second set of charges.

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In Luke and John, the narrative continues with a concern about where Jesus is from. This is followed by a question to Jesus that he refuses to answer. Luke doesn’t tell us what the question was but John connects it to the question about where Jesus was from. However, in my proposed reconstruction of John, I inserted the question to Jesus about what he has done to bring about the charges right after the inquiry about where Jesus is from. Mark omits any discussion about where Jesus came from and continued with the question about what Jesus had done. “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.”60 In Mark, Jesus remains silent when asked that question.61 Luke omits Mark’s question but retains Jesus’ silence after being questioned. He just doesn’t tell us what the questions were. John, in his present structure has Jesus remain silent to a different question. In my revised version, Jesus remains silent to the same basic question Mark poses. In both Luke and John there is an angry reaction to Jesus’ silence. Mark has no reaction. At this point Mark moves on to the Barabbas incident. John introduces the Barabbas incident immediately after the end of the first part of the inquiry so to that extent, both Mark and John place the Barabbas incident immediately after an interrogation of Jesus. Reuniting the second part of John’s interrogation with the first segment doesn’t change the sequential arrangement of inquiry followed by Barabbas incident. Luke comes close to that arrangement but it isn’t as precise. He has inserted most of the mockery section into the middle of the Herod inquiry so there is a distortion in his sequential arrangement. Outside of the Herod inquiry, as we will see, he has one piece of the mockery story that serves as a transition between the end of the Herod segment and the start of the Barabbas incident.

The Herod Problem Luke is the only gospel to introduce Herod into the Roman proceedings. Therefore, we need to look at the question of whether the Herod material came from the proposed common source or from somewhere else, either Luke’s invention or a different source. It is my view that there was some Herod material in the proposed common source but that Luke embellished it by adding in the interrogation and the mockery of Jesus. I suspect that Pilate sent Jesus to Herod and that Herod simply sent him back. It is also possible that Herod may have asked Jesus to perform some signs and Jesus refused. Let’s look at some evidence. All the gospels try to exonerate Pilate from responsibility for the order to crucify Jesus. In Mark and Luke, Pilate is described as yielding to Jewish pressure. John rejects that theme and implies that Pilate’s actions proceed not because of

The Roman Proceedings | 525 Jewish pressure but because it is the plan that the Father has set out. Mark and Luke, however, also appear to exonerate Pilate from the mockery of Jesus by altering the scenario. In Mark, the mockery comes after Pilate has handed Jesus over to the soldiers and Pilate is no longer involved. In Luke, the mockery takes place in front of the Jewish ruler Herod and the mockery is conducted by Jewish soldiers under Herod’s command. This gives Luke two benefits. Not only does he isolate Pilate from the mockery but he also isolates the Roman soldiers. Luke’s gospel reaches out to the gentiles and his Herod scene transfers responsibility for the mockery from gentiles to Jews. John, however, clearly places the mockery in front of Pilate and both Mark and John agree against Luke that the mockery was committed by Roman soldiers. If Mark’s placement of the mockery reflects its location in the proposed common source, it is hard to imagine a reason why John would switch matters around so that Pilate can be blamed for the actions of the soldiers. So for this reason, and for the sequential argument I made above with regard to the mockery narrative, I believe John’s arrangement comes closest to the sequential arrangement in the proposed common source. The agreement of Mark and John against Luke as to which soldiers abused Jesus reinforces the idea that Luke has moved the mockery scene into the Herod scene from somewhere else. Therefore, to the extent there is any Herod material in the proposed common source it does not include the mockery of Jesus. Luke also includes an interrogation of Jesus in the Herod scene but doesn’t tell us what questions Herod asked. However, he does say that Jesus remained silent. But Mark and John agree that Jesus remained silent in response to Pilate. Mark says that the question Pilate asked, and which provoked silence, was “Have you no answer? See how many charges they bring against you.” John also has a variation of that question, but he has separated the question and answer and substituted a different question that elicited silence and a different answer to the demand that he explain why the Jews are bringing charges against him. If we look at all three versions of the interrogations in Mark, John and Luke, wherever two or more gospels have parallel accounts the scenes unfold in the same sequential order except for the one verse in John where Pilate demands that Jesus explain why he is being charged. If we move that verse to just before Jesus remained silent we see that it forms a tight fit with Luke’s narrative sequence. What seems to have happened here is that Luke, like John, found Mark’s question and Jesus’ silence highly embarrassing, a borderline admission that Jesus was indeed guilty of the charges against him and that Pilate acted properly. John

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placed the question and answer into different contexts to eliminate the obvious inference. Luke squashed the question altogether, buried it in the Herod interview, and gave Pilate no reason to infer that Jesus was guilty of the charges. While the above shows why Luke may have had motive to suppress the question and place the silence before Herod, it doesn’t necessarily mean that there was a Herod scene in the proposed common source. Luke may have invented the scene for the very purposes just suggested. But, we have some clues that John knew about the Herod scene and omitted it. The chief piece of evidence is the question from Pilate about where Jesus came from. In Luke, the question is asked of the Jews and it dealt with a jurisdictional dispute as to who should have first crack at Jesus, Pilate or Herod. In John, the question is asked of Jesus, and it is this question in John that Jesus refuses to answer. When we look at Luke and John in tandem, we see that the question about where Jesus comes from and the silence appears at the same sequential location in both gospels, but John has modified the narrative structure by removing the intervening question about what Jesus has done to bring about the charges. Luke has also eliminated the specifics of that question from his narrative at the same place that John has removed the question to a different location, but Luke at least indicates that the question Jesus remained silent for was not the one about where he came from. Similarly, Mark also indicates that Jesus remained silent to a different question than the one about where Jesus came from. But Mark has eliminated the jurisdictional issue completely. That both John and Luke have a question from Pilate about where Jesus came from at virtually the identical sequential location in their gospels, indicates that a similar question appeared in the proposed common source at about the same location, and that it was not John’s version of the question in John’s context. I have already argued above that John had a theological motive for altering the jurisdictional question. John didn’t want the decision to crucify Jesus to be based on a politically motivated question as to who had the authority to execute Jesus. In fact, John specifically addresses the power to execute in response to Pilate’s threat to crucify Jesus for his silence. He told Pilate that no one had the power of death over him unless the Father himself granted it. We are left here with the fact that Luke and John have a question about where Jesus is from and Luke’s version of the question seems to be the more likely to reflect the source version than does John’s. So if the jurisdictional question was raised, it is likely that it brought about some form of deliverance to Herod. If we remove the mockery and Jesus’ silence from Luke’s Herod scene, we are still left

The Roman Proceedings | 527 with the possibility that there was some dialogue between Jesus and Herod. Luke says Herod “questioned him at some length” but doesn’t say what the questions were. This leaves open the possibility that the proposed common source had some questions and answers that Luke suppressed and that some of John’s unique dialogue between Jesus and Pilate could have been adapted from those questions and answers. However, we have no corroboration for what specific questions may have occurred before Herod. Luke also says Herod had hoped to see Jesus perform some signs but doesn’t mention any such requests in his account of the Herod scene. A request to perform a sign may have been among the questions to which Jesus didn’t respond. For purposes of reconstructing the proposed common source I am going to include the question asked by Pilate about where Jesus came from and I am going to include a scene in which Pilate sends Jesus to Herod and a scene in which Herod returns Jesus to Pilate. I can’t replicate what took place between those last two events but will leave open the idea that some dialogue between Jesus and Herod occurred. I am also open to the possibility that Herod sent Jesus back forthwith in order to avoid any official responsibility for deciding Jesus’ fate. It may also be that the refusal to perform a sign satisfied Herod that Jesus was no threat. As a consequence of this decision, I have to move the return of Jesus from Herod to Pilate back before Luke’s second interrogation.

Recreating the Interrogation Narrative Putting together all the pieces from above we can see that in its original form the interrogation narrative consisted of two segments separated by Pilate’s declaration of innocence, a second set of accusations, a jurisdictional dispute, and an appearance before Herod. Mark has heavily redacted the sequence of events and John has eliminated the jurisdictional dispute and Herod interlude. Of the several scenes that make up the narrative arc and which have parallels in at least two of the three gospels, there are only two major verse disorders. One is at John 18:35, Pilate’s question about what Jesus has done to bring about the charges. The other is Luke 23:11b–12, in which Herod sends Jesus back to Pilate. Additionally, John and Luke have two sets of accusations from the Jews at the same point in each narrative. As argued above, John appears to have switched the two sets of charges with each other and I have chosen to align John’s specific charge with Luke’s specific charge and John’s vague charge with Luke’s vague charge. Those changes are reflected in the outline below.

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The following list of scenes indicates the sequential order of events as they appeared in the proposed common source. Unless otherwise indicated, the scenes appear in Mark, Luke, and John. In those scenes not appearing in all three gospels, I add a reference to which gospels they do appear in with the letters M, L, and/or J within parentheses.



1. The Jewish authorities presented charges to Pilate, including a charge that Jesus claimed to be the messiah, a king (L, J, the latter using the term Son of God.) 2. Pilate asked Jesus if he was the King of the Jews. 3. Jesus responded, “You say so.” (M, L, and J after some intervening discussion.) 4. Pilate declared Jesus innocent of the charges (L, J.) 5. The Jews complained and made further accusations that mention activity in Galilee. (Only L mentions Galilee.) 6. Pilate asked Jesus where he came from (L, J, but J modified the context.) 7. Pilate sent Jesus to Herod (L only.) 8. Herod returned Jesus to Pilate (L only, but Luke has the act out of sequential order.) 9. Pilate asked Jesus what he has done to cause the Jews to bring charges (M, J, but John has it out of order.) 10. Jesus remained silent. 11. There was an angry response to Jesus’ silence (L, J, but the two disagree as to who was angry.)

Act II. The Barabbas Incident Despite a few differences in detail, Mark Luke, and John closely adhere to a common version of the Barabbas incident. The basic story is that Pilate offered to release Jesus pursuant to a holiday custom and the Jews requested the release of Barabbas, a man imprisoned by the Romans for violent activity. (Luke omits notice of the custom.) Mark begins the Barabbas incident immediately after his account of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus. He starts by telling us that there was a Passover tradition in which Pilate released anyone the Jews asked for.62 John begins the Barabbas account immediately after the first part of his interrogation of Jesus, after Pilate’s first declaration of innocence.63 In that regard he follows Mark’s pattern of placing the incident immediately after an interrogation of Jesus, but Mark has collapsed the two separate interrogations into a single

The Roman Proceedings | 529 narrative arc. As John is presently arranged, the second part of the interrogation comes after the Barabbas incident. However, if we reunite the two portions of John’s interrogation into a single narrative, as proposed above then John’s full interrogation narrative would end just before the Passover custom, as Mark has it. Intriguingly, Luke makes no mention of this holiday tradition. A few ancient manuscripts of Luke include a reference to the holiday custom but it is widely accepted that these stem from a later scribal addition to the manuscript that received some small amount of circulation.64 Many scholarly translations of Luke omit the mention but include a footnote about the earlier references. Those translations that include the verse usually label it Luke 23:17. It is omitted in the NRSV and I will omit it here in my analysis. Since both Mark and John agree against Luke that the Barabbas scene referenced a holiday tradition of releasing a prisoner, I will include it in the proposed common source. The historicity of this custom is debatable. Following the Passover announcement, Mark says that there was a man in prison named Barabbas, a rebel who committed murder in the course of an insurrection.65 John and Luke also refer to the custody of Barabbas but they put it at the end of the episode. Luke uses wording similar to Mark’s to describe Barabbas66 but John has redacted it, saying only, “Now Barabbas was a bandit.”67 Because John and Luke agree against Mark as to the position of the description I will follow their order. But the difference between Mark and the other two is trivial and of no concern for the purposes of reconstructing the proposed common source. John’s terser description of Barabbas appears to be related to his alternative theory of why the Jews wanted to put Jesus to death. In John’s view, Jesus’ popularity as a potential unauthorized leader of the Jews raised, in Jewish minds, a threat from Rome. In Mark, the theme is jealousy of the priests who see their own political position threatened. It won’t do, therefore, for John to describe the Jews seeking to release a popular rebel leader who challenges Roman authority. Consequently, John diminishes the role of Barabbas such that there can be no parallel between Barabbas and Jesus as popular leaders threatening Rome. Mark follows the description of Barabbas by having the crowd ask Pilate to follow his custom and release someone.68 Pilate says, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?”69 Mark adds that Pilate was aware that the Jews handed Jesus over because they were motivated by jealousy.70 However, the crowd, enamored of the heroic rebel Barabbas, demanded his release instead.71 (Presumably, the priests didn’t see that rebel as a threat to their authority.) That ends Mark’s version of the Barabbas incident.

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In Mark, it is the Jews who invoke the Passover tradition. In John it is Pilate who invokes the custom. After Pilate announces the tradition, John says Pilate turned to the crowd and asked, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?”72 The phrasing of the offer is the same in both Mark and John but the context is very different. Mark says that Pilate made this offer because he knew “that it was out of jealousy that the chief priests had handed [Jesus] over.”73 This clearly contradicts John’s alternative theory about why the Jews handed over Jesus, and if it were in the proposed common source John would have removed the reference to the jealousy. This probably also accounts for why John had Pilate invoke the custom instead of the Jews, as Mark has it. He wanted to eliminate any trace connecting the offer to release Jesus to Jewish jealousy. Luke makes no mention of Pilate offering to release “the King of the Jews” but he does appear to have a truncated reference to the offer. To see that this is the case we have to look at how Luke positioned his version of the Barabbas incident. He places the event almost immediately after the return of Jesus from Herod to Pilate. When Jesus returned, Pilate announced (for the second time in Luke) that he found no case against Jesus. Luke next says, “I will therefore have him flogged and release him.”74 The reference to flogging, I will suggest later, is a remnant of Luke’s repositioning of the mockery of Jesus in front of Herod instead of Pilate. In John, the second declaration of innocence comes right after the mockery of Jesus.75 In Luke, the second declaration of innocence also comes immediately after the mockery, when Jesus is returned to Pilate. In both John and Luke, when Pilate pronounces his second declaration of innocence, he displays Jesus to the crowd while he still wears a mock royal robe. Flogging is part of the mockery scene and Luke does not have any flogging in his version of the abuse. I suggest, therefore, if we skip over the second declaration of innocence and the offer to flog Jesus as part of Luke’s mockery act, we are left with his offer by Pilate to release Jesus. Since Luke also omits the Passover holiday announcement, we find the offer to release Jesus comes at exactly the same place as Mark and John have it. It is my view that Luke redacted the offer to release “the King of the Jews.” I suspect he understood (correctly in my opinion) that Pilate’s offer was a sarcastic remark intended to ridicule Jesus and also to insult the Jews, and Luke found the ridicule of Jesus to be offensive. (See the discussion of the mockery act below.) In my reconstruction of the source material, therefore, I am aligning Luke’s offer to release Jesus with Mark’s and John’s offer to release “the King of the Jews.”

The Roman Proceedings | 531 Mark says the priests responded to Pilate’s offer by urging the crowd to call for the release of Barabbas.76 In John the crowd calls out, “Not this man, but Barabbas!”77 In Luke, the crowd shouts, “Away with this fellow! Release Barabbas for us!”78 The Barabbas Incident can be reduced to the following four scenes in the following order.

• • • •

A notice about a Holiday custom that Pilate release someone from custody; An offer by Pilate to release the “King of the Jews”; A call by the Jews to release Barabbas; A description of Barabbas as a revolutionary who led an insurrection against the Romans.

Mark ends the Barabbas incident with the call for his release and moves directly into the argument over crucifixion.79 Luke and John end the account with descriptions of Barabbas. Mark had moved the description near the beginning of the story. Luke, like Mark, also continues with the argument over crucifixion. However, Mark and Luke moved the mockery out of its original location and disagree with each other as to where it should go. John follows the Barabbas story with the mockery of Jesus. As argued above, I have followed John’s sequential arrangement for the placement of the mockery. Mark incudes a claim that Pilate knew that the priests acted out of jealousy. While it is clear that John would have omitted the allegation if it was in the proposed common source, we note that Luke also has omitted the claim. Ordinarily, I would take the agreement of Luke and John against Mark as a factor in reconstructing the proposed common source. But here, Luke has radically reworked that part of the story so it is not clear if its absence in Luke is due to its absence in the proposed common source or due to Luke’s reworking the description of Pilate’s behavior. For now, I will leave the allegation out of the proposed common source but I have no objection to those who would keep it in.

Act III. The Mockery of Jesus I have already discussed the issue of the correct sequential placement of the Mockery Act and the motivations for alteration. I have opted to follow John’s placement immediately after the Barabbas Incident. It remains now to home in on the details. After describing Barabbas as a bandit, John says that Pilate had Jesus flogged.80 The Roman soldiers then weaved a crown of thorns and placed it on his head.81

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They finished the costuming by draping him in a purple robe.82 (Purple is the royal color.) After dressing him in mock royal regalia, the soldiers approached him and cried out “Hail, King of the Jews!”83 They concluded their salutes by striking Jesus on the face.84 Pilate brought Jesus out from his headquarters, with crown and robe, and presented him to the crowd, declaring, for the second time that he found no case against Jesus.85 Pilate finished his declaration by saying, “Here is the man.”86 Upon this declaration John moves into the “argument over crucifixion” narrative. Mark, as I have pointed out, moved the mockery of Jesus after the decision by Pilate to turn over Jesus for crucifixion. After Pilate succumbs to the crowd’s pressure, he has Jesus flogged and hands him over to be crucified.87 The soldiers lead him away to the courtyard of Pilate’s headquarters and call together the entire “cohort,” a term signifying several hundred soldiers.88 Mark, as in John, says they dressed him in a purple cloak and crown of thorns, and saluted him by calling out “Hail, King of the Jews!”89 These are the same words used in John. While Mark also reports that the soldiers struck Jesus, he adds additional details missing in Luke and John. “They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him.”90 The italicized portion is missing in John. After the mockery, the soldiers removed the robe and placed Jesus back in his own clothes, and led him away to be crucified.91 Mark says nothing about whether the soldiers removed the crown of thorns and it could reasonably be implied that the crown remained on his head. In John, after the mockery, Jesus remained in the robe, and John never specifically says the robe was removed. But after Jesus is led away to be crucified we are told that the soldiers took Jesus’ tunic and divided it up amongst themselves.92 No mention is made of any valuable royal robe. John, therefore, implies, but doesn’t say, that at some point before leading Jesus away the robe was removed. He, too, says nothing about the crown. Luke never mentions the crown to begin with. In all three gospels, there is no specific mention of what happened to the crown but Mark implies that it remained on Jesus’ head. Luke placed the mockery into the Herod interlude. After Herod returned Jesus to Pilate, the governor declared Jesus innocent for the second time and adds that Herod has taken the same position.93 In this regard, therefore, both John and Luke have the second declaration of innocence immediately after the mockery. While Mark and John both agree that a flogging preceded the mockery, Luke has no flogging during the Herod interlude. He does, however, have two separate instances where Pilate talks about flogging Jesus. The first one, as mentioned above, occurs immediately after Pilate declares, for the second time, that Jesus is innocent of wrongdoing. He adds to his declaration of innocence that he will

The Roman Proceedings | 533 have Jesus flogged and released.94 Pilate also repeats this determination to flog and release Jesus after his third declaration of innocence.95 While Pilate’s second flogging statement is clearly unrelated to the mockery, the first is in close narrative connection to Herod’s return of Jesus to Pilate and the governor’s second declaration of innocence. This suggests that Luke has separated the flogging from the mockery. However, we should also note that despite Luke’s two declarations of Pilate’s intent to flog Jesus, Luke never indicates that Jesus was actually whipped. Luke appears to have deliberately disassociated the flogging from the mockery. He has also downplayed the actual mockery. According to Luke, “Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate.”96 Luke, unlike Mark and John, depicts no actual physical abuse of Jesus. Even the crown of thorns is missing. We are told of some undescribed verbal ridicule and that Herod placed Jesus in an “elegant robe” that includes no mention of the royal purple color. Luke is obviously motivated to describe as little physical, visible and verbal abuse of Jesus as the narrative allows. Luke has omitted almost every detail in the mockery story. He shows no flogging; he doesn’t mention the crown of thorns; he omits the color of the robe; he leaves out the specific words used in the verbal abuse; no soldiers strike Jesus. John and Mark have a slight disagreement on the order of the wearing of the robe and the placing of the crown, but the difference is trivial and has no impact on the function of the story. It is simply an editorial preference for the best way to tell the tale. As a general rule, absent any evidence to the contrary, I follow Mark’s order over John’s and do so here. However, based on the agreements between Mark and John, we can identify the following sequence of events in the mockery of Jesus.

• • • • •

Jesus was flogged; Soldiers placed him in a purple robe (the symbol of royalty.) Soldiers placed a crown of thorns on his head. Soldiers called out to him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” Soldiers struck him on the face. (Mark adds additional types of physical abuse but we don’t know if they were mentioned in the proposed common source.)

Act IV. The Argument Over Crucifixion John begins the argument over crucifixion immediately after the mockery scene, with Pilate’s second declaration of innocence. One could argue that the second declaration of innocence ended the mockery rather than started the argument

534 | The

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over crucifixion but the distinction is without value. The boundary is artificial and all that matters is the actual sequence of events. Mark and Luke, on the assumption that John has the correct order, moved the mockery act out of its proper position, so there is a slight disagreement on the chronological sequence of the larger narrative. Mark places the argument over crucifixion right after the Barabbas incident and places the mockery later. Luke has moved the mockery and the second declaration of innocence before the Barabbas incident. So Luke closely associates the second declaration of innocence with the mockery, as does John, but Luke has shifted the scenes earlier. As a consequence, he starts the argument over crucifixion right after the Barabbas incident and in that regard he agrees with Mark, but that is a coincidence as they disagree as to where in the sequence of events the mockery belongs. Mark has no declaration of innocence in his gospel. Moving past the second declaration of innocence, the first Jewish call for crucifixion is triggered by a statement from Pilate related to his desire to release Jesus but the details in Mark, Luke, and John differ. Mark, following the call to release Barabbas, says that Pilate turned to the Jews and said, “Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?”97 Pilate’s statement should be considered as a sarcastic remark belittling Jesus’ importance and ridiculing the Jews for wanting to punish him. The crowd yells out “Crucify him!”98 In John, after the mockery of Jesus, Pilate brings Jesus out before the crowd while he is still wearing his royal clown costume and says he is doing so in order that the crowd will know that the governor finds no case against him.99 Pilate shows the costumed Jesus to the crowd and says, “Here is the man!”100 As in Mark, we have an obvious situation in which Pilate has made a sarcastic remark meant to belittle Jesus and insult the crowd for suggesting that he should punish such a foolish creature. In response, the Jews call out, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”101 Note here that in both Mark and John the trigger causing the Jews to call for the crucifixion of Jesus is a sarcastic remark by Pilate that mocks Jesus and insults the Jews for wanting to punish Jesus. In response to the Jewish demand, John presents a statement by Pilate that is missing from the other gospels. “Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.”102 This statement has two parts. The second part is John’s third declaration of innocence. The first part raises some concerns. John’s direction to the Jews that they crucify Jesus themselves is problematic. Earlier, the Jews said that they were not permitted to put anyone to death and this

The Roman Proceedings | 535 served as a basis for conferring jurisdiction on Pilate to hear the case. Yet, here he is telling the Jews to kill somebody. It is my view that John’s statement by Pilate that the Jews crucify Jesus themselves is a Johannine creation that was used as a substitute for a different statement (see below) and serves as a textual bridge to the second part of John’s interrogation of Jesus by Pilate. Following the third declaration of innocence is the point at which John inserts the second part of his interrogation sequence, with the Jews responding that they have a law and pursuant to that law Jesus must die because he claimed to be the son of God. This response, initiates the second part of the interrogation of Jesus and, as proposed above, I have moved this response and the second interrogation to just after Pilate’s first declaration of innocence. Luke doesn’t quote Pilate. He summarizes the situation by saying that “Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!”103 As with his mockery scene, Luke omits as much description of abuse as he can get away with. He says Pilate spoke to the crowd but doesn’t tell us what Pilate said. By cross reference to Mark and John, we know that Pilate made a sarcastic remark insulting to both Jesus and the Jews. Note also that Luke and John both have the crowd use the word “crucify” twice and Mark has it only once. In Mark, after the Jews call for crucifixion, Pilate replies, “Why, what evil has he done?”104 The Jews shouted again, “Crucify him!”105 In Luke, after the Jews call for crucifixion, Pilate replies, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.”106 The first part of the statement is identical to what Mark has. The second part of the statement is Luke’s third declaration of innocence. The third part of the statement says that Pilate wanted to release Jesus. In John, we have to jump past the second portion of Pilate’s interrogation (John 19:7–11) before we resume the argument over crucifixion. At the end of the second interrogation Pilate returns to the crowd and John says that “From then on Pilate tried to release Jesus.”107 Putting the second interrogation disruption aside, John has the following order of events after the first call for crucifixion: third declaration of innocence and Pilate’s attempt to release Jesus. Luke has the same sequence but he also inserts a copy of Mark’s statement about “What evil has he done?” The question we have to ask is whether Mark’s statement was part of the proposed common source or his reworked version of the declaration of innocence. I believe it was original to the source and that John substituted an alternative statement for Mark’s original. John objects to any formulation in which Jesus’

536 | The

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actions have to be justified under law, Jewish or Roman. Having Pilate ask what evil Jesus has done could leave the impression that Jesus has violated the earthly laws. John believes that Jesus is outside of earthly law and shouldn’t be judged under them. Mark’s version of the statement about “what evil” encourages a discussion of whether or not Jesus violated Jewish or Roman law. John, pursuant to his editorial practices, would need to either change the formulation or omit the question. Earlier I observed that in John, just before the third declaration of innocence Pilate also said, “Take him yourselves and crucify him.” I said I thought the phrase was a Johannine creation. It is my view that John has used the statement as a substitute for the original question about what evil Jesus has done, as reflected in Mark and Luke. It appears at exactly the same point in both Mark and Luke where the question about “what evil” is asked, right after the first call to crucify Jesus. John’s formulation changes the context from one in which Pilate asks for a statement about what laws Jesus broke to one in which Pilate ignores the matter of law and simply tells the Jews to deal with the matter on their own. John’s version has no request to tell Pilate what laws Jesus violated. After the third declaration of innocence, Luke and John both say that Pilate wanted to release Jesus. Luke includes it as the tail end of Pilate’s response to the demand for crucifixion, with Pilate saying he will have Jesus flogged and released.108 In John, no specific quote is given; John simply announces that Pilate wanted to release Jesus.109 Mark omits this effort by Pilate. In Mark and Luke, after Pilate’s response, the Jews call out for a second time to have Jesus crucified.110 The two gospels then move to the decision stage of the narrative. John has some additional material before we get to the second call for crucifixion and the decision stage. After saying that Pilate wanted to release Jesus, John says that the Jews called out, “If you release this man, you are no friend of the emperor. Everyone who claims to be a king sets himself against the emperor.”111 The implication here is that if Pilate releases Jesus he would be committing treason against Rome because no one can be allowed to claim kingship without Rome’s consent. The argument, of course, is in regard to earthly kingship and John has tried hard to show that Jesus’ kingship has nothing to do with earthly rule. John says that Pilate went to the official judgment seat but that he hadn’t quite abandoned his efforts to free Jesus.112 He adds that it was about noon on the day of Preparation for Passover, which is the day that the Jews slaughter the lamb.113 He turns to the Jews and says “Here is your king!”114 The idea here is that

The Roman Proceedings | 537 Pilate indicates that claiming this flogged and ridiculed person could be a king is foolish and the Jews should be ashamed of themselves for pursuing this cause of action. But the Jews remained unconvinced. They shout, “Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!”115 This is John’s second call for crucifixion. John says that Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?”116 The chief priests answered, “We have no king but the emperor.”117 At this point Pilate moves to the decision stage. Note here that some of John’s extra dialogue is not present in Mark and Luke. The Jews aggressively insist on their total and absolute loyalty to Rome and oppose any act that can be construed as undercutting Rome’s authority, whether by the Jews or by Pilate. They even suggest that Pilate’s behavior borders on treason against Rome. This theme plays into John’s alternative theory about why the Jews wanted to kill Jesus. As you will recall, when Caiaphas determined that Jesus had to die it was because otherwise Rome would not only be unhappy, but it would also destroy both the Temple and the nation. This display of pro-Roman chauvinism among the Jews in John’s gospel should be seen in the context of Caiaphas’s fear. The Jews need to show Rome that they have nothing to fear from the Jewish ­people. Given this connection between John’s alternative theme and this extra dialogue we should assume that this supplemental debate is a Johannine creation and I am omitting it from the proposed common source.

The Argument over Crucifixion in the Proposed Common Source Based on a synthesis of the evidence above, the argument over crucifixion in the proposed common source appears to unfold in the following order. The letters M, L, and J indicate which scenes appear in which gospels.



1. Pilate declared Jesus innocent for the second time (L, J). 2. Pilate made a sarcastic remark ridiculing the Jewish belief that Jesus is some sort of threat (M, J). Luke omitted the specific language. 3. Jews called for Jesus to be crucified (M, L. J). John and Luke agree against Mark that the Jews used the term “crucify” twice in this demand. Mark indicates only once. 4. Pilate asked, “Why, what evil has he done (M, L)?” John has an altered formulation of this question, inserting instead, “Take him yourselves and crucify him.”

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5. Pilate declared Jesus innocent for the third time (L, J). 6. Pilate tried to release Jesus (L, J). 7. Jews called for crucifixion for a second time (M, L. J).

Act V. The Decision After the second call for crucifixion, Mark says, “So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified.118 As I pointed out above, the flogging of Jesus here is connected to the start of the mockery scene, which Mark has moved after the verdict. Mark says that Pilate gave in to two demands, the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus. Luke also says Pilate gave into their demands, releasing Barabbas (whom he doesn’t mention by name) and handing Jesus over for crucifixion.119 He reiterates that Barabbas was “the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder,” no doubt as a contrast to the peaceful Jesus. John says they handed over Jesus but says nothing about releasing Barab120 bas. His omission of Barabbas’s release differs from others and we should address the disagreement. Historically, for a variety of reasons, it would be absurd to believe that Pilate would have released Barabbas, but we are not concerned with history; we are concerned with sources, accurate or otherwise. I suspect that the proposed common source included the release of Barabbas and John omitted it. This is consistent with John’s earlier alteration of Barabbas’s description, treating him simply as a bandit. The release of a popular rebel would conflict with John’s message that Jews feared Rome would crack down on the Jews because of a popular Jesus. More importantly, John and Mark both agreed that there was a Passover custom that Pilate release one individual, whichever one the Jews demanded. Since the Jews demanded Barabbas, Pilate would have been obligated to release him. Failure to do so would cause narrative problems that would have to be dealt with. John doesn’t actually say Barabbas wasn’t released. He just doesn’t say one way or the other. So for purposes of reconstruction, I will include the release of Barabbas in the common source. John also lacks the allegation that Pilate succumbed to Jewish pressure in handing Jesus over. John presents the entire Passion drama as God’s divine plan so Pilate’s actions can’t be the result of a personal decision based on earthly pressures. Therefore John simply says that Pilate handed Jesus over without exploring any motivation.

The Roman Proceedings | 539

Reconstructing the Roman Proceeding According to the Proposed Common Source Table 11.2, The Roman Proceedings in the Proposed Common Source, synthesizes the various threads from the above discussions and shows what I believe the proposed common source had to say about the Roman proceedings. The numbers in the first column indicate the sequential order of scenes in the proposed common source. Highlighted cells indicate that gospel’s departure from the proposed order. As described above, the primary sequential disagreement among the three gospels is over the placement of the mockery of Jesus. For reasons explained above, I have opted to go with John’s arrangement and have moved the components of the mockery so that they coincide with John’s version of the event. Within that context, both John and Luke have divided the interrogation of Jesus into two segments, with a declaration of innocence at the end of the first segment. Luke and John both insert some narrative material before the second part of the interrogation resumes. Luke follows the declaration of innocence with a vague set of additional charges that mention activity in Galilee. This leads Pilate to ask where Jesus is from and the transfer of Jesus to Herod for further disposition. Luke has placed part of the mockery in front of Herod and part after the return of Jesus to Pilate. Luke also assigned the second interrogation to Herod, and, while he doesn’t tell us what questions were asked, he says Jesus remained silent. Mark and John both agree that Jesus remained silent in response to questioning by Pilate. I have, therefore, moved Luke’s second interrogation and the mockery after the Herod interlude. Based on John’s indication that Pilate did in fact express a concern as to where Jesus was from, and based on the arguments above, I concluded that there was a Herod interlude but that both John and Mark omitted it. As a consequence, I moved Herod’s return to Pilate before the second interrogation in Luke. This is reflected in Table 11.2 by showing that scene out of order in Luke’s gospel. Something probably did happen during the Herod interlude but we can’t say what. Since Luke says that Herod wanted to see a sign from Jesus, there is a good chance that there was such a request of Jesus when he appeared before the Galilean ruler and that Jesus refused to provide one. But we have no corroboration for such a scene so I have omitted any details between the arrival of Jesus before Herod and the return of Jesus to Pilate. Putting aside Luke’s placement of the mockery and the return of Jesus to Pilate, Luke has one other departure from the proposed sequential order. Luke

540 | The

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Table 11.2:  The Roman proceedings in the proposed common source. Source: Author CS# Scene Description I. The Interrogation 1 Jewish authorities accuse Jesus of claiming to be “King of the Jews.” 2 Pilate asks Jesus if he is “King of the Jews.” 3 Jesus responds, “You say so.” 4 Pilate declares Jesus innocent of wrongdoing. 5 Jewish authorities make further complaints against Jesus. 6 Pilate wants to know where Jesus is from. 7 Pilate sends Jesus to Herod. 8 Herod returns Jesus to Pilate. 9 Pilate asks Jesus why the authorities brought charges against him. [Luke doesn’t tell us what questions Herod asked.] 10 Jesus remains silent. 11 Reaction to Jesus’ silence. II. The Barabbas Incident 12 There is a Passover custom for the release of a prisoner. 13 Pilate wants to release the “King of the Jews.” [Luke omits the phrase “King of the Jews”] 14 The Jews call for the release of Barabbas. 15 Barabbas is described as a rebel. III. The Mockery of Jesus 16 Pilate has Jesus flogged. 17 Soldiers mock Jesus by placing a purple robe on him. [Luke omits the robe’s color.] 18 Soldiers mock Jesus by placing a crown of thorns on his head.

Mark

Luke

John

23:2

19:7

15:2a

23:3a

18:33

15:2b

23:3b 23:4

18:37b 18:38b

15:3

23:5

18:30 19:8–9a

15:4

23:6 23:7–8 23:11c 23:9a

23:9b 23:10

19:9b 19:10

15:5

15:6, 8

18:35

18:39a

15:9–10

23:16b

18:39b

15:11 15:7

23:18 23:19

18:40a 18:40b

15:15b 23:16a 15:16–17a 23:11b

19:1 19:2b

15:17b

19:2a

The Roman Proceedings | 541 Table 11.2:  Continued CS# Scene Description

Mark

Luke

John

19

15:18

23:11a

19:3a

Soldiers mock Jesus by calling out “Hail, King of the Jews.” [Luke omits the specific words.] 20 Soldiers strike Jesus. IV. The Argument Over Crucifixion 21 Pilate declares Jesus innocent for the second time. 22 Pilate makes a sarcastic remark about Jesus in an effort to get Jewish consent for the release. [Luke omits the sarcastic remarks.] 23 Jews call for the crucifixion of Jesus. 24 Pilate asks, “Why, what evil has he done?” [John substitutes a different question with a similar theme.] 25 Pilate declares Jesus innocent for the third time. 26 Pilate wants to release Jesus. 27 Jews call for crucifixion a second time. V. The Decision 28 Pilate succumbs to Jewish pressure. 29 Pilate releases Barabbas. 30 Pilate hands over Jesus for crucifixion. 31 The soldiers replace the purple robe with Jesus’ original clothing.

15:19

19:3b 23:13–15

19:4

15:12

23:20

19:5

15:13 15:14a

23:21 23:22b

19:6a 19:6b

23:22a, c

19:6c

23:22d 23:23a

19:12a 19:15a

15:14b 15:15a 15:15b 15:15c 15:20

23:23b–24 23:25a 23:25b 19:16a Implied by 19:23

Highlighted verse citations indicate that they have been moved out of that gospel’s original sequential placement.

placed Pilate’s second declaration of innocence before the Barabbas incident. Mark and John place the Barabbas incident immediately after the interrogation of Jesus, so Luke appears to be out of order. John places the second declaration of innocence immediately after the mockery. Luke’s placement of the second declaration of innocence is placed in the context of the mockery act, with Jesus appearing before the Jews in a faux royal robe.

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I suspect therefore, that Luke’s placement of the second declaration of innocence is an artifact of his manipulation of the mockery data. Table 11.2 shows Luke’s second declaration of innocence aligned alongside John’s second declaration, after the mockery of Jesus. Aside from the mockery of Jesus, I have moved only one scene in Mark out of that gospel’s order. In the Barabbas incident, Luke and John place the description of Barabbas at the end of the incident, although John has significantly modified the description of Barabbas from a rebel to just a bandit. Mark places the incident earlier in the course of the incident. Because John and Luke agree against Mark I have followed their arrangement rather than Mark’s. But the disagreement is trivial and of no importance. It changes no context and simply reflects an editorial decision about the best way to tell the story. John, for reasons explained above has made a number of changes to the interrogation narrative. He has moved the second set of accusations and the follow up questioning into the middle of the argument over crucifixion. I have moved that sequence (John 19:7–11) back to just after the first declaration of innocence, where we now have a close alignment between John and Luke as to the second interrogation sequence. John has also made a couple of other changes. He has, I propose, transferred the question about what Jesus did to bring about the charges from just before Jesus’ silent response in the second part of the interrogation to the middle of the first interrogation as to whether Jesus was King of the Jews. I have moved that verse (18:35) back before the silent reaction. Somewhat less significant, but interesting as regards how John reframed the interrogation, was his switching around of the specific charge (“Son of God,” i.e., “messiah”) and the vague charge about being a criminal. I have reversed John’s arrangement so that John’s specific charge coincides with Luke’s specific charge and John’s vague charge coincides with Luke’s vague charge. Even without the switch, the presence of two sets of charges at the same points where Luke has two sets of charges shows clear parallels between John and Luke. Mark has kept only the vague charges. Finally, John has one trivial variation from Mark during the mockery of Jesus. In Mark, the soldiers put on the robe and then the crown. In John the soldiers put on the crown and then the robe. The difference is meaningless and has no impact on the context. It is just an editorial judgement. As a general rule, where there is no additional evidence and Mark and John disagree on a sequence, I tend to follow Mark.

The Roman Proceedings | 543 For all practical purposes, in Mark and Luke, once the pieces of the mockery of Jesus are put back in alignment with John, there is almost no significant variation in the sequential order of events. There is an issue of John’s moving the second part of the interrogation around and the moving of an important specific question in the interrogation out of order, but the overall impact on the full narrative of the Roman proceedings is minimal. Based on the analysis above I see virtually no reason to doubt that Mark, Luke, and John all developed their account of the Roman proceeding from a common written source.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

(Brown 1994), 860. (Brown 1994), 743. (Brown 1994), 758 (Brown 1994), 736. Luke has a separate interrogation with Herod. John has a second interrogation with Pilate. Mark 15:2. Mark 15:4. John 18:34. John 18:35. John  19:9. Luke 23:6–7. Luke  23:9. John  5:27. Luke  23:2. Luke  20:25. Luke  20:24. Luke  23:3. Luke  23:3. Luke  23:4. John  18:28. John  18:29. John  18:30. John  18:31. John  18:31. John  18:32.

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26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

John  18:33. John  10:25. John  18:34. John  18:35. John  18:36. John  18:37. John  18:37. John  18:37. John  18:38. Luke  23:5. Luke  23:6. Luke  23:7. Luke  23:12. Luke  23:8. Luke  13:31. Luke  9:7–9. Luke  23:9. Luke  23:10. Luke  23:11. Luke  23:12. Luke  23:14. Luke  23:13. John  19:7. John  19:8 John  19:9. John  19:9. John  19:10. John  19:11. John  19:7. John  19:9a. John  19:9b. John  20:31. Mark  15:2. Mark  15:3. Mark  15:4. Mark  15:5. Mark  15:6. John  18:39. (Metzger 1994), 153. Mark  15:7. Luke  23:19.

The Roman Proceedings | 545 67. John 18:40. 68. Mark 15:.8. 69. Mark 15:9. 70. Mark 15:10. 71. Mark 15:11. 72. John 18:40. 73. Mark 15:10. 74. Luke 23:16. 75. John 19:4. 76. Mark 15:11. 77. John 18:40. 78. Luke 23:18. 79. Mark 15:12. 80. John 19:1. 81. John 19:2. 82. John 19:2. 83. John 19:3. 84. John 19:3. 85. John 19:4–5. 86. John 19:5. 87. Mark 15:15. 88. Mark 15:16. 89. Mark 15:17–18. 90. Mark 15:19. 91. Mark 15:20. 92. John 19:23. 93. Luke 23:14–15. 94. Luke 23:16. 95. Luke 23:22. 96. Luke 23:11. 97. Mark 15:12. 98. Mark 15:13. 99. John 19:4–5. 100. John  19:5. 101. John  19:6. 102. John  19:6. 103. Luke  23:21. 104. Mark  15:14. 105. Mark  15:14. 106. Luke  23:22. 107. John  19:12.

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108. Luke  23:22. 109. John  19:12. 110. Mark 15:14; Luke 23:3. 111. John  19:12. 112. John  19:13. 113. John  19:14. 114. John  19:14. 115. John  19:15. 116. John  19:15. 117. John  19:15. 118. Mark  15:15. 119. Luke 23:24–25. 120. John  19:16.

Bibliography Brown, R. E. (1994). The Death of the Messiah (Vol. One). New York: Doubleday. Metzger, B. M. (1994). A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.). London; New York: United Bible Societies.

12

The Crucifixion

In this chapter I review the crucifixion stories in Mark, Luke, and John. To a large extent, all three revolve around the same basic story, although in some places the details are different and each of the gospels has some elements that do not appear in either of the other two. The following list outlines the broad substance of the crucifixion story.

• Soldiers brought Jesus to a place known as “Skull” (or Golgotha to use the original Hebrew name). • Jesus was crucified between two other crucified individuals. • An inscription containing the words “king of the Jews” was placed on the cross. • Soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing. • People mocked Jesus while he was on the cross. • Jesus was offered sour wine to drink. • Jesus uttered his final words • Jesus died. • Mary Magdalene and another woman named Mary witnessed the crucifixion. • Unnamed women who followed Jesus witnessed the crucifixion.

The two major differences among the gospel narratives revolve around the mockeries of Jesus while he was on the cross and the final words of Jesus. None of the

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Table 12.1:  The crucifixion story in Mark, Luke, and John. Source: Author Scene

Mark

Luke

John

1. Jesus led away. 2. Someone helped Jesus carry the cross

15:20b 15:21

23:26a 23:26b

19:16b 19:17a

along the route.

3. Jesus addressed his women followers 4. Two criminals were led away with Jesus. 5. Jesus was taken to a place called “Skull.” 6. “Skull” is a translation of the Hebrew

15:22 15:22

7. Jesus offered wine with myrrh. 8. Jesus was crucified. 9. Jesus was placed between two crucified

15:23 15:24a 15:27

23:33b 23:33c

19:18a 19:18b

15:25 15:26

23:38

19:19

23:34b

19:20–22 19:23–25a 19:26–27

word “Golgotha.”

bandits. 10. Time of crucifixion fixed. 11. An inscription placed on cross contained the words “king of the Jews.” 12. Jews argued with Pilate over inscription. 13. Soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothes. 14. Jesus talked to his mother and the Beloved Disciple. 15. First mockery of Jesus on the cross. 16. Second mockery of Jesus on the cross. 17. Third mockery of Jesus on the cross. 18. One of crucified bandits demonstrated faith in Jesus. 19 Jesus offered salvation to the crucified bandit. 20. Darkness fell from noon to three. 21. Jesus cried out in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” 22. Bystanders misunderstood the Aramaic and thought Jesus called out for Elijah 23. Jesus said he was thirsty. 24. Someone went to fetch some wine. 25. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink.

15:24b

23:27–31 23:32 23:33a

19:17b 19:17b

15:29–30 23:35 15:31–32a 23:36a, 37 15:32b 23:39 23:40–42 23:43 15:33 15:34

23:44

15:35

15:36a 15:36a

23:36b

19:28 19:29a 19:29a

The Crucifixion | 549 Table 12.1:  Continued Scene

Mark

26. Someone said they should wait to see if Elijah appears. 27. The wine was poured onto a sponge and raised up to Jesus on a stick. 28. Jesus drank the offered wine. 29. Jesus’ uttered his last words. [Mark, Luke and John disagree over what those words were.] 30. Jesus died. 31. The Temple curtain tore in two. 32. Centurion commented on Jesus. 33. Mary Magdalene and another Mary witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus. 34. Crowds departed, beating their breasts. 35. Unnamed female followers witnessed the crucifixion.

15:36b

Luke

15:36c–d

15:37a

19:29b

23:46a

15:37b 26:46b 15:38 23:45 15:39 23:47 15:40–41a

15:41b

John

23:48 23:49

19:30a 19:30b

19:30c

19:25b

19:25b

three gospels agree on what the last words of Jesus were. As to the mockeries, Mark and Luke. each show three mockeries of Jesus, although they disagree on who the mockers were and the order of the mocking. John, on the other hand, has no direct mocking of Jesus but, as I will suggest below, he has substituted one of his unique scenes for the synoptic mockeries. For purposes of analysis, I have separated each of the three gospel accounts into separate scenes and then aligned them in as close to a sequential arrangement as possible. Altogether, I identified 35 separate scenes distributed among the three gospels. Of those, 26 appear in Mark, five of which are unique to his gospel; 22 appear in Luke, five of which are unique to his gospel; and 18 appear in John, four of which are unique to his gospel. However, John has one scene that has parallels to two different scenes in Mark, so on a literary level, John has 19 parallel scenes. Table 12.1, The Crucifixion Story in Mark, Luke, and John, lays out all the scenes along with the appropriate verse citations. Initially, I sorted the scenes in Johannine order, except for 19:25b, which names some of the women

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followers present at the crucifixion. For those scenes not present in John, I followed Mark’s order. Those scenes unique to Luke appear in Luke’s order. Highlighted verse citations indicate that the scene is listed out of that gospel’s order. Given this arrangement, the sequential order turns out to have some interesting results. Only two scenes in Mark (# 9, 13) are listed out of order and only one scene in John (#32) is out of order. That’s a fairly strong indication that they know a common sequential order. I will argue later, however, that one of John’s unique scenes, the argument between the Jews and Pilate over what the inscription on the cross should say (#12 in the list) is a substitute for the later mockery scenes in Mark and Luke, and, as a consequence of that editorial change, John’s current placement is out of order with respect to the prosed common source. Within that collection of 35 scenes, the following eleven appear in all three gospels.

• • • • • • • • • • •

Jesus was led away. The cross was carried along the route. Jesus was taken to a place called “Skull. Jesus was crucified. Two others were crucified with Jesus. An inscription placed on the cross contained the words “King of the Jews.” Soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothing. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink. Jesus uttered his final words just before he died. Jesus died. Unnamed female followers witnessed the crucifixion

Table 12.2, The Triple Agreements in the Crucifixion Story, lists all eleven along with the verse citations and the corresponding scene numbers from Table 12.1. Highlighted cells indicate which scenes are out of order in the indicated gospel. Because the eleven scenes appear in all three gospels, I have included all of them in the proposed common source. Additional scenes from the proposed common source will be identified later. Mark’s two out of order scenes appear in this group of triple agreements. An interesting feature of these two scenes is that if the two switched places, Mark and John would be in sequential agreement across all eleven scenes. This suggests that the sequential disagreement between Mark and John is trivial at best. simply reflecting an editorial judgement about how to tell the same story, and reinforces the suggestion that Mark and John knew a common sequential order for all eleven scenes.

The Crucifixion | 551 Table 12.2:  The triple agreements in the crucifixion story. Source: Author Scene

Mark

Luke

John

1. Jesus led away. 2. Someone helped Jesus carry the cross

15:20b 15:21

23:26a 23:26b

19:16b 19:17a

5. Jesus was taken to a place called “Skull.” 8. Jesus was crucified. 9. Jesus was placed between two crucified

15:22 15:24a 15:27

23:33a 23:33b 23:33c

19:17b 19:18a 19:18b

15:26

23:38

19:19

15:24b 15:36a 15:37a 15:37b 15:41b

23:34b 23:36b 23:46a 26:46b 23:49

19:23–25a 19:29a 19:30b 19:30c 19:25b

along the route.

bandits. 11. An inscription placed on cross contained the words “king of the Jews.” 13. Soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothes. 25. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink. 29. Jesus’ uttered his last words 30. Jesus died. 35. Unnamed female followers witnessed the crucifixion.

Scenes are listed in the order of the proposed common source. Scene numbers are from Table 12.1. Highlighted cells indicate that the verses are out of that gospel’s sequential order.

The Journey to Skull After Pilate’s verdict, all three gospels tell us that soldiers led Jesus away for crucifixion. Mark, however, before Jesus departs, inserts his out-of-order Roman soldier mockery of Jesus (see Chapter 11). After the Roman soldiers lead Jesus away, Mark says they compelled a passer-by to carry (or help carry) the cross that Jesus would be placed upon.1 Mark identifies the passer-by as “Simon of Cyrene, the father of Rufus and Alexander.”2 Mark’s casual mention of Rufus and Alexander without identifying characteristics, named only in his gospel, suggests that the two individuals were known to the members of Mark’s community. Cyrene was a city in coastal Libya and perhaps that is where his community resided. Luke follows Mark in mentioning the assistance of Simon of Cyrene but omits the names of his children, suggesting that they were not well-known in Luke’s community.3 John omits any mention of Simon, saying that Jesus carried the cross by himself.4

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Since there is no reason to think from John’s gospel alone that anyone other than Jesus carried the cross, his emphasis on Jesus carrying it alone suggests that he is responding to the claim that Simon (or some unidentified individual) carried it or helped Jesus carry it. From John’s theological perspective there is no reason for Jesus to need any help in carrying the cross. I accept, therefore, that the proposed common source indicated that someone helped Jesus carry the cross and John challenged that detail. Whether Simon was specifically mentioned in the proposed common source as the person who assisted Jesus we can’t determine on the present evidence. Luke inserts some scenes into the journey narrative that are unique to his gospel. He says that numerous women followed along the route with Jesus and that Jesus spoke to them.5 He also says that the two individuals crucified along with Jesus were in the procession.6 At the end of the trek, Mark says, “Then they brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means the place of a skull).”7 John says, they came “to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha.”8 Luke says, “They came to the place that is called The Skull” but he says nothing about the name Golgotha.9 Mark and John agree against Luke that the place was actually called Golgotha. Both also agree that name, when translated, means “Place of the Skull.” Luke only says the location was called “The Skull,” which has a slightly different sense of meaning than the phrasing used in Mark and John. John is the only one to mention that Golgotha is a Hebrew word. Mark refers to “a” skull and John refers to “the” skull. They also disagree on the order of the information presented, but the difference is trivial. The takeaway is that the names “Golgotha” and “Place of [the/a] Skull” were both present in the proposed common source. Mark and John include both; Luke omits the Hebrew name. For this reason I believe the that the Hebrew name Golgotha appeared in the proposed common source as well as the translated name “Place of [the/a] Skull.” Upon arriving at Golgotha Mark inserts a scene not present in Luke or John, in which Jesus is offered some wine with myrrh and he rejects it.10 Shockingly, Matthew, who records Jesus declaration that he would not drink wine again until “that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom,”11 says that Jesus tasted the wine before rejecting it.12 Matthew aside, the agreement of John and Luke against Mark suggests that Mark added this scene to the narrative, but see the discussion below about Jesus being offered wine while on the cross.

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The Crucifixion At this point in the respective narratives, all the gospels say Jesus was crucified.13 However, we now encounter some minor, relatively trivial, disagreements as to the sequential order of events following the crucifixion. After reporting the crucifixion, John says Jesus was crucified with two others.14 Luke also says immediately after the crucifixion announcement that Jesus was crucified with the two bandits whom he mentioned earlier in the procession.15 Mark delays mentioning the “two bandits” until later, inserting some other events before reaching that notice.16 The agreement of John and Luke against Mark as to the sequential arrangement indicates that Mark is the one who altered the sequence. All three gospels agree that Jesus was crucified along with two others and that Jesus appeared in the middle. Mark and Luke say the other two were bandits, placed on Jesus’ left and right. John omits the “bandit” description and says they were placed on either side of Jesus. John’s placement of the two others is identical to that of Mark and Luke although he uses different words. John very probably omitted the “bandit” description so that it wouldn’t detract from the symbolic death of Jesus according to God’s plan. There would not be, per John’s perspective, any reason for Jesus to emphasize that the other persons crucified were criminals since it could divert attention away from the climax of Jesus’ mission. Nor does there seem to be any reason that Mark would add in that they were criminals if the information was missing in the source. Also persuasive in favor of Mark’s description is that the two men would only have been crucified if they were found to be criminals of some sort. So I accept that the proposed common source identified the men as bandits and John omitted the description. Putting aside for the moment Mark’s shuffling of the two bandits sequence, his gospel moves from (a) the crucifixion announcement, to (b) a declaration of the specific hour of Jesus’ crucifixion17 (which is not present in either John or Luke,) to (c) the words placed on Jesus’ cross, “King of the Jews.”18 Mark places the notice about the two bandits after telling us what words were on the cross. John also moves from the announcement of Jesus crucifixion (alongside the two others) to the notice of the words on the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”19 However, John adds some unique material to his account that describes an argument between Pilate and the Jews over the inscription.20 Although the scene appears only in John, we will see later that John substituted it for the mockery scenes in Mark and Luke.

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In effect, Mark and John say, in sequential agreement, that Jesus was crucified and there were words placed on the cross and the words included “King of the Jews.” Luke diverges from this sequence, placing the message on the inscription later in his narrative.21 In Luke, the words read, “This is the King of the Jews.” Because Mark and John agree against Luke as to the sequence of the crucifixion and the placing of an inscription on the cross, I follow their arrangement rather than Luke’s. All three disagree on the precise words used, but all include “King of the Jews” in the posting. Whether other words also appeared, we can’t say. Here we come to a second sequential disagreement between Mark and John. The latter moves from the issues related to the inscription on the cross to a report about the soldiers dividing up Jesus clothes into portions and then drawing lots for his tunic.22 Mark, on the other hand has placed the casting of lots for the clothing before telling us what was on the inscription.23 John adds some scriptural quotes implying a prophecy about the soldiers’ behavior but this citation is missing in Mark and Luke.24 Luke places a terser version of the division of the clothes almost immediately after telling us Jesus was crucified with two criminals.25 In between the two events is material unique to Luke but not present in many early important textual witnesses to Luke’s gospel.26 He says that Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”27 (Since this verse is not present in all ancient versions of Luke we can’t be sure it is original to the gospel. The NRSV includes it in parentheses, indicating some hesitation about its validity.) If we acknowledge that Luke has moved the notice about the inscription on the cross out of sequence, as suggested by the agreement of Mark and John against Luke, and move it back to where Mark and John have it, then Luke’s placement of the division of the clothing would align with John against Mark. Such agreement between John and Luke against Mark suggests, again, that Mark has altered the sequential arrangement. If we take the two passages that appear to have been relocated by Mark and simply switch them with each other, Mark and John fall into near perfect sequential order, disagreeing with each other on the placement of only one scene, the naming of the women at the crucifixion (#33 in Table 12.1).

A Gap in John Following the division of Jesus’ clothes, John has some material missing from the other gospels. He says that Jesus’ mother, other named women, and the Be-

The Crucifixion | 555 loved Disciple were present at the cross and that Jesus had a conversation with his mother in which he told her that she should treat the Beloved Disciple as a son and that the Beloved Disciple should treat Jesus’ mother as his own.28 He also says that Jesus’ mother became a member of the Beloved Disciple’s household.29 The mention of the named women can be separated from the presence of Jesus’ mother (who is not named) and the conversations between Jesus, his mother, and the Beloved Disciple. None of the other gospels indicate that these named women were present near the cross, and I will suggest later that the particular passage, including named and unnamed women, belongs after Jesus’ death, as Mark has it. (That is the Johannine scene that I mentioned earlier as spanning two different scenes in Mark. The Beloved Disciple material is clearly Johannine in origin and I will return to those verses later.) Following the Beloved Disciple passage, John jumps to Jesus’ last moments. Mark and Luke, however, have a substantial amount of additional material before arriving at the final few seconds of Jesus’ life. These include several instances of mockery and some supernatural occurrences. I will review those scenes later.

Jesus’ Last Moments Mark and John both agree that just before Jesus died someone placed sour wine on a sponge and used a stick or branch to place it before Jesus. Luke also has a scene where soldiers offer Jesus sour wine while he was on the cross, but they do so mockingly, and there is no sponge or stick to place the wine before Jesus’ lips.30 Together, all three agree that someone offered Jesus sour wine while he was on the cross. Mark, as previously noted also has an earlier scene, before Jesus was crucified, in which wine was offered and rejected, but in Mark, the earlier wine was mixed with myrrh, so it wasn’t sour. To clarify, Mark has two separate scenes involving the offer of wine, one before crucifixion and one after. Below, I’ll suggest a reason why Mark may have added this scene. Mark says someone “filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to [Jesus] to drink.”31 But Mark introduces this scene with some material missing in Luke and John. In these extra preceding passages, Mark says that before Jesus was offered wine, he cried out “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”32 The words are Aramaic and Mark translates them as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”33 But, according to Mark, the crowd misunderstood what Jesus said and thought he had called out for Elijah.34

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At this point “someone ran, filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a stick, and gave it to [Jesus] to drink.”35 Mark doesn’t say why the person fetched the wine or whether Jesus drank it. But he does say that while handing up the wine the person said they should wait to see if Elijah takes him down.36 At that very moment, Jesus cried out and died.37 Mark’s passage presents some problems. Neither John nor Luke include the specific quote, with or without the Aramaic, and neither includes the surrounding material in which Mark embeds it. Ordinarily, the agreement of Luke and John would lead to the conclusion that Mark has not followed the proposed common source in the manner that John and Luke do. But here I don’t think that is the case. Mark’s Jesus quote is one of such anguish and despair it is hard to imagine that he would substitute if for the words uttered in Luke or John if those other words were in the proposed common source. The surrounding material, which doesn’t seem to have a direct theological connection to Jesus’ words, is so intricately connected to Mark’s quote that it is hard to imagine why if he invented the quote he would have also added this additional material to it. At the same time, there is good reason to think that if John and Luke found a version of Mark’s quote in the proposed common source, they would have considered it deeply troubling and each would have had independent motives to change the story. Both have consistently attempted to minimize any showing of suffering on the part of Jesus. In Luke, for example, when Jesus appeared before Pilate, who ordered Jesus be flogged, Luke never actually shows Jesus being whipped. My inclination is to accept Mark’s version as the one that comes closest to what was in the proposed common source. Let’s take a look at Luke and John and consider the issues further. According to John, the last moments begin with Jesus saying he was thirsty.38 Neither Mark nor Luke have such a request. But John adds that the request was “in order to fulfill the scripture.”39 This gloss suggests that John was trying to explain away an existing claim that Jesus was thirsty just before his death and requested relief. Since John’s Jesus never needs help or relief, John had to explain away the request. So the act was defined as the fulfilment of a prophecy. Furthermore, John says that when the wine was placed before Jesus, he “received” it.40 In other words, Jesus drank the wine. If this scene were in the proposed common source, and I can’t imagine John including it unless it were, it would have raised a major red flag for Mark and Luke. In their accounts, Jesus said at the Last supper, “Truly I tell you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”41That promise isn’t in John’s gospel.

The Crucifixion | 557 While Mark says someone “filled a sponge with sour wine” and held it up to Jesus, Mark omits John’s claim that Jesus received it. I suspect that he deliberately omitted it from his gospel and added in the earlier offering of wine to show Jesus specifically rejecting the offer of wine. Yet, Matthew, as I note above, who has Jesus make the same promise as in Mark, says in his version of Mark’s scene about the earlier offer of wine, that Jesus tasted it.42 So, there clearly seems to be some tradition that Jesus sipped wine during the crucifixion story. After Jesus said he was thirsty, John said there was a jar of sour wine close by.43 “So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth.”44 John’s description of the offering of the wine closely follows Mark’s. When offered the wine, John says Jesus received it.45 Mark doesn’t show Jesus accepting the sour wine offering but neither does he indicate that Jesus rejected it. Luke omits the scene altogether. I include Jesus drinking the wine in the proposed common source. Following the offer of wine, John gives us Jesus’ final words. “It is finished.”46 Jesus then lowered his head “and gave up his spirit.”47 John’s version of the final words reflects his theological scheme; events unfolded according to God’s plan. The plan had now been completed. It was time for him to die, as the Father wanted. This suggests that whatever the final words were in the proposed common source, John has substituted a different speech. John has no crying out by Jesus, no anguish, no despair, no sense of abandonment. This is in complete contrast to Mark’s depiction. Both Mark and John connect the handing up of the wine as the introduction to Jesus’ last act. Mark places Jesus’ final (or, at least last quoted) words before the offer of wine, and after the offer Jesus cried out and died. Whether the shout included any additional words we can’t say. John placed Jesus’ last words after the wine was offered and has no final shout or cry. I believe John used those final words as a replacement for Jesus crying out, as reflected in Mark. I believe Luke did the same. Therefore, I am separating Mark’s Aramaic words from Jesus’ final cry, and aligning the final words in Luke and John with Mark’s cry, and referring to them all as the last words of Jesus. I have kept Mark’s Aramaic quote in its earlier context as separate from the final words. This raises some small sequential issues that I will look at below. Luke departs significantly from Mark and John. He places a different sour wine episode earlier.48 In Mark and John, the offer is an act of compassion. In Luke, it is offered as part of a mocking effort by Roman soldiers. There is no reference to a sponge or placing the sponge on a stick or branch to reach up to Jesus. Neither Mark nor John show Roman soldiers offering wine to Jesus while he was on the cross.

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Luke, here, may be attempting to counter the claim that Jesus asked for wine, in conflict with his pledge at the Last Supper. Placing the offer in the hands of the mocking Roman soldiers certainly changes the dynamics of the scene. But Luke’s mockery scene also departs from Mark’s version of the mockeries. We’ll look at those later. Luke introduces the final moments with a notice that darkness descended over the land from noon to three and the curtain of the Temple mysteriously tore in two.49 Mark also introduces the final moments of Jesus with a notice about the darkness,50 but he places the tearing of the Temple curtain after Jesus expires.51 John has no mention of the darkness or the tearing of the curtain. In further conflict with Mark and Luke, John places Pilate’s verdict at noon, while Mark and Luke have Jesus on the cross at noon, when darkness descends for three hours. In both Mark and Luke, Jesus’ final words come right after the darkness descends. Luke, however, omits Mark’s Aramaic version of the final words, the crowd’s misunderstanding, and the offer of the sour wine. He went straight to his version of Jesus’ final words. Jesus, “crying with a loud voice, said, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.’ ”52 Jesus then expired. Since Luke and Mark place the final words immediately after the darkness descends, and Luke omits the Aramaic words (either in original or translated form,) we can reasonably assume Luke intended his version of the final words to be a replacement for Jesus’ cry in Mark, rather than an addition to Mark’s Aramaic words. Mark, Luke and John all disagree as to what Jesus’ final words were. In Mark, technically, the cry out is Jesus’ final remark, but we should probably take the earlier statement in Aramaic, as his final claim. Luke has Jesus say, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” a hopeful note but one of uncertainty. John would have found both remarks unsatisfactory and his final words, “It is finished,” reflect his theme that all unfolds as God plans. If we accept that Mark’s version of the final moments most closely reflects the original version, then we have a slight chronological disagreement between Mark and John. I have already said I think John accurately reflects the idea that Jesus said he was thirsty and that Mark omitted the request. I also pointed out that Mark had someone fetch the wine without explaining why that was done. This is the point at which I think the wine was requested. Mark places it after the final words and before a last scream. John places it before the last words, and, not surprisingly, has no final scream. I believe John slightly altered the scenario so that Jesus dies right after he says, “It is finished.” On the assumption that Mark reflects the original version of Jesus’ final moments in the proposed common source, the following scenes should be included in that source.

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• • • • • • • • • •

Jesus cried out in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The crowd misunderstood what he said, thinking he called for Elijah. Jesus said he was thirsty. Someone went to fetch wine. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink. The sour wine was placed on a sponge and raised up to Jesus on a stick. Jesus drank the wine. Someone said they should wait to see if Elijah comes. Jesus uttered his last words. Jesus died.

The Named Women Following the death of Jesus, Mark and Luke both quote a centurion’s reaction, but they disagree as to what he said. John has no mention of the centurion. I’ll review this issue further below. After the centurion’s announcement Mark says that there were some women watching from a distance and he gave the names as “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.”53 Luke has no such scene after the centurion’s announcement. But he inserts a detail unique to his gospel at the parallel location where Mark has the women’s names. He says that the crowd that had witnessed the spectacle went home, beating their breasts.54 Mark next says that there were other women who also came to Jerusalem with Jesus.55 He doesn’t say that they also witnessed from a distance but it is implied. Luke says specifically that there were other female followers of Jesus who watched from a distance and adds that all of Jesus’ acquaintances were among those who watched from afar.56 John has no statement by the centurion and, after the death of Jesus, makes no mention of either named women or unnamed female followers of Jesus watching from afar. He does, however, have a scene where named and unnamed females approach Jesus while he is still alive on the cross. “Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”57 It is this verse that I suggested was out of sequence with respect to the proposed common source and Mark. In this section I am only going to analyze the matter of the named witnesses. I’ll deal with the unnamed females later. The statements naming witnesses in Mark and John present some problems. I’ll begin with Mark. The first question we have to ask is how many named women Mark says were watching from afar, two or three. Grammatically, both possibilities are equally

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plausible. Mark clearly states that one woman present at the scene is named Mary Magdalene. He also states clearly that a second woman at the scene was named Mary, “mother of James the younger and Joses and Salome.” Is Salome one of Mary’s children, or is she a third woman at the scene? This leads to the second problem. Is this second Mary the mother of Jesus? Nothing Mark says in this passage even hints at the idea that the second Mary is Jesus’ mother. But, earlier in his gospel, during the Hometown Rejection episode, Mark says of Jesus, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?”58 So Mark says that the mother of Jesus is named Mary, and this Mary had sons named James and Joses and that she had daughters. If one reads this passage, one might reasonably assume that the second Mary is the same women as the mother of Jesus described in the Hometown Rejection story, even if Mark doesn’t specifically identify her as such. However, that conclusion assumes that Mark described the second Mary based on his earlier description of the mother of Jesus instead of taking his earlier description of the mother of Jesus from the description of the second Mary. In my analysis of the Hometown Rejection story in Chapter 5 I made the argument, based on the agreement of Luke and John against Mark, that in the original version of the story the source only mentioned the father of Jesus by name, Joseph, and that Mark has eliminated any reference to the Son of God having a human father. Therefore, I suggested that Mark added the names of the mother and children to the story. Where did he get the names from? One good possibility is that he assumed the second Mary in the crucifixion story was the mother of Jesus and used this later description in the Hometown Rejection story. This solution isn’t perfect. The earlier story mentions two other brothers by name and those other names are missing from the description of the second Mary. Also, in the crucifixion scene, James is described as “the younger” and that descriptor is missing in the earlier Hometown Rejection story. On the other hand, if all four brothers were named to describe the brothers of Jesus in the earlier story, shouldn’t we expect the same treatment here? This might suggest that we are dealing with a different set of children. In any event, this doesn’t solve the problem of whether Salome is the name of a third woman present or is only the name of the daughter of the second Mary. Salome is not mentioned in Mark’s earlier story about the names of Jesus’ family members. Since this is the first time Mark mentions her by name, and given the lack of an earlier mention of any prior association with Jesus, there is some likelihood that she was a third named woman at the scene, but we can’t be sure. Her name does appear again, however.

The Crucifixion | 561 Shortly after this witnessing scene, Mark refers to “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses.”59 And shortly after that, he mentions, “Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome.”60 Again, it is not clear if Salome is simply a descriptor for Mary or another woman who is present. Note that Mark has described the second Mary in three different ways, once with two sons, and twice with one son but with different sons mentioned on the latter two occasions. Also, on one occasion, Salome is not included in the grouping and on two occasions she is. This is quite confusing. But on no occasion does Mark describe any of these women as Jesus’ mother. Let’s turn to John now. As mentioned above, he says the following women were near the cross while Jesus was alive: “his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.”61 Again we have grammatical problems as to the number of women who were present at the cross. Some scholars say two, some say three, and others say four, with the latter probably being favored. One argument for only two women is that the first two unnamed women were actually the two named women. That is, Jesus’ mother is Mary the Wife of Clopas and the mother’s sister is Mary Magdalene. This is grammatically possible, and makes the two Marys sisters. Objections to this are that the father of Jesus is Joseph, not Clopas, and it is unlikely that a family would have two daughters named Mary. But, if Joseph had died and Mary remarried, Clopas could be the new husband (step-father of Jesus) and Mary Magdalene could be Clopas’s daughter, making the two Marys sisters through the marriage of their respective parents. Another plausible reading is that there were three women, (1) the mother of Jesus, who is unnamed, (2) the sister of Jesus’ mother, who is Mary, the wife of Clopas, and (3) Mary Magdalene. If we read John’s roster under an equally plausible interpretation of four women present, we would have, (1) the mother of Jesus, unnamed, (2) the sister of the mother of Jesus, also unnamed, (3) Mary, the wife of Clopas, and (4) Mary Magdalene. If we accept that Mark’s second Mary is not the mother of Jesus, then under either of the last two readings, three women or four women at the cross, we have some possibility that Mark and John are describing the same two Marys. First, each mentions Mary Magdalene. Second, if John identified the second Mary by her husband’s name and Mark has identified his second Mary by the children’s’ names, then both could be describing the same woman, a Mary married to Clopas, who is also the mother of James and Joses, and, perhaps, Salome. In this scenario, the proposed common source might have identified the two Marys in a manner somewhat similar to the following: “Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joses, the wife of Clopas.” Adding in the wife of

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Clopas might have been a way to distinguish her from Mary the mother of Jesus, whom Mark identifies earlier as having children with the same names. Mark would have kept the “mother” part, treating the “wife” part as either an unnecessary additional descriptor (Mark tends to compact stories) or as a separate unnamed woman who can be placed with the other unnamed followers. John would have dropped the reference to the second Mary’s children in order to avoid confusing her with Mary the mother of Jesus, who had children with similar names. Luke doesn’t mention any specific women watching from a distance so he doesn’t give us any further guidance on this issue. Later, however, he mentions “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them” in connection with the witnesses to the empty tomb.62 Here two we have two Marys, one of whom is Mary Magdalene, and one of whom matches one of Mark’s later descriptions of the second Mary, who was also one of the witnesses to the empty tomb.63 Luke’s Joanna is an additional name for the roster of witnesses. Luke, on an earlier occasion during Jesus’ mission, has identified Mary Magdalene together with a Joanna, as followers of Jesus.64 There is no easy way to cut through the weeds here. The most we can say with any confidence is that among the named witnesses to the crucifixion were Mary Magdalen (mentioned by all three gospels), and at least one additional woman named Mary (mentioned in all three gospels) whose identity is elusive. We have no corroboration for any other women being named in the proposed common source. While there appears to be no strong academic consensus regarding a solution to the identities issue, the weight of the evidence suggests that none of the women named in the proposed common source was the mother of Jesus. In Mark, there are unnamed women who witness from a distance. In John, unnamed women are near the cross, close enough for Jesus to talk to his mother. I have said above that I think John’s chronology is out of order on this point, and that the reference to the women belong after the death of Jesus. I do this because it is my general practice in chronological conflicts between Mark and John, barring any other evidence and given John’s proclivity to move pieces around, to follow Mark’s sequence over John’s. See also the discussion of the scene with Jesus’ mother further below.

The Three Mockeries of Jesus Mark and Luke each include three instances of Jesus being mocked during the crucifixion, but Luke departed from Mark in some significant ways. The mock-

The Crucifixion | 563 ery here is an enhancement of the mockery at the Jewish proceedings. Earlier, the mockery was based on contempt towards Jesus for claiming to be the messiah. Now it has expanded to a victory celebration over a defeated rival, making fun of his claims to be a savior when he can’t even save himself. These depictions would have been highly offensive to John. First, he has rejected “priestly jealousy” as the Jewish motive for Jesus’ death. Second, the mockery depicts the crucifixion as proof that Jesus is not a savior. John doesn’t give platforms to one-sided Jewish arguments that could leave readers saying that perhaps the opponents have a point. Third, John has presented the death of Jesus as part of God’s plan and subjecting him to mockery at the very point where the plan is coming to fruition could suggest that God doesn’t have everything under control. It will be my argument below that John has replaced the mockery scenes with his earlier account of an argument between Jesus and Pilate over the wording of the inscription. First, however, let me briefly review the mockery scenes. According to Mark, after the crucifixion of the two bandits alongside Jesus and before the darkness at noon, there were three different mockeries. First were those who passed by and said, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!”65 Second were the chief priests and scribes who said, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Messiah, the King of Israel, come down from the cross now, so that we may see and believe.”66 Third were the two bandits who were crucified alongside him, who “also taunted him,” although we aren’t told what they said. The thrust of the mockery is that if Jesus were who he claimed to be then he should be able to save himself by coming off the cross and proving who he is. The priestly insult implies victory over their political rival, an earthly king, while showing the crowds that Jesus lacks any of the powers necessary to be God’s messiah. Luke has slightly modified Mark’s account of the mockery, departing in places from both Mark’s sequential arrangement and details. He places the mockery after the division of the clothes. As I suggested above, Luke’s placement of the division of the clothing and the crucifixion of the bandits coincides with John, indicating that Mark has altered the chronology. Putting that aside, Luke says that people watched but, contrary to Mark, he doesn’t attribute any mockery to them. In Luke, the first mockery came from ‘the leaders,” who said, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!”67 This is close to what Mark attributes to the priests and scribes in Mark’s second mockery, but Luke omits the challenge that Jesus should come down so that they may

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believe. Luke’s second mockery came from Roman soldiers who approached him to offer sour wine and said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”68 This second mockery seems to be an alternative version of Mark’s first mockery, with the insult coming from the Roman soldiers rather than the Jewish peasants. In both instances, the core insult is “save yourself ” although each has different surrounding words. Luke’s third mockery also involves the two bandits crucified with Jesus but his version of the scene is very different from Mark’s. He says only one of the two bandits mocked Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”69 Of note here is that the bandit accepts that Jesus is the messiah, or that he at least claims to be the messiah, and that Jesus should save the two bandits as well as himself. Luke then adds a major twist to the story. The second bandit criticized the first saying that the two bandits deserve punishment for what they did, but that Jesus did nothing wrong.70 He also asked Jesus to remember him when Jesus inherited his kingdom.71 Jesus promised, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”72 Luke and Mark agree that the leaders mocked Jesus with similar words, although Luke omits Mark’s additional challenge that Jesus come down so that they may believe. They also agree that at least one bandit taunted Jesus, with Luke adding in a significant theological dialogue between Jesus and the second bandit. They disagree as to the third mockery, which Mark attributes to passers-by and John attributes to the Roman soldiers, who offered sour wine. For reasons explained above, John would have found the entire set of mockeries as depicted in Mark and Luke offensive and if it existed in the proposed common source in any manner similar to what Mark or Luke portray, he would have rejected it, either deleing them or substituting an alternative story. I believe the latter is the case. In John, when Pilate had the inscription placed on the cross, an argument broke out with the Jews. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”73

This argument between Pilate and the Jews is unique to John, but it is essentially a continuation of the arguments between the Jews and Pilate, in which the Jews do

The Crucifixion | 565 everything they can to show that there is no support for Jesus among the Jewish leaders and that they are loyal only to Rome. In the passage just quoted, the Jews insisted that the governor change the inscription to indicate that Jesus was not accepted as king of the Jews but only that Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews. Pilate refused to change the inscription, his attitude reflecting his earlier contempt towards the Jewish leaders when he announced, “Here is your king.” John has replaced the mockery with a different form of derision that maintains his own agenda. The Jews don’t mockingly ask Jesus to prove he is the savior or the messiah; they insist that Pilate place on the cross the demeaning and insulting phrase, “He said I am king of the Jews.” Implicit in the proposed alteration is that this is what happens to those who claim to be a king against Rome’s wishes. John’s argument by the Jews to Pilate presents an alternative form of the mockery. The mockery made fun of Jesus because he was on the cross and falsely claimed to be the messiah. John removes the celebratory aspects following Pilate’s decision and shows the Jews desperate to have the inscription declare Jesus a false messiah. John’s Jews want to insult Jesus as much as Mark’s Jews do, but John’s insult falls within his framework of fearing Rome and Mark’s falls within the framework of victory over a political rival. Since John appears to have attached his mockery alternative to the notice of the words on the cross, his sequence is out of order. I would conclude therefore that the proposed common source included some form of mockery of Jesus as a failed messiah but to what extent it did so we can’t say. John tends to combine related incidents into a single story and if there were three separate mockeries in the source it is likely that John combined them all under the single argument with Pilate. It is also possible that John’s unique indication that the inscription on the cross contained three different languages might symbolically incorporate the idea that there were three separate mockeries. Although I remain open to this idea, I am not sufficiently convinced that this is the case such that I can, with a reasonable degree of certainty, include all three mockeries in the proposed common source. At a minimum, therefore, it appears that the proposed common source indicated that the Jewish leaders mocked Jesus as a failed messiah because of his crucifixion.

Supernatural Occurrences Mark and Luke each describe two supernatural events in connection with the crucifixion. The first is a darkness beginning at noon and lasting for about three

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hours. The second is the mysterious tearing in two of the Temple curtain. Mark places the darkness before Jesus’ death74 and the tearing after.75 Luke places both before the death of Jesus.76 Presumably, the events are designed to show that God was unhappy with the Jews for rejecting Jesus as the messiah (whatever that might have meant). Yet, there is no indication that anybody was concerned about these omens. The events happen but no reactions are recorded and people go on through the remaining portion of the gospels with no reference back to either event. If these incidents were in the proposed common source John would have rejected them. In his gospel, God was not angered by the death of Jesus. It was the divine plan all along that Jesus would die. John didn’t want people to promote Jesus out of fear but out of faith that he is the one sent by the Father to bring eternal life to those who believe in him. I don’t think we can say whether or not these supernatural events appeared in the proposed common source. According to Mark and Luke the darkness began at noon and lasted until three in the afternoon. John directly contradicts this. In his gospel Pilate delivers the verdict at noon77 and Jesus is led away. John has no hint of darkness at any point along the trail or during the afternoon events between noon and three. Either John knew nothing about the darkness story from the source or John deliberately challenged it with his alternative chronology. I don’t think we have enough evidence one way or the other to decide.

Jesus and His Mother John has a unique story in his crucifixion narrative that involves Jesus’ mother and the Beloved Disciple. He says that certain women were near the cross.78 I have already discussed some of the issues involved in identifying the women present here. I am working here from the assumption that Jesus’ mother is not identified by name, and, very probably, her sister is not identified by name. There were also two women named Mary present. One aspect of John’s story, however, focuses on the mother, and the other women play no role in this episode. But John has connected them to this story about his mother, which suggests that he is playing off the scenario of named and unnamed female witnesses. According to John, Jesus told his mother that she should take the Beloved Disciple as if he were her own son and he told the Beloved Disciple that he should take Jesus’ mother as his own.79 This makes the Beloved Disciple a direct witness

The Crucifixion | 567 to the crucifixion and later on John says that the Beloved Disciple was “testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.”80 The Beloved Disciple was a highly revered individual in the Johannine Community but has no role in the other gospels, at least in any way that identifies him as a Beloved Disciple. So the story is obviously a Johannine creation. The question we need to ask is whether the story is anchored to some other incident from the proposed common source. There are some possibilities. John attached the story to the two named female witnesses and he may have included a second unnamed woman, Jesus’ mother’s sister. (See the discussion above of John’s roster of names at the cross.) In Mark, after giving the names of specific females, he adds that there were other female followers also present but gives no names. Luke mentions the unnamed women but omits the named women. The only reference John has to any unnamed women is to the mother of Jesus, whose name he doesn’t give, and, perhaps, to an unnamed sister. So, given that John connects the story of the unnamed mother to the two named women, he may have substituted Jesus’ mother (and her sister) for the unnamed women. Mark says all of Jesus’ acquaintances were there, so such a stretch on John’s part wouldn’t be unreasonable. However, we should also note that on other occasions when John refers to the mother of Jesus he never mentions her by name there either. John’s gospel never says Jesus has a mother named Mary. Luke’s crucifixion narrative has two specific instances in which he refers to unnamed female followers, one occurring on the road to “the Skull,” and the other parallel to Mark’s post-crucifixion reference. Interestingly, the earlier incident in Luke also has references to family issues, but not in the way John does. According to Luke, when Jesus saw the women following along with him on the roadway, he turned to them and said, Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For the days are surely coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never nursed.’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?81

The passage talks about troubling times to come and says how lucky some women will be if they don’t bear children and nurse them. John’s story of Jesus’ mother could be seen as picking up on that theme as it describes a new mother-son relationship not based on the mother giving birth to the child. So, John’s story about Jesus’ mother and the Beloved Disciple might be corroboration for Luke’s account of the women who followed along the road to Skull.

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If we can draw that conclusion, we might also note John’s tendency to combine stories with similar themes, and John may have taken the unnamed women following along the road way and combined it with the unnamed women witnesses alongside the named women witnesses. I think such an argument is plausible, but I am not at this point sufficiently convinced that Luke’s story served as a touchpoint for John’s story. I do think, however, that John’s connection of the story to his two named women does suggest that the mother is a stand-in for the unnamed witnesses to the crucifixion but I consider the details of the story to be a Johannine creation.

The Time of the Crucifixion Mark says that Jesus was crucified at nine in the morning (i.e., the third hour). John specifically contradicts this, telling us that Pilate delivered his verdict at about noon (i.e., the sixth hour). Luke, and even Matthew, omit Mark’s notice of the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. At the same time, John’s setting of the noon verdict also contradicts Mark’s notice about the darkness at noon. Given that both John and Luke omit any specific time for the crucifixion, I will consider it as a Markan addition to the proposed common source.

The Centurion Mark and Luke both say that a centurion said something right after Jesus died. In Mark, the centurion said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!”82 In Luke, the centurion said, “Certainly this man was innocent”83 Luke has rejected Mark’s citation of the centurion’s words. John has no account of any centurion. The statement of the centurion in Mark appears to reflect the development of Mark’s theological theme, that while Jesus was alive no one knew his true nature. It was only Jesus’ death that gave his life meaning. Here the centurion announces that Jesus is God’s son. That is the claim Mark makes in his opening verse and only here, after Jesus dies, does any human publicly proclaim Jesus as the Son of God. What about Jesus’ death leads the centurion to that conclusion is difficult to understand. The statement in Luke contradicts Mark and reflects a Lucan theological theme, that Jesus is innocent of wrongdoing. Contrary to Mark and John, Luke does not have Jesus admit to being the messiah and son of God. Luke has no ver-

The Crucifixion | 569 dict pronounced at the Jewish proceeding. In the Roman proceedings there are three declarations of innocence, and Luke throws in a fourth such verdict from Herod. He concludes with the centurion saying that Jesus is innocent. John omits any mention of the centurion. This would reflect one of John’s themes. In John’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t depend on witnesses to prove who he was. He wants people to accept him on faith that he was the one sent by God to offer eternal life. John’s Jesus “needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.”84 We have no corroboration for the story of the centurion and even if it were in the proposed common source, the conflict between Mark and Luke made it impossible to know whether either is accurately quoting the centurion. I am omitting it from the reconstruction.

Summary I began the analysis in this chapter with a collection of 35 scenes spread out over Mark, Luke and John. After the above analysis, I have identified 20 scenes that belong to the proposed common source. Table 12.3, The Crucifixion Story as Reconstructed in the Proposed Common Source, lists the 20 scenes along with the relevant verse citations. The numbers in column one indicate the suggested order of scenes in the proposed common source. Despite small areas of disagreement in detail, Mark, Luke and John fall into near perfect sequential alignment as to the unfolding of events in the proposed common source, and what sequential disagreements we have are few and trivial. Mark has only two departures from the proposed order of events (# 6, 8) and if we switch the two scenes around, Mark would be in full alignment with the proposed common source, and the two scenes would then also align with John. Luke has only one variation from the suggested order of events (# 7). John has only two departures from the suggested order, and those are the ones that need to be singled out for comment. John’s first departure concerns the question of mockery. Mark and Luke both depict three mockeries of Jesus while he is on the cross, but disagree as to the order of events and the identity of the perpetrators. John has no direct account of mockery but has one unique incident that I believe he substituted for the mockery. The mockery in the synoptic sources treats Jesus as a defeated rival for power, a theme that John has rejected. Instead, I suggest, he inserted an argument between Jewish authorities and Pilate over the inscription on the cross. The Jews wanted

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Table 12.3:  The crucifixion story as reconstructed in the proposed common source. Source: Author Scene

Mark

Luke

John

1. Jesus led away. 2. Someone helped Jesus carry the cross along the route. 3. Jesus was taken to a place called “Skull.” 4. “Skull” is a translation of the Hebrew word “Golgotha.” 5. Jesus was crucified. 6. Jesus was placed between two crucified bandits. 7. An inscription placed on cross contained the words “king of the Jews.” 8. Soldiers cast lots for Jesus’ clothes. 9. Jewish authorities mocked Jesus while he was on the cross. [John substitutes for the mockery the Jewish demand that Pilate change the inscription.] 10. Jesus called out in Aramaic, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” 11. Bystanders misunderstood the Aramaic and thought Jesus called out for Elijah 12. Jesus said he was thirsty. 13. Someone went to fetch some wine. 14. Jesus was offered sour wine to drink. 15. Someone said they should wait to see if Elijah appears. 15. The wine was poured onto a sponge and raised up to Jesus on a stick. 16. Jesus drank the offered wine. 17. Jesus’ uttered his last words. [Mark, Luke and John disagree over what those words were.] 18. Jesus died. 19. Mary Magdalene and another Mary witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus. 20. Unnamed female followers witnessed the crucifixion.

15:20b 15:21

23:26a 23:26b

19:16b 19:17a

15:22 15:22.

23:33a

19:17b 19:17b

15:24a 15:27

23:33b 23:33c

19:18a 19:18b

15:26

23:38

19:19

15:24b 23:34b 15:29–32 23:26

19:23–25a 19:20–22

15:34 15:35

15:36a 15:36a 15:36b

23:36b

19:28 19:29a 19:29a

15:36c–d

19:29b

15:37a

23:46a

19:30a 19:30b

15:37b 26:46b 15:40–41a

19:30c 19:25b

15:41b

19:25b

23:49

Scene numbers signify the order of scenes in the proposed common source.

The Crucifixion | 571 Pilate to change it from “King of the Jews” to “he said” he was king of the Jews. This insertion serves the same function as the mockery. The mockeries in Mark and Luke insulted Jesus on the ground that he wasn’t the messiah. John makes the same point. The Jews criticized Jesus for falsely claiming to be the messiah. If I am correct, John’s decision to use the inscription argument as a substitute for the mockeries required him to change the sequential location of the mockery event. A secondary issue involves the number of mockery incidents. Given the disagreements between Mark and Luke over the details of the mockeries and John’s direct omission of the mockeries, it is hard to say how many mockeries there were. The most we can say at this time is that in the proposed common source there was at least one mockery in which Jewish authorities challenged Jesus’ claim to being the messiah. On the other hand, John’s substitute for the mockery was an inscription written in three languages, each of which the Jewish authorities challenged. So, it is possible that John has symbolically retained a reference to three mockeries. This would be consistent with John’s practice of combining similar incidents into a single event. At this point I am only including one mockery of Jesus in the proposed common source, but can accept that there might have been three. John’s other significant variation to the sequential order again comes from his additional material. John has a scene where Jesus’ mother together with named and unnamed women approached him while he was on the cross and Jesus talked with his mother about her and the Beloved Disciple having a mother-son relationship from now on. In this episode, among those present at the scene were Mary Magdalene, another Mary, and unnamed women. In Mark, after Jesus has died, he tells us there were some female witnesses to the crucifixion who watched from afar. These included Mary Magdalene, another woman named Mary, and some unnamed woman. I divided this incident into two scenes, one for the named witnesses and one for the unnamed witnesses. John has no report of female witnesses watching Jesus die on the cross. It is my argument, that John’s earlier incident at the cross with Mary Magdalen, a second Mary and unnamed women substituted for Mark’s two scenes with the women witnesses after Jesus died. John used the incident to explain the importance of the Beloved Disciple to the Johannine community. Since John’s episode had to take place while Jesus was still alive, so that he could talk to the mother in front of witnesses, he necessarily had to move the scene out of order. I followed Mark’s order over John with regard to these two scenes because, absent other evidence, I rule in favor of Mark over John as to the order of events in the proposed common source.

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Aside from these two areas of Johannine concern, all three gospels seem to be closely aligned with each other across all 20 scenes Any other variations in story details or minor sequential variations are, for the most part, relatively trivial. But there is one very important scene that I have identified as belonging to the proposed common source and which raises questions about the synoptic version of the last Supper. John says Jesus drank wine while on the cross. Neither Mark nor Luke corroborate this detail directly but Matthew also mentions Jesus sipping wine. In the synoptic Last Supper story, Jesus declared, “I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.” John has no such promise in his gospel but Matthew does. Mark closely follows John’s wine scenario, right up to the point where the wine is held up to Jesus’ mouth, but Mark does not say whether Jesus sipped from it or rejected it. Nor does he explain why people scurried to find wine and offer it to Jesus. For these reasons and others explained above, I have included in the proposed common source John’s scene where Jesus says he is thirsty and the scene where Jesus sips the wine. Mark and Luke describe supernatural events in connection with the crucifixion, a three-hour darkness beginning at noon and the mysterious rending of the Temple curtain in two. Despite the appearance of the supernatural events, there appears to be no reaction to the occurrence. Nobody makes any mention of them or asks what it means. This suggests that Mark may have grafted the events on to the story in the proposed common source. John has no mention of such scenes, and it is unlikely that John would have included them if they were found in the proposed common source. John’s narrative specifically contradicts Mark’s claim about the darkness by placing the verdict of Pilate at noon. Mark and Luke also say that a centurion said something after Jesus died, although they disagree on what he said. John makes no mention of this. All three authors had theological reasons that could explain their positions with regard to the story. Under the circumstances, we have no corroboration for this scene being in the proposed common source. Of scenes appearing only in Mark, I have accepted that his account of Jesus’ anguished cry in Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” incorporates the final words of Jesus as they appeared in the proposed common source and that John and Luke changed the words to something more palatable. I have also accepted that Mark’s surrounding account of the crowd misunderstanding the Aramaic and thinking Jesus called upon Elijah also belongs to the proposed common source. Even though John and Luke eliminate both the cry

The Crucifixion | 573 and the surrounding material, I am largely persuaded that Mark wouldn’t create such a tragic death scene as a substitute for something not already in his source material

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Mark 15:21. Mark 15:21. Luke 23:26. John 19:17. Luke 23:27–31. Luke 23:32. Mark 15:22. John 19:17. Luke 23:33. Mark  15:23. Matthew  26:29. Matthew  27:34. Mark 15:24; Luke 23:33; John 19:18; Matthew 23:35. John  19:18. Luke  23:33. Mark  15:27. Mark  15:25. Mark  15:26. John  19:19. John 19:20–22. Luke  23:38. John  19:23. Mark  15:24. John  19:24. Luke  19:34. (Brown 1994), 975. Luke  19:34. John 19:19:25b–27. John  19:27. Luke 23:36–37. Mark  15:36. Mark  15:34. Mark  15:34. Mark  15:35.

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35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Mark  15:36. Mark  15:36, Mark  15:37. John  19:28. John  19:28. John  19:30. Mark  14:25. Matthew  27:34. John  19:29. John  19:29. John  19:30. John  19:30. John  19:30. Luke  23:36. Luke 23:44–45. Mark  15:33. Mark  15:38. Luke  23:46. Mark  15:40. Luke  23:48. Mark  15:41. Luke  23:49. John  19:25. Mark  6:3. Mark  15:47. Mark  16:1. John  19:25. Luke  24:10. Mark  16:1. Luke  8:2–3. Mark 15:29–30. Mark 15:31–32. Luke  23:35. Luke 23:36–37. Mark  23:39. Luke 23:40–41. Luke  23:42. Luke  23:43. John 19:19–22. Mark  15:33. Mark  15:38.

The Crucifixion | 575 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84.

Luke 23:44–45. John  19:14. Mark 19:25b. John 19:26–27. John  21:24. Luke 23:28–31. Mark  15:39. Luke  23:47. John  2:25.

Bibliography Brown, R. E. (1994). The Death of the Messiah (Vol. 2). New York: Doubleday.

13

The Day of Preparation

John says in no uncertain terms that Jesus appeared before Pilate before the Passover meal had been eaten.1 Mark insists that Jesus was arrested after the Passover meal.2 Resolving this conflict may be one of the most vexing problems in gospel harmonization. While we can’t change what the two authors wrote we can explore whether such conflicts may have arisen from the proposed common source. I believe there are at least four major problems in the gospels that could be traced back to that earlier document. First, the gospel authors, I will argue, used a Roman definition of the calendar day, sunrise to sunrise, instead of the Jewish definition, sunset to sunset, to describe events on the Jewish calendar, making it extremely difficult to accurately analyze what actually occurred at particular points in time. I will trace this usage back to the proposed common source. Second, there are some indications that the gospel authors are not familiar with the difference between the holiday of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and I will suggest they copied their usage from the proposed common source. Third, the gospels use a very unusual term in connection with the day Jesus died, “day of Preparation,” but they disagree as to what the term signified with regard to the Jewish calendar. This usage, I will suggest, goes back to the proposed

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common source, which didn’t identify what the term meant and which the gospel authors interpreted as to what they thought it meant. Fourth, the term “day of Preparation” has no parallel in Jewish usage at the time of Jesus. In this chapter I am going to examine these issues and see how they play out in the various gospels. At the conclusion of my analysis I will propose a solution that explains how the conflicts arose. I’ll begin first with the issue of what type of calendar day is present in the gospels, Jewish or Roman.

What Calendar Did the Evangelists Use? According to English translations, Mark and Luke say Jesus was crucified at nine in the morning;3 Mark and Luke both say darkness descended at noon, when Jesus was on the cross; and the darkness lasted to three in the afternoon.4 John says, according to the English translation, contra Mark, that Jesus was before Pilate at noon.5 In the underlying Greek, however, the text refers to the third hour, the sixth hour and the ninth hour of the day. Since we are in the daylight hours at the time these terms are being used, we are talking about a day that starts at approximately sunrise. The third hour, therefore, coincides with about nine in the morning, and so on. Since the Jewish day starts at sunset, the third hour in the Jewish calendar would be about nine in the evening. This is an indication that at least some gospel references to the calendrical day use the Roman definition of a day rather than the Jewish. We also have other evidence that a Roman calendar is in play. In Mark, Luke, and John, after the burial of Jesus, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb after the Sabbath is over. Each of the evangelists, as indicated immediately below, says the Sabbath day began in the early morning, in accord with the Roman definition of a day rather than the Jewish. According to Mark, “When the sabbath was over … very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.”6 Mark connects the start of the first day of the week, after Sabbath has ended, with the rising of the sun, which he says was early on the first day. This signifies that Mark is identifying the start and end of Sabbath using Roman calendar days instead of Jewish calendar days. Luke follows Mark’s usage here. He says, “On the sabbath they rested according to the commandment. But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb taking, the spices that they had prepared.”7 The implication here is that they came to the tomb right after Sabbath ended, just after the sun

The Day of Preparation | 579 rises. A little later, after Jesus was removed from the cross, Luke says “Sabbath was beginning.”8 However, the underlying Greek text says, Sabbath was “dawning” (Greek: epiphosko).9 In the Jewish calendar, Sabbath doesn’t dawn; it dusks. Dawn signifies a rising sun. Was Jesus taken off the cross just before sunrise or just before sunset? John also seems to be following the Roman calendar. He says, “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.”10 “First day” is the day after Sabbath. John appears to be saying that Mary came to the tomb shortly before sunrise, when the “first day” started. That John meant to start the Sabbath day at sunrise is made clear later, when Jesus appears to the disciples for the first time after his burial, on the same Roman calendar day that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them.”11 In other words, following the Roman definition of the day, Sabbath ended at sunrise, when Mary came to the tomb, and that first day of the week continued through the following evening, when Jesus appeared before the disciples. All three gospel authors identify the Sabbath day using a Roman calendar and say it started at sunrise. Since the Jewish calendar day begins with sunset, the first half of a Roman day (daylight hours) overlaps the second half of a Jewish day; the second half of a Roman day (evening hours) overlaps the first half of the next Jewish day. So when did Mary go to the tomb in connection with Sabbath? Additionally, Jews in Judea, where Jesus was buried, would be using the Jewish calendar to mark off Sabbath. If Mary wanted to go the tomb right after the end of the Sabbath, as the gospels say, then she would be going in the early evening, not the next morning. But which evening would she have gone on? The gospels, taken together, depict a Sabbath on two different Jewish days. The Sabbath, on the Jewish calendar, ended either twelve hours before Mary’s visit and she was unexplainably late, or it ended just before the evening when Jesus appeared to the apostles, and Mary was in the middle of the Sabbath day when she went to the tomb. This example shows how much chaos we have when using the Roman day to depict Jewish holidays in a Judean setting. The gospels give us two consecutive Sabbath days on the Jewish calendar and we have no clear basis for choosing one or the other as the legitimate Sabbath day. If the same practice is in effect with regard to the dating of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, we will have additional chaos and confusion with the gospel chronology.

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Table 13.1:  Schematic of conflicts between Roman and Jewish calendars in the gospels. Source: Author Sunrise Sunset Nisan 13th Holidays Jewish Roman Event John Mark

Sunrise

14th 14th Passover

Arrest

lamb Execute

Sunset

Sunrise

15th 15th Unleavened Bread

Sunset

Sunrise

16th

16th

meal Arrest

Execute

Table 13.1, Schematic of conflicts between Roman and Jewish calendars in the gospels, gives a graphic representation of what sort of problems may arise when using the one calendar to describe events on the other calendar. Nisan is the Jewish month related to the Passover chronology and will be described more fully below. The gray and black bars represent alternating calendar days.

Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread are two separate and distinct holidays that have a chronological connection to each other. Passover is the day on which a lamb is slaughtered to commemorate the day when the Jews were in Egypt and God slaughtered the first born child in every Egyptian family, except for those Jewish households which, per Moses’ instructions, had been marked by the blood of a lamb. The Festival of Unleavened Bread commemorates the journey out of Egypt, when the rush to leave left the Israelites with insufficient time to create leavening for their bread and they had to eat unleavened bread while in the wilderness. The Passover holiday is celebrated on the 14th day of the first month of the year, which in the time of Jesus fell during the month of Nisan, and the lamb was to be slaughtered at twilight12 and eaten during the evening hours.13 The slaughtered lamb was/is known as “the Passover.” Among the Jews, the day began in the evening and ended at sunset. Therefore, according to the Jewish calendar, the lamb slaughtered at twilight on 14 Nisan was eaten shortly thereafter on 15 Nisan during the early evening hours. These two events take place on two different Jewish days.

The Day of Preparation | 581 The Festival of Unleavened Bread begins on the 15th of Nisan and one must eat unleavened bread for seven days.14 Because “the Passover” (i.e., the slaughtered lamb) is eaten on the evening of 15 Nisan, it is eaten during the meal on the first day of Unleavened Bread. The first day of Unleavened Bread (15 Nisan) is a different Jewish holiday than Passover (14 Nisan). Confusingly, then, we have two different but related concepts of Passover involving different dates. One is the holiday known as Passover on 14 Nisan; the other is the slaughtered lamb that is eaten on the next night on 15 Nisan, which meat is referred to as “the Passover.” Adding to the confusion, in the time of Jesus, Jews did not refer to the Passover holiday (14 Nisan) as “Passover.” They called it “Evening of Passover,” an idiomatic Jewish expression meaning that on the coming evening, which starts a new day (15 Nisan), “the Passover” is eaten. The same idiom is used on other occasions, such as the Sabbath. The Jews, then and now, call the day before Sabbath “Evening of Sabbath,” that is, the coming evening (the start of the next calendar day) begins the Sabbath holiday. That the Passover holiday is identified by the Passover meal on the next day could lead people not intimate with Jewish tradition to confuse Passover and Unleavened Bread as one and the same holiday. There are certain rules associated with the Festival of Unleavened Bread. Beginning on the evening of 14 Nissan (the start of the day according to the Jewish calendar) one must not eat any leavening for eight days and must cleanse the house of any leavening prior to the start of the Festival of Unleavened Bread on 15 Nisan.15 On the first and seventh days of the Festival of Unleavened Bread Jews are directed to conduct a “solemn assembly” and “no work shall be done on those days; only what everyone must eat, that alone may be prepared by you.”16 The first and seventh days of Unleavened Bread are very much like a Sabbath Day in that work is prohibited. It is possible, therefore, that someone not intimately familiar with Jewish custom, might confuse the first day of Unleavened Bread with Sabbath.

Passover Chronology in Mark, Luke and John The first reference to the final Passover in all three gospels comes in connection with the priests plotting to kill Jesus. Mark and John place it between the plot to kill Jesus and the Anointing at Bethany, although John dates the sequence of events a few days earlier than Mark. Luke follows the notice with regard to the

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plot to kill Jesus but has moved his version of the anointing story to an earlier location in the gospel. All three gospels, therefore, position the first reference to the final Passover in the same exact literary location, right after the plot to kill Jesus.

• Mark: “It was two days before the Passover and the festival of Unleavened Bread.” [emphasis added]17 • Luke: “Now the festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was near.” [emphasis added]18 • John: “Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.” [emphasis added]19

In all three instances I have highlighted the reference to “the Passover.” Note also, that John omits the reference to Unleavened Bread. The question is whether any of the three authors identified “the Passover” with the Passover Holiday or with the lamb that was eaten on the next day, or conflated the two events as if they were one and the same. “The Passover” is a term that refers to the meal but it could be either a variation on the Passover holiday name or even a variation on the expression “Evening of Passover,” where Passover refers to the meal. In the latter two cases, Mark and Luke would be conflating the Passover holiday (14 Nisan) with the first day of Unleavened Bread (15 Nisan). The terminology is slightly vague. Since John omits the reference to Unleavened Bread, he doesn’t create a possible conflation of the two holidays but he is still vague as to what he means by “the Passover.” However, some clarification is given with the second reference to Passover in Mark and Luke.

• According to Mark, “On the first day of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb is sacrificed …”20 • According to Luke, “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed.”21

Here Mark and Luke unequivocally equate the Passover holiday (14 Nisan) with the first day of the Festival of Unleavened Bread (15 Nisan). According to the Jewish calendar, Mark and Luke are in error, but under the Roman calendar they would be technically correct. (See Table 13.1.) If Mark and Luke reference the Roman definition of the day, which is the only reading that eliminates the error, then the particular Roman day referenced encompasses the second half of 14 Nisan (daylight hours when the lamb is sacrificed) and the first half of 15 Nisan (evening hours) when the Passover meal is eaten.

The Day of Preparation | 583 In Mark and Luke, this second Passover notice serves as an introduction to the preparation for the Last Supper, which in those gospels is preparation for a Passover meal. In John, the second reference to Passover also introduces the preparations for the Last Supper, but, as we saw in Chapter 8, since he places the Passover meal after the arrest of Jesus, he has a different preparation scene; Jesus washes the feet of the disciples. According to John, “Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father [emphasis added].”22 John, therefore, agrees with Mark and Luke, that the second reference to Passover comes at the same exact literary point in the narratives. Together with the agreement on the placement of the first notice, we have two precise narrative agreements as to the placing of the two Passover notices, a strong indication that Mark and John are working from a common written source. John, however, again eliminates the reference to Unleavened Bread and so avoids the chronological problem present in Mark and Luke. In John, so far, while he may be vague as to whether he is referring to the holiday or the meal, he doesn’t yet create a problem with regard to the Jewish calendar versus the Roman calendar. If John and Mark are working from a common source, then we have to assume that either Mark added in the reference to Unleavened Bread, or John removed it. My sense is that John took the expression out because he was tightly focused on presenting Jesus as the sacrificial lamb and had also placed the first day of Unleavened Bread after the arrest of Jesus. Following the second Passover notice, Mark and Luke next describe preparations for the Passover meal and John depicts the foot-washing scene. In Luke, however, there is an additional element missing from Mark and John. In Luke’s version of the preparation episode, Jesus says, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God [emphasis added].”23 Luke here clearly refers to the Last Supper as a Passover meal, but indicates that Jesus didn’t eat the Passover meal. However, there is some controversy over what the original wording was. Some ancient manuscripts use the phrase “will never eat it again [emphasis added],” adding in the word “again”, suggesting that Jesus ate that meal but wouldn’t do so again until the conditions are fulfilled.24 Metzger says the “again” must have been added later because “there is no satisfactory explanation to account for its absence from” several key manuscripts.25 If Metzger is correct—this analysis is generally accepted—then we have evidence that there was a perception of a problem in some early Christian circles with

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Luke’s lack of a Passover ceremony and somewhere along the line Luke’s manuscript appears to have been amended to address the problem. In Mark and Luke, these are the last references to Passover, and John has parallels to both notices in the same precise literary contexts. So far, there is no direct conflict between Mark and John regarding the Passover chronology. That changes with John’s next Passover reference. Jumping forward to Jesus’ appearance before Pilate, John says, “they took Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate’s headquarters. It was early in the morning. They themselves did not enter the headquarters, so as to avoid ritual defilement and to be able to eat the Passover [emphasis added].” In John, the Passover meal has not yet been eaten when Jesus appeared before Pilate. This contradicts Mark and Luke, who set the Passover meal before the arrest of Jesus. John’s notice places the arrest of Jesus before the Passover meal but he doesn’t yet say when the Passover meal should occur. Although he indicates that the Jewish authorities had to remain ritually clean before the meal, ritual uncleanliness could come days before the meal and could last several days before the impurity is ritually removed. However, John clarifies the situation shortly thereafter. “Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon.”26 Here, John makes clear that during the daylight hours (noon/sixth hour) it was “the day of Preparation for the Passover [emphasis added].” He is clearly alluding to either the slaughter of the lamb at twilight or to the meal that is to be prepared that evening. John places this event on the Jewish day of 14 Nisan, although we still don’t know if he is using the Jewish calendar day or the Roman calendar day. John doesn’t tell us what time of day Jesus died, but given his identification of Jesus with the sacrificial lamb, we should assume that, in John’s mind, Jesus died in the twilight hours of the day, shortly before the next Jewish day started. The death could have been on 14 Nisan, when the lamb was slaughtered, or in the early hours of evening, after the start of 15 Nisan. For now, we will treat the day of death as 14 Nisan. But we still don’t know if John is using Roman calendar days for the holiday chronology (as he did for the Sabbath) or Jewish calendar days. If John is using Roman calendar days, then 14 Nisan crosses over two consecutive Roman days, and we don’t know which of the two days he would have identified as the one that coincided with the Jewish holiday, the one containing the last half of the first Roman day (evening) or the one containing the first half of the second Roman day (daylight). In Mark, we have a clear indication that he identified the first half of the second Roman day with the Jewish day of 14 Nisan. If John, however, identified the last half of the first Roman day (evening, start of 14 Nisan on the Jewish calendar) as 14 Nisan on the Roman calendar,

The Day of Preparation | 585 he might have also equated the start of 14 Nisan with the daylight hours of that same Roman day, which would actually be the second half of the Jewish day of 13 Nisan. If that were the case, John may have unintentionally placed the execution of Jesus on 13 Nisan, before the start of the Passover holiday.

What and When Was the Day of Preparation? Let’s turn now to the matter of the “day of Preparation.” What was the “day of Preparation” and when did it occur? Mark and Luke have only one reference to the “day of Preparation” and use it in connection with the burial of Jesus and the upcoming Sabbath. John has three references to “day of Preparation,” one of which is a direct parallel to the usage in Mark and Luke. But there are several issues that need to be noted with connection to this term. I’ll start with the three parallel statements in Mark, Luke and John. According to Mark, “When evening had come, and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,” Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus.27 Mark tells us that there was something called “day of Preparation,” which, he says, referred to the coming Sabbath, and that this day fell in part during the evening hours after the death of Jesus. Mark implies that Joseph wanted to bury Jesus before the Sabbath started. But Mark’s gospel has consistently used the Roman calendar for dating events. Let’s parse out what he says here. When was Sabbath? Jesus was executed in the daylight hours after the Passover meal. In the evening hours after the death of Jesus, Mark says it was the day of Preparation. For Mark, evening was the second half of the Roman day, so the day of Preparation, for Mark and the Roman calendar, would have started in the daylight hours when Jesus was executed. Both the execution in the daytime and the removal in the evening happened on the same Roman calendar day. In the Jewish calendar, Jesus died (per Mark) on the second half of 15 Nisan (daylight hours) and was removed from the cross during the first half of 16 Nisan (evening hours.) Mark places the “day of Preparation” over two different Jewish days, 15 Nisan and 16 Nisan. Only one of those dates can be correct according to the Jewish calendar. Mark also starts the Sabbath in the daytime pursuant to the Roman calendar but the Jewish calendar starts the day in the evening. So if 15 Nisan was the actual Jewish day of Preparation then 16 Nisan was the Sabbath, implying that Jesus was buried on the Sabbath. If, however, 16 Nisan was the actual “day of Preparation” then Sabbath started on 17 Nissan.

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John has a parallel passage for Mark’s reference to the “day of Preparation.” He says, “Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity.”28 Unlike Mark, John doesn’t say whether this occurred in the daytime or the evening. But earlier, when Jesus was in front of Pilate, John says, “Now it was the day of Preparation for the Passover; and it was about noon.” So, according to John, at least part of the “day of Preparation” occurred during the daylight hours when Jesus was executed. Since we have seen that John used a Roman calendar day to start the Sabbath, his placing the “day of Preparation” in the daytime nicely compliments Mark’s placement in the evening hours, bringing both together under the Roman calendar. A little later, after Jesus was removed from the cross, John says, “because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.”29 While Mark says the burial occurred at night, John is mute on the issue. But, since he uses the Roman calendar day, we still have some chronological problems. John specifically dates the crucifixion to the second half of 14 Nisan, which is the first half of a Roman day. The first half of 14 Nissan falls on what would have been the previous Roman day. So we don’t know which of these two consecutive Roman days John identified with 14 Nissan. As I noted above, depending on which Roman day he chose, Jesus may have been executed on 13 Nisan, the day before the Passover holiday. So far, we see Mark and John disagree on two particular points with regard to holiday chronology. John places the arrest of Jesus before the Passover meal and Mark places it after the meal. John says the day of Preparation was for the Passover meal and Mark says it was for the Preparation for the Sabbath. Both seem to agree that the Sabbath followed the “day of Preparation.” How does Luke address this issue? According to Luke, “It was the day of Preparation, and the sabbath was beginning.”30 Luke differs from Mark in some ways. He drops Mark’s reference to the evening hours and takes a neutral position as to the meaning of “day of Preparation.” He doesn’t equate it with either the Passover meal or the Sabbath, but, like both Mark and John, he allows that the Sabbath followed the “day of Preparation.” However, as previously noted, the Greek word translated as “beginning” is the word for “dawning,” which refers to sunrise, not sunset. So, there is some question as to what time of day Luke is talking about. Was the sun about to rise when Jesus was removed from the cross and buried? Luke’s use of “day of Preparation” seems to adopt a position somewhere between Mark and John, leaving the term undefined. It is my general view that in

The Day of Preparation | 587 these situations Luke sees some sort of conflict between Mark and what is written in the proposed common source. It is my view, therefore, that the proposed common source used the term “day of Preparation” but didn’t define it. Mark and John adopted their own definition for whatever purposes it served and Luke accepted the phrase without explanation. Since all three agree that Sabbath followed “day of Preparation” we can say that was in the proposed common source also. Since Mark and Luke have only one reference to “day of Preparation” and John has an explicit parallel to that reference, I accept that this was the only such reference. John’s earlier reference to “Preparation for the Passover” is his amendment to the source material. Mark’s gloss about the Preparation being for the Sabbath is also an amendment to the source material. There is, also, the possibility that the author of the proposed common source may have confused the first day of Unleavened Bread, when no work may be done other than to prepare the Passover meal, with a Sabbath day. If that were the case, then the day after the “day of Preparation” may not have actually been a Sabbath but rather just the Jewish day of 15 Nisan, the first day of Unleavened Bread. Since labor is prohibited on 15 Nisan, there would still have been the same necessity to bury Jesus before the next day started as if the next day were a Sabbath. This brings us to the question of what the “day of preparation” was. The chief difficulty is that this is not a Jewish term. As noted above, the Jews had an idiomatic expression, “Evening of …” which referred to the following Jewish day, which began in the evening. Jews referred to the Passover holiday as “Evening of Passover,” which meant that the coming evening was the start of the holiday on which the Passover sacrifice would be eaten. The day before Sabbath was/is called “Evening of Sabbath,” meaning that Sabbath started on the following evening. This usage is consistent with the Jewish calendar because the Jewish calendar day runs from evening to evening (sunset to sunset). There is no Jewish usage of the term “Day of ….” This has not gone unnoticed by New Testament scholars. The general approach seems to be that the gospel term “day of ” is intended as a parallel to the Jewish term “evening of.” There are some problems with this equation. First, for “Day of Preparation” to be a parallel to Jewish terminology there should be a parallel Jewish term “Evening of Preparation” when referring to the first day of Unleavened bread or Sabbath and there is no such term. Jews of that time never referred to either holiday as the “Evening of Preparation.” A second problem is that for the term to mimic the idiom, what follows after “day/evening” must be the event taking place on the next evening. Techni-

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cally, if “Day of Preparation” is intended to correspond to “Evening of Preparation” then the gospel term would be referring to the day before the day on which preparations are made, which would mean that “Day of Preparation” happened two days before either Sabbath or the Passover sacrifice or 14 Nisan. But, the gospels use the expression to describe what happens on the same day. So not only does the gospel term have no Jewish counterpart, to the extent it serves as an attempt to engage the Jewish idiom from a Roman calendar perspective, it is grammatically incorrect. A proper parallel, clumsy though it would be, should take the form “day of Sabbath” or “day of Passover.” Such usage, though, would probably have added additional levels of chronological confusion for those not familiar with the Jewish idiom. Finally, why would the author of the term say “day of ” instead of “evening of ”? The only place we find the term “day of Preparation” whether parallel to Jewish usage or not, is in the gospels. Where did that usage come from? If John is independent of the other gospels why would he be the only other source for this highly unusual locution outside of the synoptic gospels. The most likely explanation is that this was the term used in the proposed common source and it is consistent with a calendar system that reflects the Roman definition of the day rather than the Jewish definition.

Dating the Last Supper Mark and John have different dates for the Last Supper. According to John and the Jewish calendar, the Last Supper occurred on 14 Nisan, during the evening hours at the start of that Jewish day. Mark places it on 15 Nisan, during the evening hours at the start of the Jewish day. Both authors used a Roman calendar to date the events, which calendar was twelve hours out of synchronization with the Jewish calendar. There is, of course a good bit of debate as to whether to follow John’s chronology or Mark’s. Arguments can be made either way and scholars have done so.31 Some scholars suggest that Mark’s identification of the Passover meal rests on a very thin reed. It consists primarily of Mark 14:12–16, when the Apostles ask Jesus about instructions for preparing the Passover meal and Jesus tells them what to do. But, Mark’s (and Luke’s) account of the Last Supper looks nothing like a Passover meal. Aside from not eating “the Passover” (absent in Mark’s account but addressed in Luke’s) the main feature of the meal should be “unleavened bread.” But Mark

The Day of Preparation | 589 and Luke do not describe the bread handed out by Jesus as “unleavened” bread. They just refer to it as ordinary bread. Yet, there is a Greek word for “unleavened,” azumos. Why wasn’t that term used to describe the bread that Jesus handed out? During the Last Supper, Luke depicts Jesus addressing the matter of “eating” the Passover. He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I tell you, I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.”32 Luke’s Jesus appears to be rejecting the Passover meal. To some extent the language seems to parallel his promise about not drinking wine again. Luke is the only gospel to mention this incident and one might wonder whether he inserted this passage to account for the lack of a Passover ceremony at the Last Supper. On the other hand, if he got the passage from the proposed common source, John, pursuant to his chronology might have omitted it. John also introduces an interesting piece of evidence. John says, “Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity [emphasis added].”33 He says that not only was the next day a Sabbath, he says that it was a special Sabbath, “because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity.” What would make a Sabbath falling sometime close to the Passover and Unleavened Bread holidays “a day of great solemnity” unlike other Sabbaths? On the first and seventh days of the Festival of Unleavened Bread Jews are directed to conduct a “solemn assembly” and “no work shall be done on those days; only what everyone must eat, that alone may be prepared by you.” So, the first day of Unleavened Bread requires that no work be done and that a solemn assembly be held. I suggest that John’s special Sabbath of “great solemnity” refers to the first day of Unleavened Bread falling on the Sabbath. This would mean that John is setting the first day of Unleavened Bread after Jesus’ death, consistent with his earlier claim, on the day after Jesus’ death, contrary to Mark. The problem here is whether John’s usage of “great solemnity” came from the proposed common source or came from John in conformity with his view that ‘day of Preparation” meant the day the lamb was sacrificed. His lack of explanation as to why that Sabbath was special may indicate that he was simply copying from the source but we really don’t have enough information to say that John got it from the proposed common source and we can’t make that leap at this time. But it could indicate that the Passover chronology in the proposed common source agreed with John over Mark. However, I would remind you that the priority of a claim is not necessarily proof of the accuracy of the claim. The source could be inconsistent with the history. We are concerned here only with what was in the source material, not its historical reliability.

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The Origin Locale of the Proposed Common Source The Roman calendar usage overlaying a Jewish calendar, together with inaccurate Jewish terminology, suggests that the author of the proposed common source must have been from outside of the Judea-Galilee region, where the use of a Roman calendar might have been less problematic to the intended audience. The casualness with which Mark, Luke, and John adopt the odd usage of “day of Preparation” as well as the Roman calendar practices embedded in their own gospels, indicates that they, too, are from outside of the Judea/Galilee region and are more comfortable in a Roman cultural setting than the average diaspora Jew may be.

Summary Based on the evidence above, the proposed common source indicated that Jesus died on the “Day of Preparation,” that Jesus had to be buried before the next day, and the next day was Sabbath. But “Day of Preparation” appears to be a term invented by the author of the proposed common source, as there is no corresponding term in Jewish usage at the time of Jesus and the author doesn’t define what the term means. This led to a chronological conflict between John and Mark as to the day on which Jesus died. Jews used an idiomatic expression for the day before a holiday that began with “Evening of …” Even if we accept that the author of the proposed common source substituted “Day” for “Evening” in imitation of the Jewish idiom, “Day/ Evening of Preparation” was not a term Jews would have used in connection with either Passover or the Sabbath. The Jewish expression for the day before Passover or the day before Sabbath would have been either “Evening of Passover” or “Evening of Sabbath.” Even as an intended parallel, the term was grammatically incorrect, referring incorrectly as to when “Preparation” should take place. Compounding the confusing chronology, the author of the proposed common source used a Roman definition of the calendar day, sunrise to sunrise, instead of the Jewish calendar day, sunset to sunset. So, we don’t know which of two consecutive Roman days was chosen to be parallel to the particular Jewish holiday. This plays havoc with any attempt to correlate the gospel chronology related to the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus with what would have happened in actuality if the Jewish calendar had been used.

The Day of Preparation | 591 For example, the gospels all say that no one went to Jesus’ tomb until the end of the Sabbath, at sunrise. But, the Sabbath would have ended either half a day earlier according to the Jewish calendar, on the previous sunset, or half a day later, at the start of the next sunset. Therefore, we cannot say when the first day of the week began in relation to the empty tomb. The Sabbath chronology has been thoroughly botched. Finally, the use of a Roman calendar overlay onto an out-of-sync Jewish calendar, coupled with the erroneous usage of “day of Preparation,” suggests that the author of the proposed common source was not a Jew but may have been targeting a Jewish audience in the diaspora. The author may have a gentile God-fearer who followed Jewish practices. The reliance of the gospel authors on this non-Judean chronology suggests that they, too, were from outside of Judea-Galilee, and more comfortable with Roman cultural settings than Judean-Galilean cultural practices.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

John 18:28. Mark 14:16–17. Mark 15:43; Luke 23:44. Mark 15:43; Luke 23:44. John 19:14. Mark 16:1–2. Luke 23:56–24:1. Luke 23:54. (Hall 2010), Luke 23:54; (Strong 2001), 2020. John  20:1. John  20:19. Leviticus  23:5. Exodus  12:8. Leviticus  23:6. Exodus 12:18–19. Exodus  12:16. Mark  14.1. Luke  22:1. John  12:1. Mark  14:12. Luke  22:7. John  134:1. Luke 22:15–16.

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2 4. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

(Metzger 1994), s. v., Luke 22:16. (Metzger 1994), s. v., Luke 22:16. John  19:41. Mark  15:42. John  19:31. John  19:42. Luke  23:54. (Meier 1991), 391–400. Luke 22:15–16. John  19:31.

Bibliography Hall, W. H. (Ed.). (2010). Lexham Greek-English Interlinear New Testament: SBL Edition. Lexham Press. Meier, J. P. (1991). A Marginal Jew, Rethinking the Historical Jesus (Vols. One, The Roots of the Problem and the Person). New Haven; London: Yale University Press. Metzger, B. M. (1994). A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (4th rev. ed.). London; New York: United Bible Societies. Strong, J. (2001). Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.

14

The Resurrection

The final sections of Mark, Luke and John describe what happened after the death of Jesus on the cross. Attempting to reconstruct what the proposed common source says took place faces a few obstacles. Most significant is that both Mark and John appear to have new endings tacked on at a later time. The problematic verses in Mark are Mark 16:9–20. Those in John include all of John 21. In its present form, Mark ends at 16:20 but it is the opinion of most gospel scholars that the original version ended at 16:8.1 This perception arises from the fact that the best early witnesses to Mark lack 16:9–20. Other endings have been found in later manuscripts, but the general consensus is that they were added on at a later date. The apparent additions to Mark seem to be influenced in substantial part by Luke. According to the shorter original version of Mark, Mary Magdalene (with at least one other woman) went to the tomb of Jesus and found it empty. A mysterious figure inside the tomb said Jesus was not there and told the women to tell the apostles that Jesus will meet up with them in Galilee. Fear seized the women, they ran away, and told nobody what they saw or heard. The shorter version of Mark ends at that point. In this version there is no appearance by a resurrected Jesus. It is widely assumed that Mark, for some reason, hadn’t finished his manuscript but any such

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theories as to why rely solely on speculation. For our purposes, we will take Mark’s gospel as ending with Mark 16:8. This means that for areas not covered by the shorter Mark, we have only Luke and John for trying to determine what was in the proposed common source and that, too, is fraught with problems. Most Johannine scholars believe that John originally ended with John 20 and that John 21 was added on at a later date. The chief reason for believing this concerns the way the two chapters end. At the conclusion of John 20, the gospel says, Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.2

This certainly has the appearance of an ending to the story. But after telling us that there were other miracles not mentioned in this book, John 21 adds another miracle to the story, Peter’s astonishing catch of fish, an incident we discussed in detail in Chapter 6. At the end of John 21, after an episode related to the Beloved Disciple, John adds the following ending to his gospel. This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.3

First, we are told that the Beloved Disciple is the witness to “these things”—the whole gospel or just the events of John 21?—and then we are told a second time that Jesus did a lot of miracles that weren’t included in the gospel. A comparison of the two chapter endings does seem to suggest that John 21 was added to an already completed gospel. There are also other problems with John 21 and we will consider them below. Another difficulty is that Luke describes only one post-crucifixion appearance of Jesus to the apostles and John describes three such appearances, one of which occurs in the problematic John 21. It will be argued below that John’s second and third appearances to the apostles were Johannine creations and not part of the proposed common source. Luke also has a long account of an appearance made by Jesus to two travelers on the way to a village named Emmaus, located some seven miles from Jerusalem. John has no such journey but, as we shall see below, John knew the story and made some substantial alterations based on his theological agenda.

The Resurrection | 595 Despite these various problems and differences in details, I believe a close examination of John and Luke can provide a very good approximation about what was in the proposed common source concerning the events following the crucifixion. Broadly speaking, I think we can divide the post-crucifixion narrative into four episodes unfolding in the following order.



• The burial of Jesus; • The empty tomb revelations; • A first post-resurrection appearance by Jesus to some one or more witnesses who were followers of Jesus but not members of the inner circle, and who didn’t initially recognize Jesus; • A second post-resurrection appearance to the apostles as a group in which the disciples initially thought Jesus was a spirit.

One final note: In the previous chapter I discussed the various chronological problems involved with identifying the Day of Preparation and the use of Roman versus Jewish calendars to define Jewish time frames. Some of those matters involved scenes in this section of the gospels. I am not going to reiterate any of those arguments here. I will mention Day of Preparation and Sabbath in the context of the stories but will not address the chronological issues previously discussed.

The Burial After the death of Jesus, Mark says that when evening had come, “and since it was the day of Preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath,”4 a man named Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.5 This Joseph, he says, was a respected member of the council and was waiting “expectantly” for the kingdom of God.6 Implicitly, Joseph would have been present for the trial of Jesus before the Jewish authorities. Upon Joseph’s petition, Pilate asked a centurion to determine if Jesus had been dead for a while.7 When the soldier returned and confirmed the death of Jesus, Pilate authorized Joseph to remove the body.8 Joseph brought linen cloth to the cross, took down Jesus’ body, wrapped it in the cloth, and laid it in a tomb cut of rock.9 When he was finished, he rolled a stone against the door of the tomb.10 Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses (who is presumably the earlier mentioned mother of Joses and James) saw where Joseph had placed the body.11 The passage also mentions Salome, but it isn’t clear if she is present with the two Marys or her name is simply mentioned as an additional descriptor for the second

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Mary. This is the same problem mentioned earlier with the witnesses who viewed Jesus from afar. Luke differs slightly from Mark. He doesn’t connect the petition for Jesus’ body to the Day of Preparation. He begins by telling us that there was a man named Joseph who was “good and righteous,” and that although this Joseph was a member of the council, he “had not agreed to their plan and action [emphasis added.]”12 He says this Joseph came from the Jewish town of Arimathea and was waiting expectantly for the kingdom of God.13 Joseph, he says, went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.14 But Luke omits any mention of Pilate’s inquiry into Jesus’ death. He jumps from Joseph’s request of Pilate to the removal of Jesus from the cross.15 Joseph wrapped him in linen and placed the body in a tomb cut of rock “where no one had ever been laid.”16 It is only after Jesus is entombed that Luke mentions that it was the Day of Preparation.17 Following the announcement, Luke tells us that the unnamed women who had followed Jesus from Galilee, previously mentioned as watching the crucifixion from afar, saw where Joseph placed Jesus’ body.18 They left the scene in order to prepare spices and ointments, and they rested on the Sabbath “according to the commandment.”19 Although Luke’s story looks a lot like Mark’s there are several small differences.

• Unlike Mark, Luke draws no connection between the request for the body and the Day of Preparation. • Luke adds that Joseph, as a member of the council, opposed the plan and action taken by the Jewish authorities. • Luke also adds that no one had ever been previously laid in the tomb where Jesus was placed. • Luke omits Pilate’s inquiry into whether Jesus had yet died. • Luke also omits Pilate’s specific authorization to remove the body, although it is implied. • Luke also omits the rolling of the stone against the door, although later, in the empty tomb segment, he says that the stone was rolled away.20 • Luke also omits the names of the women who saw where Jesus had been placed.

Of these differences perhaps the major difficulty is the failure to offer any eyewitness evidence that Jesus was actually dead at the time his body was removed from the cross. That Jesus was not dead when removed from the tomb was one of the allegations used by opponents of the Jesus movement and Luke’s gospel could be cited as evidence for that objection to Jesus.

The Resurrection | 597 John appears to know the basic scenario but also has significant variations. John, like Mark and in conflict with Luke, connects the Day of Preparation to the request to remove the body of Jesus from the cross. But, unlike Mark and Luke, he says that the Jewish authorities didn’t want bodies left on the cross during Sabbath and they asked Pilate to have the legs of the prisoners broken, presumably so that any one still alive would die almost immediately because they could not sustain their body with broken legs.21 Pilate sent soldiers to do so, first breaking the legs of the two men crucified with Jesus22—John is the only gospel to address the removal of the two others— but when they went over to Jesus they found him already dead and didn’t break his legs.23 Instead, John says, a soldier pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, which resulted in a gush of blood and water.24 John adds a gloss indicating that the Beloved Disciple, whose “testimony is true,” was a witness to this occurrence.25 John also adds that these occurrences were the fulfillment of two different scriptural passages, one relating to no bones being broken and the other to the body being pierced.26 Only after Jesus is proven dead does John introduce Joseph of Arimathea. This Joseph, he says, was a disciple of Jesus, but a secret one, because of his fear of the Jews.27 John mentions nothing about Joseph being a member of the council but does have him ask Pilate for the body of Jesus.28 Pilate granted Joseph permission and he removed the body.29 Although John says nothing about Joseph being a member of the council, he brought back Nicodemus, who was a member of the council and who opposed the council’s actions, and Nicodemus hooked up with Joseph, bringing about one hundred pounds of a spice mixture for use in the burial.30 The two, working together, wrapped the body with linen and placed the spices inside the wrappings “according to the burial custom of the Jews.”31 John says that there was a garden nearby and it had a tomb “in which no one had ever been laid.”32 Because it was the Jewish Day of Preparation, implying the urgency of the matter at hand, they placed Jesus in the tomb.33 John, like Luke, omits any mention of the stone being placed against the doorway, but, also like Luke, says during the empty tomb segment that the stone had been moved away.34

Mark, Luke and John Compared John’s two most important departures from Mark and Luke consist of (1) the Jewish authorities making the request that the people on the crosses have their legs broken to expedite their deaths and (2) the piercing of Jesus’ side.

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In Mark and Luke, the Jewish authorities left Jesus on the cross and made no effort to remove him, even for the coming Sabbath. This should be considered a continuation of the mockery of Jesus by rivals gloating over their political victory. Having Joseph come to the rescue of the body emphasizes the lack of concern the Jewish authorities have for their defeated opponent. John eliminated the mockery of Jesus in his account of the crucifixion because he doesn’t portray Jewish opposition to Jesus being the result of political rivalry. It was caused by a fear that Rome would intervene and punish the Jews. The Jewish authorities may have been wrong in their analysis but their concern was for the nation, not themselves. By having the Jewish authorities demonstrate that they are treating Jesus along with the two other crucified prisoners in accord with Jewish law, John eliminated the appearance of gloating and rivalry by the authorities. In Mark, when Joseph asked Pilate for the body, Pilate sent the centurion to check whether Jesus had died. The centurion reported back that Jesus was indeed dead. Mark doesn’t say what happened between the centurion’s departure and return. John’s account would be consistent with Mark in that having a soldier check on Jesus’ death by piercing his side would dovetail with the centurion returning and saying Jesus was dead. I suspect that John’s adding of a scriptural gloss to the piercing indicates that he is trying to explain away something in the source that he found problematic. I believe Mark had a motive to eliminate the piercing. At the conclusion of the crucifixion, Mark portrayed a human, the centurion, declaring for the first time that Jesus was indeed the son of God. From Mark’s perspective, depicting a dead bleeding human could contradict that message. Luke, surprisingly, omitted the necessary eyewitness evidence to show that Jesus did indeed die on the cross. Despite having Mark in front of him, he also omitted the latter’s claim that Pilate sent a centurion to see if Jesus was dead. Luke previously went out of his way to avoid depicting Jesus being subject to physical desecration. Although he mentioned the possibility of Jesus being flogged during the Roman proceeding, unlike Mark and John, he omitted any actual flogging. I believe we had a similar motive here. I don’t think Luke wanted to show Jesus being physically abused. It is my view that the piercing of the body belonged to the proposed common source and that Mark and Luke omitted it. But I also believe that the piercing was the result of Joseph’s request for the body of Jesus. John’s substitution of the Jewish request for the expeditious removal of the bodies looks like a continuation of

The Resurrection | 599 his alternative theme about why the Jewish authorities wanted Jesus put to death. I also suspect that the original piercing only mentioned blood and that the water was a Johannine addition. I have no corroboration for John’s piercing of Jesus’ body. But Mark’s centurion being sent out to check requires some indication that Jesus was deceased, and piercing the side could be one such way to make sure Jesus was dead. Luke’s omission of any checking seems unexplainable unless something really offensive took place and would explain why he omitted the mention of the centurion being sent to check on Jesus’ death. For purposes of reconstructing the proposed common source I am adding in the piercing of Jesus’ side but remain open to arguments against that conclusion. As to the lesser details there are some interesting parallels. Luke and John both say that the tomb had never been used before and Mark omits that notice. Luke and John both omit mention of the rock being rolled across the entrance of the tomb but both also say during the empty tomb segment that the rock had been moved away. These agreements between Luke and John against Mark suggest that the latter added in the rolling of the stone in front of the entrance. He may, however, have just been adding in an obvious detail omitted from the source. Mark and John agree against Luke that the reason for removing the bodies from the cross had to do with the coming Sabbath. Mark and John also both agree against Luke that a soldier checked to see if Jesus had died. I accept both agreements against Luke as part of the proposed common source. John has added in that the soldier checking on Jesus pierced his side with a spear and, as suggested above, I think that scene also belonged to the proposed common source. Mark, Luke and John all agree that Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus and that Pilate granted the request. They all also agree that after Jesus was taken down from the cross that the body was wrapped in linens. Mark and Luke both say that more than one female follower of Jesus saw where he had been buried. Mark specifically identifies Mary Magdalene as one of the women. Luke omits the specific names. John doesn’t specifically mention any female followers seeing where Jesus was buried but later, he says, Mary Magdalene saw that the stone had been rolled away from the tomb.35 This suggests that Mary Magdalene had seen the stone placed in front of the tomb and witnessed the burial. So, implicitly, John does corroborate that Mary Magdalene was a witness, but he doesn’t indicate that any other women witnessed the burial scene. At a minimum, therefore, we have to include Mary Magdalene as a witness to the placement of Jesus in a tomb.

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John appears to have bifurcated the person of Joseph of Arimathea, assigning some of his attributes to Nicodemus. John omits Joseph’s membership on the council but adds Nicodemus to the burial team, and the latter was a member of the council. Luke says that Joseph opposed the action and plan of the council. John actually depicts Nicodemus earlier opposing the council’s actions. John may have been concerned about depicting too many members of the council opposing its actions and having mentioned Nicodemus’s actions earlier he omitted Joseph’s credentials. We can say, therefore, that at least one member of the burial team, per Luke and John, had been a member of the council and had opposed its actions with respect to Jesus. I suspect that Nicodemus was added to the burial team by John. One reason for that addition may have been John’s earlier depiction of Nicodemus as interested in Jesus’ teachings. By way of summary, based on the analysis above, I have identified the following scenes as belonging to the proposed common source.

• Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the council and opposed its actions against Jesus. • Because the Sabbath was approaching, Joseph wanted to remove Jesus from the cross and bury him. • Joseph went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. • Pilate sent a centurion to make sure Jesus was dead. • The centurion stabbed Jesus in the side with a spear to make sure he was dead. • The centurion reported back that Jesus was dead. • Pilate authorized Joseph to take the body. • Joseph removed the body from the cross and wrapped it in linens. • Joseph placed Jesus’ body in a tomb that had never been used. • Mary Magdalene (and possibly others) saw Joseph place Jesus in a tomb.

The Empty Tomb With the empty tomb segment of the gospels we begin to encounter significant problems in harmonization. Mark, as noted above, appears to have ended the gospel with a version of the empty tomb story and has omitted any account of the resurrection. Mark’s shorter original version, as shown below, actually incorporates only a partial account of the empty tomb episode. Luke has significant variations from Mark. John, as a number of scholars suggest, appears to have reordered some of the verses such that the narrative doesn’t coincide with either of the other two.36 Closer examination, however, will resolve some of these issues.

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Mark’s Version (16:1–8) According to Mark, after the Sabbath Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome went to the tomb with spices so that they might anoint the body of Jesus. (The same cautions about Salome’s presence apply here also.) Mark has left out Joses from the description, so it is not entirely clear that this is the same Mary that witnessed the crucifixion from afar. But it is probably best to assume that this is the case. They left just after sunrise and along the way wondered who would roll the stone away so that they might enter the tomb. But when they reached the tomb, they saw that the stone “which was very large” had already been rolled away. When they entered the tomb they saw a young man in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they became afraid. Sensing their fear, the young man said, Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.37

Upon hearing these words, the women panicked. They ran from the tomb. “Terror and amazement had seized them.”38 Mark says they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.39 On that note, the original version of Mark’s gospel ends. Key points in the story include the following.



• The women witnesses from afar, including Mary Magdalene, went to the tomb of Jesus. • A mysterious figure dressed in white was sitting in the tomb and said Jesus had been raised and was not there. • The man in white said that Jesus was going on ahead to Galilee and that the women should tell Peter and the disciples to meet him there, and they will see him. • The women were frightened and told no one anything about what happened.

Luke’s Version (24:1–12) According to Luke, on the morning after Sabbath ended, the unnamed women who watched from afar came to the tomb with the spices they had prepared. Although Luke didn’t name the women who watched from afar, or give us the names in this initial notice, a few verses later he says that the women included Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other unnamed women.

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Luke refers to the second Mary as the mother of James, which is how Mark refers to her, but he omitted Mark’s mention of Salome.40 Instead, he substitutes a third woman named Joanna. The women found that the stone had been rolled away but Luke omitted Mark’s notice that the women wondered who would move it when they got there. They went into the tomb but the body wasn’t there and they were puzzled about what happened. While they were considering the matter, two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. “The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground.”41 Seeing their fear, the men said, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.42

Luke retains Mark’s “He is not here,” but the surrounding words are very different. The two men say nothing about Jesus going to Galilee and meeting up with the disciples, but they do remind the women about what he prophesied in Galilee about being crucified and rising up. The opening statement, about looking for the living among the dead, could be interpreted to mean that Jesus hadn’t died and had been removed from the tomb. This is puzzling, especially since Luke has also eliminated any indication that anyone checked to see if Jesus was dead before he was removed from the cross. Instead of fleeing in fear and telling no one, as Mark has it, Luke says the women went and told the eleven apostles (Judas was no longer among them) and others about what happened. But they were not believed. Despite the disbelief, Luke says that Peter got up and ran to the tomb, looked in, and saw the linen wrappings by themselves. Seeing the empty tomb, Peter went home amazed at what happened. Luke’s empty tomb segment breaks off without any indication that Peter told anybody what he saw. Luke has several significant variations from Mark, including the following.

• Luke has two man standing in the empty tomb where Mark has one man sitting. • The words spoken by the men in Luke are very different from those spoken in Mark, although both include the phrase “He is not here.” • In Luke, the men do not tell the women that Jesus was going on to Galilee and that the disciples should meet him there, as Mark has it. • Luke mentions linen wrappings left in the tomb; Mark doesn’t.

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• In Mark, the women say nothing; In Luke they tell everything. • Mark ends the story with the women not telling anybody what they saw; Luke ends with Peter not telling anybody what he saw.

Luke also has one very important detail missing in Mark. He says Mary Magdalene was not believed by the apostles when she told them what she had seen. I think this is a very important clue that will help explain some problems with Mark and John. I’ll return to this later.

John’s Version (20:1, 11–13, 2–10) John presents some difficult issues with his narrative of the empty tomb. As I indicate in the subhead, the verses appear to be out of order. A number of scholars have seen problems with the sequence of events running from John 20:1–18 and have made a number of suggestions as to how they should be reconstructed.43 There is also some question as to whether verses 20:17–18 are later additions to John’s original manuscript.44 Von Wahlde has proposed that the correct sequence should be 20:1, 11–16, 2–10.45 It is my view that only 11–13 should be moved forward. John 20:14–16 involves an appearance by Jesus to Mary while she is still outside the tomb. I believe that these verses belong after the empty tomb incident and serves as a partial parallel to Luke’s account of the first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus. I’ll postpone my discussion of that issue for later. As John is presently set up, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw the stone removed, but she didn’t go in and look. She ran straight away to tell the apostles. On Mary’s report, Peter and the Beloved Disciple ran to the tomb, noted the missing body, and returned home. But, at John 20:11, Mary Magdalene is still outside the tomb and encounters two angels in white inside the tomb. A discussion ensued, and the scene abruptly breaks at John 20:14 for the appearance of Jesus to Mary. The effect of my re-ordering of verses, as with von Wahlde and others, is to put Mary’s encounter with the strangers in the tomb ahead of the arrival of Peter and the Beloved Disciple. But von Wahlde also moves the appearance of Jesus to Mary before the arrival of Peter and the Beloved Disciple and I leave the appearance after the two disciples left the scene. John 20:1 begins that gospel’s account of the empty tomb. Mary arrived at the tomb and saw that the stone had been moved. Unlike Mark and Luke, she brings no spices and appears to be alone. (John says Nicodemus provided the spices earlier.) In my arrangement, the story resumes at John 20:11, with Mary

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weeping outside the tomb. While crying, she looked in and saw two angels in white sitting at each end of Jesus’ bier. Mark indicates only one man in white sitting in the tomb. John has two men in white sitting in the tomb. Luke has two men in dazzling clothes standing in the tomb. Taking the three reports together, it is most likely that in the proposed common source there were two men (John and Luke) in white (John and Mark) sitting (John and Mark) on the platform, as John has it. The angels asked Mary why she was weeping and she replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”46 John has eliminated some of the words spoken by the angels so we have no way to compare Mark and Luke as to who more closely reflects the common source. The angels must have said something in response to Mary prior to her running back to the disciples. Yet John omitted the words. I suggested earlier that Luke’s initial words from the two mysterious men— ”Why do you look for the living among the dead?”—could be interpreted to indicate that Jesus didn’t actually die. If those words were in the proposed common source, I suspect that John would have had major problems with the phrasing. John’s arrangement also makes the role of the angels somewhat superfluous. This suggests to me that John omitted the words and that Luke may better reflect what was said by the men in the tomb than Mark does. In John’s present sequence of events, following the conversation with the angels, Jesus appeared to Mary. In my reconstructed order, before Jesus appears to Mary (John 20:14), the conversation with the angels (John 20:11–13) is moved after John 20:1, and following the conversation, the narrative picks up at John 20:2, at which point, Mary ran to Peter and the Beloved Disciple, telling them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”47 John has a key departure from both Mark and Luke. In Mark, Mary Magdalene says nothing about what she saw. In Luke, Mary Magdalene says something but she is not believed. In John, Mary Magdalene says something, and in response, Peter and the Beloved Disciple race each other to the tomb to see for themselves. My strong suspicion here is that Luke has it right, that in the proposed common source the disciples at first didn’t believe her, but Peter decided to check anyway. Mary Magdalene obviously occupies an important place in the early Christian traditions and it is my view that both John and Mark were offended by a claim in the proposed common source that the disciples wouldn’t believe her. In Mark, the problem is solved by initially having Mary say nothing. What Mark may have been planned for later we can’t say. In John, the problem is solved by reordering

The Resurrection | 605 the sequence of events so that Peter sees the empty tomb before Mary does and therefore there is no issue as to not believing her. Notice, also, that Mary said “we” don’t know where he is. This suggests that Mary Magdalene had companions when she went to the tomb and that John has dropped them out of the scene. After Mary Magdalene informs Peter and the Beloved Disciple, the two men race to the tomb and the Beloved Disciple gets there first. He bent down to look into the tomb but didn’t go in. He could see, however, the linen wrappings that were inside. Peter arrived perhaps a few seconds later, and went into the tomb. He also saw the linen wrappings but John says he also saw the cloth that had been placed over Jesus’ face rolled up and placed alongside the wrappings. This is the first mention of a cloth over the face. Previously Mark, Luke and John spoke only of wrapping the body in linens and placing it in the tomb. I suspect that John added the face cloth to conform this story to that of his account of Lazarus, who was allegedly dead and had a cloth over his face while lying in the tomb. After Peter entered, the Beloved Disciple also entered. John says that when the Beloved Disciple saw the setting, he “believed.”48 John adds that the disciples at that point did not yet understand that Jesus “must rise from the dead.”49 John’s teaching here is that the Beloved Disciple, without having to see Jesus appear, had faith that Jesus had risen from the dead, but that Peter, and implicitly all the other disciples, have still not understood that Jesus had to die and be raised. We’ll come back to this point when we look at Luke’s account of the appearance of Jesus to the apostles. Following the discovery, Peter and the Beloved Disciple “returned to their homes.”50 Under my reconstructed order, this is where the empty tomb segment should end. Recognizing that the acts of Beloved Disciple are John’s own insertion into the story, John and Luke both end the story in the same way. Peter returns home from the tomb but says nothing to anybody about what he saw. Since John and Luke both show Peter heading to the tomb after Mary Magdalene reports back, it is possible that Mark shifted Peter’s silence to Mary and would have had Peter tell the disciples about the empty tomb. But Mark has ended the gospel before Peter checks the tomb, so we do not know how Mark would have finalized or re-edited the involvement of Mary and Peter in the empty tomb segment.

John and Luke Compared Once we reconstruct John’s sequence of events, there appears to be a close parallel between John and Luke as to the unfolding of the empty tomb story. At the end of Sabbath, Mary Magdalene (and others) went to the tomb and found the stone

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rolled away. Mary went in and two men were in the tomb. John redacted the statement made by the angels to Mary, I suggest, because it allowed for an interpretation that Jesus may not have actually died. Mary went back to the disciples and told them what happened. Luke says they didn’t believe her but Peter went to check out the tomb. John omits the statement about not believing her but has Peter follow her announcement by going to the tomb. John and Luke both have Peter see the linen wrappings in the tomb and then go home. Both end the segment with Peter saying nothing to anybody about what he saw. The chief differences between Luke and John is that John has omitted the angels’ words and he has omitted the claim that the disciples didn’t believe Mary Magdalene. In John, when Mary Magdalene says “we don’t know where” we have a hint that John has dropped the other women out of the story. John has also inserted the Beloved Disciple into the episode, which is a product of his own point of view, but this incident with the Beloved Disciple will later present a contrast with the actions of the disciple Thomas. Despite these small disagreements, it seems clear that John and Luke worked from a common source for the empty tomb segment. By way of summary, I have included the following scenes in the following order in the proposed common source.

• • • • •



•



• • • •

Mary Magdalene and other women went to the tomb. The women saw that the stone had been rolled away. They looked inside the tomb and saw Jesus wasn’t there. Two men dressed in white sat on the bier where Jesus had been placed. The men said something to the women that is not easily recoverable, but Luke probably has the version that most closely follows the proposed common source. “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.” Mary Magdalene and the other women went back to the apostles and told them what they saw and heard. The apostles did not believe Mary Magdalene. Peter went to the tomb anyway. Peter looked inside and saw the linen wrappings. Peter went home but did not tell anyone what he saw.

The Road to Emmaus Mark’s gospel ends with Mary Magdalene’s silence and it includes no resurrection account. This means that any attempt to reconstruct what the proposed common

The Resurrection | 607 source had to say about the events after the empty tomb episode depends upon our ability to find parallels between Luke and John. Immediately after Luke tells us Peter went home, the location switches to a road leading to the village of Emmaus, which Luke places seven miles from Jerusalem.51 He says “two of them [emphasis added]” were on that road. The only logical narrative referent to “them” is “Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles.”52 Luke, however, never tells us the sex of either of these two and always refers to them in the plural. He does give the name of one of the travelers, “Cleopas,” but doesn’t tell us the other traveler’s name.53 Given that these two witnesses will be the first persons to whom Jesus reveals himself, the failure to mention the name of the second witness seems rather odd. The lack of a name suggests that, like Cleopas, the traveler was not a member of the twelve apostles. “Cleopas” appears to be grammatically masculine and, despite the slight spelling difference, some see in this name the husband of John’s “Mary, the wife of Clopas.”54 The unnamed second person, therefore, could be John’s “Mary, the wife of Clopas,” whom John identifies as the second Mary with Jesus at the crucifixion. However, Luke has no mention of this Mary in his gospel. As they were walking along and talking about the things that happened, Jesus appeared in front of them but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.55 In Luke, this is Jesus’ first post-crucifixion appearance, in front of two persons who weren’t among the twelve apostles. Jesus asked them what they were talking about.56 The two travelers responded with a somewhat lengthy reply highlighting the events that passed. Jesus of Nazareth, they said, was a prophet, “mighty in deed and word before God;” the chief priests had handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him; and the two travelers “had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel [emphasis added].”57 The italicized portion suggests that these two travelers may have lost faith in Jesus as the messiah. Besides all that, they say, three days have passed and some of the women who were with them went to the tomb, found the body missing, and “had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.” When the women told their group, what happened, they said, some of those who were with them went to the tomb and found him gone.58 (Luke only mentions Peter going to the tomb after the women reported back.) Throughout the reply, none of the witnesses to the empty tomb are named, and the two travelers never specifically say they were among those who saw the tomb.

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Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith. “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”59 Jesus then explained to them all the teachings of Moses and the prophets that spoke about him.60 As of yet, the two travelers did not know they were speaking to Jesus, but his initial rebuke indicates that they had lost faith in him. As they came towards the village, Jesus started to go on his way but the two companions invited him to stay with them for the night, as it was getting late.61 Jesus accepted their offer.62 At the table Jesus broke some bread, blessed it and handed it over to them.63 (It was still during the Festival of Unleavened Bread, but only regular bread is described.) At that very moment their eyes opened, they recognized Jesus, and he vanished.64 The breaking of the bread proved that the image of Jesus they saw was not a spirit image but a real human, because a spirit image couldn’t have held and broken the bread. After reflecting on their experience, the travelers immediately rushed back to Jerusalem to find the apostles.65 When they found the eleven remaining disciples, the travelers heard them say, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”66 The declaration that Jesus appeared to Simon (i.e., Peter) is somewhat shocking. When Luke last left Peter he had headed home without saying anything to anybody. The appearance of Jesus to Peter seems like a pretty important event. Shouldn’t there be some description of what took place? Furthermore, in the very next scene, where Jesus appears to the disciples as a group, Peter, along with the others is described as terrified. This insertion about Simon appears to be an editorial insert by Luke. When we looked at the Eucharist episode in Chapter 8, we saw that Luke appeared to have direct knowledge of the written form of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. In that same letter, Paul says that when Jesus arose on the third day he appeared to Cephas (i.e., Peter) and then “the twelve.”67 So Luke would have likely been familiar with this passage. That arrangement is what Luke follows in his gospel. He says there was a single appearance to Peter and then right after that he tells us about an appearance to all of the apostles (except Judas). Paul, however, doesn’t say Jesus appeared to Peter first; he just says he appeared to Peter before appearing to the “twelve.” Paul’s language allows for Jesus to have appeared to others before appearing to Peter. In any event, I am treating Luke’s initial appearance to Peter as a Lucan addition to the gospel and not as a passage from the proposed common source.

The Resurrection | 609 Following the notice about Peter’ experience, the travelers told the apostles about how Jesus appeared to them and made known who he was by the breaking of bread.68 At this point Luke segues into the first appearance of Jesus to the apostles. “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ ”69 The two travelers remained present when Jesus appeared to the apostles. To summarize some key points from Luke’s account of the journey to Emmaus, we have the following:



• Jesus first appeared to two people who were not members of the inner circle of apostles but who appear to be among the followers and, perhaps, lesser disciples of Jesus. • The two individuals to whom he appeared did not recognize him at first. • The two individuals appear to have lost faith in Jesus as the messiah. • Jesus rebuked them for not understanding the scriptural necessity that the messiah had to die and rise up. • Jesus revealed himself to the individuals after breaking bread. • The breaking of bread signified that the image of Jesus they had just seen was not a spirit image. • Jesus disappeared from the scene. • The two travelers went back to Jerusalem to tell the apostles what happened. • Jesus appeared to the apostles while the two travelers were present.

The Road to Emmaus in John John doesn’t have a story that looks anything like Luke’s account of the two travelers to Emmaus. If it were in the proposed common source John would have had at least two objections to how the story unfolded. First, he would have been disturbed by Jesus initially appearing to people who appear to have lost faith in Jesus as the messiah. Second, he would have had problems with Jesus having to provide physical proof that he wasn’t a spirit. He may also have been concerned that Jesus first appeared to people who weren’t among his intimates. The evidence below will show that John has parallels to the essential facts of the Emmaus journey but has altered the details to account for his theological agenda. Consistent with his previously described methods he has bifurcated the story and separated the parts while at the same time merging details with other stories. To understand how John preserves the Emmaus journey in altered form we need to first return to his account of Peter’s miraculous fish catch and then to Mary Magdalene’s appearance at the tomb.

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The Fishing Miracle In John, the fishing miracle is part of the story of Jesus’ third appearance before the disciples and encompasses much of John 21. We initially looked at John’s account of this fishing miracle in detail back in Chapter 6 and discussed how John adapted the story from a similar narrative to the one in Luke relating to the initial recruitment of Jesus’ disciples. I’m not going to review any of that discussion here but will focus primarily on peripheral details that have been attached to the story. In context, however, John’s story takes place after Jesus has already made two appearances to the disciples and, in theory, they no longer had any doubts that he has returned from the dead. John begins by telling us who was present. “Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples [emphasis added].”70 In Luke’s version, only Peter and the brothers Zebedee were present. I may be stretching John’s symbolism beyond his intentions but the two additionally named disciples, Thomas and Nathanael, were originally doubters in John’s narrative. At the beginning of John’s narrative, Nathanael remarks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”71 After Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance to the disciples (without Thomas present), Thomas says, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”72 At the start of the fishing miracle story we are given to believe that those doubts have been overcome. My concern here is the two unnamed disciples. Why are they unnamed? John has a very expansive use of the term disciples, using it for many people who weren’t among the twelve. Consider this scene from shortly after John’s discourse on bread. “Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” [emphasis added]”73 The presence of two unnamed disciples in this scene suggests that they weren’t among the apostles. This places them in a similar position to the two minor followers on the road to Emmaus, post-resurrection disciples who were not among the apostles but to whom Jesus appeared. By itself, that would simply be a coincidence, but in the context of other facts, an Emmaus parallel begins to emerge. “Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.”74 Implicit here is that the two unnamed disciples didn’t know

The Resurrection | 611 they were looking at the resurrected Jesus. Also consistent with Luke, the two unnamed disciples are present when Jesus makes a post-resurrection appearance to the apostles. Although this is the third appearance of Jesus to the Apostles they don’t actually recognize him at this point of the story. As I pointed out in Chapter 6, some scholars observe that this story “has all the marks of an initial appearance to these disciples.”75 In fact, as I argued in Chapter 6, this story was originally about the recruitment of the disciples early in Jesus’ mission and John moved it into this location. John’s narrative moves on to the miraculous catch of fish and reactions. I won’t repeat the whole story but in the course of the incident the Beloved Disciple announces the man they had been talking to before the catch was the Lord, and when Peter heard him, he jumped into the water to race ashore. There is no direct evidence in John that anybody other than Peter heard what the Beloved Disciple said and the others remained on the boat for the time being. As we will see in a moment, it is also questionable whether the other disciples actually recognized Jesus during the course of the incident. When the disciples come ashore Jesus has arranged for a charcoal fire with grilled fish and bread.76 Jesus invites the disciples to breakfast and then we have a very strange statement by John. “Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ because they knew it was the Lord.”77 The statement seems to suggest that the disciples weren’t really sure and wanted to confirm that this person was in fact the Lord Jesus, but that they were afraid to show any doubts. The problem here is that according to John’s narrative, the disciples had met Jesus twice earlier after his resurrection and were joyous at his presence. So why should there be any question at all about what the disciples believed or feared to ask? John follows up the ambiguous recognition by having Jesus hand bread to the disciples and then the fish. I’ll return to the fish issue later, after we review Luke’s first post-resurrection appearance to the apostles. But after Jesus hands over the bread John says, “This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.” He leaves the slightly ambiguous recognition in place with no further observations. Let’s look at several of the elements that are present in John’s story and compare them to Luke’s journey to Emmaus.

• Two unnamed disciples, who do not appear to be among the Twelve, were present when Jesus appeared to the apostles. • Jesus made a post-resurrection appearance to these two disciples. • At first the two individuals did not recognize Jesus.

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• Immediately before Jesus handed bread to the individuals, they appeared to recognize him as Jesus, although John is a little ambiguous about this recognition taking place. • Jesus handed them bread.

These are all key elements in Luke’s Emmaus story, although the first item in the list is out of sequence. But there are also some variations and departures from Luke.

• Luke places the journey near Jerusalem. John places it in Galilee. • There is no apparent loss of faith by the unnamed disciples. • There is no rebuke to the unnamed disciples for failing to understand that Jesus had to rise up from the dead. • There are no lectures to the unnamed disciples. • The bread doesn’t serve to prove that Jesus is not a spirit. • Luke places the appearance of Jesus to the minor disciples before the appearance to the apostles. (Note that John starts with the end of the Emmaus story rather than the beginning, i.e., the unnamed disciples are present with the apostles.)

From my perspective, the only serious departure from Luke’s Emmaus story is the placing of the appearance to the two unnamed disciples after the appearance to the apostles rather than before. We will address this short-coming in a moment when we look at the story of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene. As to the location of the incident, that was necessarily determined by John’s attaching the story elements to the fishing miracle in Galilee. The remaining departures are accommodations to John’s theological agenda. He has eliminated the lack of faith and the need to rebuke and lecture. The handing over of bread no longer serves as proof that Jesus is not a spirit. Jesus’ first appearance to the apostles put that issue to rest. So while there are explainable variations from Luke, most of the essential details are present in John. Let’s turn now to the one major missing element, the appearance to a non-apostle before appearing to the apostles.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene In John’s present arrangement, Peter and the Beloved Disciple went into the tomb before Mary and she went in after them. In that setting Mary initially began a conversation with the two angels but the conversation was abruptly interrupted by the appearance of Jesus. I proposed that the segment about Mary in the tomb

The Resurrection | 613 belonged before Peter went to the tomb but that the appearance of Jesus to Mary belonged after Peter went to the tomb and went home. This rearranged sequence of scenes coincides with Luke’s empty tomb narrative. Placing the appearance of Jesus to Mary after Peter returns home situates the scene in sequential parallel to Luke’s account of the events on the way to Emmaus, after Peter goes home and before Jesus appears to the disciples as a group. In John, Mary is not on the road to Emmaus but by the tomb. It is not clear if she had entered or was just looking in from the door entrance. But this may be a result of John’s re-ordering of the scene structure. The appearance to Mary should occur after the entire empty tomb sequence has been completed. Taking John as it is written, the dialogue between Mary and the two angels is cut short. She turned around and saw Jesus but didn’t recognize him.78 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”79 Mary asked him if he had taken away the body and, if so, can he show her where, so she can take it?80 Jesus said, “Mary!” and, suddenly recognizing him, called out, “Rabbouni!” which John tells us is Hebrew for “teacher.”81 “Rabbouni” is a variation of the word Rabbi. As I noted above, some scholars see the next two verses, John 20:17–18, as later additions to the gospel. Given what I see as parallels to Luke I am not sure that this is the case. In the first verse, Mary attempts to hug Jesus and he responds, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ”82 I won’t attempt to assess the theology involved here but we have a dovetail with Luke. Both John and Luke depict Jesus as not having ascended to heaven after leaving the empty tomb. Luke depicts the actual ascent at the end of the gospel. John says it hasn’t happened just yet but doesn’t show us the ascent. Interestingly, John’s arrangement, preventing Mary from physically touching him, reinforces Mary’s faith as she accepts him even without physical contact. Compare that later with the offer of Jesus to have the apostles touch him (in both Luke and John). In the second of the two verses, Mary went to the apostles and said, “I have seen the Lord.”83 Next, she related to them everything that happened.84 While John’s account of Jesus and Mary doesn’t look like Luke’s road to Emmaus, there are several parallels. First, there is a sequential agreement that places the first appearance of Jesus between the empty tomb scene and the appearance to the disciples as a group. Second, this appearance was to a follower of Jesus who was not an apostle. Third, when Jesus first appeared to Mary she did

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not recognize him. Fourth, Jesus eventually enabled the witnesses to recognize him. Fifth, after recognizing Jesus the witnesses went to the disciples and told them what they saw and heard. A key difference, however, is that Mary had not lost faith and, even without a physical sign that Jesus was not a spirit, she accepted him as “Lord.”

Summarizing John’s Emmaus Elements Keeping in mind John’s theological objections, it ought to be clear that John knew the Emmaus story and has rearranged and altered the pieces. He eliminated the first post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to people who lost faith and replaced them with Mary Magdalene, who remained faithful, believing him to be resurrected without any hesitation. At the same time, Mary, a close intimate of Jesus, has replaced the initial minor unknown characters to whom Jesus first appeared. John relegated them to a barely noticed presence during Jesus’ third appearance to the apostles in Galilee. John also eliminated the breaking of the bread as proof that Jesus was not a spirit, but John placed the breaking of bread into a different context, where it didn’t serve to prove Jesus was not a spirit. Reading the Mary Magdalene and fishing miracle details together we have the following parallel sequence of events with Luke’s journey to Emmaus (although John has changed some of the sequential order).





• Jesus made his first post-resurrection appearance to someone who was not an apostle. Luke says it was two minor disciples who have lost faith. John says it was Mary Magdalene who remained faithful, and he moved the two minor disciples into a different context. • This appearance happened immediately after the empty tomb episode (with Mary Magdalene in John’s version). • It happens on the same day as the empty tomb episode (with Mary Magdalene in John’s version). • The persons to whom Jesus first appears did not initially recognize him. In Luke it is the two travelers on the road to Emmaus. In John, it is Mary. He moved the substitutes for the two travelers into a different context where they still don’t recognize Jesus when he first appears. • Jesus sat down to a meal with bread with the two minor disciples. • The minor disciples recognized Jesus right after the bread meal. • The first witnesses (Mary Magdalene in John) to Jesus’ resurrection reported what they saw to the apostles.

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• The two minor disciples were present when Jesus appeared to the apostles (although John moved this scene into his third appearance story).

I will include the journey to Emmaus in reconstructing the proposed common source, but I will omit Luke’s allegation that Peter had seen Jesus before the appearance to all of the disciples as a group. I also omit Luke’s two episodes where Jesus engages in lengthy teachings about what the prophets said about him as that seems rather late in the game for such a small return in terms of time invested.

Jesus’ Appearance to the Apostles in Luke (24:36–49) In Luke, while the two travelers talked with the Apostles about what they learned, Jesus appeared among them. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 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.” [emphasis added]85

I have emphasized a certain part of this passage. Let me explain why. To begin with, in what we will see as part of John’s parallel to this scene, he writes, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.86

Luke and John introduce Jesus to the disciples with the same phrase, “Peace be with you.” Both also have Jesus show off his body to them. In Luke, Jesus displays hands and feet. In John, it is hands and side. John’s use of “side” instead of “feet” may be related to the piercing of Jesus’ side. I have accepted above that the piercing scene is original to the proposed common source and that Luke omitted it in order to avoid depicting physical abuse of Jesus. Luke, therefore, may have changed “side” to “feet” to deflect attention away from the piercing scene. However, we have no corroboration for either version. What is important though is that both show Jesus offering his body for display in order to show that it is really him.

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Now compare the emphasized passage in Luke with the end of the passage in John. Luke depicts frightened apostles who thought they saw a ghost (despite Luke’s earlier allegation that Jesus appeared to Peter). Luke also has Jesus accuse the disciples of having doubts. John depicts the disciples as joyous, but we will later be told that Thomas wasn’t present for this appearance and he had doubts. Both, therefore, indicate the issue of doubt was present among the apostles but the two disagree as to how the disciples reacted. I’ll review the doubt issue in more detail later after looking at John’s account of the appearance to Thomas. At present, I want to look at Luke’s language about the ghost. There is something familiar about it. Luke omitted Mark’s account of Jesus walking on water, which story also included Jesus chastising the apostles for not understanding the miracle of the loaves. In Mark’s story we have the following information. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. [emphasis added]87

As I suggested back in Chapter 2, Luke appears to have had problems with Mark’s negative depiction of the disciples and scattered some of the details of those stories into different contexts. To a substantial degree, this is what John has also done with negative depictions of the disciples. It is my suggestion that in the proposed common source the disciples thought Jesus was only a spirit image, not an actual living human, and that Luke transferred the ghost passages from his missing walking on water scene to this post-resurrection scene in order to emphasize the point. Returning to Luke’s account of the appearance of Jesus, after he tells them to touch his body he displays his hands and feet.88 Luke doesn’t indicate anyone touched Jesus but the gospel describes the disciples as, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering [emphasis added].”89 This description brings us closer to what John has at the end of the passage quoted above. “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” But Luke’s version still shows the disciples have doubts and in John’s version there is no doubt. As they wondered about what they saw, Jesus asked them if there was anything to eat.90 A piece of broiled fish was produced and Jesus ate it in their presence.91 The expression of hunger and the act of eating fish serve as proof that Jesus was a real human being, not a spirit image, because a spirit image couldn’t eat a meal.

The Resurrection | 617 At this point we have a suspicious rehash of what Jesus taught the two travelers (who Luke implied were still present). He goes into the teachings of the prophets and the need to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.92 He concludes his teachings by telling the apostles that they are the witnesses to these things, and that he will send them what has been promised, and that they should remain in the city until “you have been clothed with power from on high.”93 Luke’s indication that Jesus taught the disciples that he needed to die and rise up dovetails nicely with John’s notice in the empty tomb scene that Peter did not yet understand that Jesus must rise from the dead. At some point after the burial scene, the proposed common source must have indicated that Peter and/or the disciples did not yet understand that Jesus must rise up from the dead. Luke ends the gospel with a notice that Jesus led the apostles to Bethany, blessed them, then withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven.94 The apostles returned to Jerusalem, worshipped Jesus, and “were continually in the temple blessing God.”95

Jesus’ First Appearance to the Apostles in John (20:19–23) While Luke only depicts one appearance of Jesus to the disciples, John depicts three. The first takes place among ten of the original twelve, missing Judas and Thomas. The second appearance is with the ten plus Thomas. The third is the appearance in Galilee, which we have discussed above in connection with the Emmaus story. John begins with the disciples barricaded inside a house for “fear of the Jews.”96 As in Luke, the appearance is on the same day as the discovery of the empty tomb, the day after the Sabbath.97 Also, as in Luke, the scene follows after Jesus has made an appearance to someone other than the disciples, in John’s case, Mary Magdalene.98 With the door locked, Jesus appeared to the disciples inside the cabin, and said “Peace be with you.”99 As described above, this is the very same phrase Jesus speaks when he appears before the disciples in Luke. John has no ghost and fear scene and after his greeting of peace, he displays his hands and side, presumably the side that had been pierced.100 The disciples were joyous.101 John describes the disciples in collective fashion and up to this point has not mentioned anyone missing or mentioned any names of who was or wasn’t present. Jesus repeated his greeting, “Peace be with you” and added, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”102 He breathed on them and told them, “Receive the

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Holy Spirit.”103 He further instructed them, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”104 So ends the first appearance Compare this ending portion of the first appearance with Luke’s ending, in which he quotes Jesus as saying, “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.” In John, Jesus bestows the Holy Spirit then and there; Luke tells the disciples to wait for it to come from on high. While we can’t determine who has the precise sequence for bestowing the Holy Spirit, it is reasonable to say that the proposed common source indicated that Jesus made some sort of claim about bestowing the Holy Spirit on the apostles. Also in Luke’s version, Jesus says, “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”105 John also sends the disciples out with the power to forgive sins. John omits Luke’ teachings about the prophets and Jesus’ need to suffer, die and rise. However, as I noted above, when Peter was in the empty tomb John told us that the disciple did not yet understand that Jesus had to die and rise up. This suggests that at some point in the proposed common source, after the burial scene, Peter and/or the disciples did not yet understand that Jesus needed to die and rise up. There is also the matter of Luke’s grilled fish meal. John doesn’t have a fish meal in his account of the first appearance but he does have one during the third appearance in Galilee, in the same scene as the bread meal. In Luke, eating the fish is supposed to show proof that Jesus is in a human form. In John’s setting, the fish meal has nothing to do with proof that Jesus has been resurrected. Since the bread and fish meals serve similar purposes, John has combined them into a single event and eliminated the objectionable elements.

Jesus’ Second Appearance to the Apostles in John (20:24–29) After bestowing the Holy Spirit, which seems like cloture over the resurrected appearance of Jesus, John tosses a curve ball. He announces that Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus appeared.106 When Thomas returned the disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But Thomas responded, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”107

The Resurrection | 619 A week later, while Thomas was in the house with the others and the door was shut, Jesus appeared to the crew again and said, “Peace be with you.”108 Jesus turned to Thomas and said, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”109 John doesn’t say that Thomas actually touched Jesus, but the disciple reacted to Jesus’ invitation by declaring, “My Lord and my God!”110 Jesus responded to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”111 This is the end of the second appearance by Jesus to the disciples and John moves to the notice about the gospel being written so that people will believe that Jesus is the messiah and the son of God.112 Thomas’s element of doubt brings to mind Luke’s notice that when Jesus appeared to the disciples and showed his hands and feet, the disciples were “disbelieving and still wondering.” John appears to assign the doubting role just to Thomas, and the rebuke to Thomas serves as a contrast to the Beloved Disciple in the tomb. Note that Mary Magdalene also believed that Jesus was fully human without touching him, an additional contrast with Thomas. In John’s empty tomb scene, we are told that upon seeing the empty tomb the Beloved Disciple believed in Jesus but that the others had not yet understood the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. The Beloved Disciple believed in the resurrected Jesus without having to see him. Thomas didn’t believe in the resurrected Jesus until he could see him. When Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” the obvious comparison is with the Beloved Disciple who did not have to see to believe. I judge the entire Beloved Disciple/Doubting Thomas contrast to be a Johannine creation that was not part of the proposed common source. At the same time, John’s first two appearances to the disciples omits Luke’s report that the disciples as a group harbored doubt until after Jesus ate the grilled fish.

Jesus’ Third Appearance to the Apostles in John (21:1–23) John builds Jesus’ third appearance to the disciples around the miracle of Peter’s great fish catch. I have already discussed the details of the story both above and in Chapter 6. I have nothing to add at this point. By way of summary, John has taken details of the Emmaus journey and moved them into a different context, placing the parallel to the two travelers into this third appearance. John also com-

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bined the bread meal from the Emmaus story with the fish meal from Luke’s first appearance to the apostles, and placed them in a different setting in this third appearance that eliminates the evidentiary role the two meals play in showing that Jesus was not a spirit.

Reconstructing the Appearance of Jesus to the Apostles There appears to be strong parallels between John and Luke regarding the appearance of Jesus before the apostles. Although John has three separate appearances to Luke’s one, I have suggested that the second and third appearances are Johannine creations that have moved parts of the first appearance into different contexts. John has transferred the general doubts held by all of the disciples to just Thomas, which is the subject of the second appearance. That doubt in the second appearance is contrasted against the lack of doubt by the Beloved Disciple in the empty tomb scene. John has also moved the fish meal out of the story and into the third appearance, where it no longer serves as proof that Jesus is not a spirit. John has also transformed Luke’s account of Jesus’s scriptural teaching to the disciples, that he needed to die and rise up, into a gloss attached to Peter’s appearance at the tomb, in which John says that Peter did not yet understand that same scriptural teaching. There is also some indication that Luke may have adapted the fear of a ghost imagery from the walking on water scene and transferred it to the reaction of the disciples at the re-appearance of Jesus. Bearing these observations in mind, and based on the above analysis, here is my summary of the scenes in the order of appearance in the narrative account of the appearance of Jesus to the apostles in the proposed common source.

• • • • • • •

Jesus had been resurrected in human form but had not yet ascended to heaven. The apostles had not yet accepted that Jesus had to die and rise up. Jesus appeared to the apostles as a group. He said to them, “Peace be with you.” The apostles believe he was a spirit image. Jesus showed his hands and side to the apostles and invited them to touch him. No one touched him but the apostles still retained doubt that this was the resurrected Jesus. • Jesus asked if there was anything to eat. • Someone brought him grilled fish. • Jesus ate the fish.

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• Eating the fish convinced the apostles that Jesus had in fact returned in human form. • The apostles rejoiced. • Jesus reminded the apostles of the scriptural teaching that he must die and rise up. • Jesus instructed them to go out and forgive the sins of those who repent. • Jesus told them that they would receive the Holy Spirit from on high.

Luke ended the gospel with Jesus ascending to heaven, possibly out of the sight of the apostles. That scene is missing from John. Since John mentions that Jesus hadn’t yet ascended, there would seem to be no reason for him to omit the scene on theological grounds. We can’t say, therefore, whether the ascension to heaven appeared in the proposed common source.

The Rest of John 21 We have covered almost all of John 21 and found it to be a Johannine construction. There is one remaining episode left in that narrative and we should take a brief look. It occurs just before the concluding passage of the gospel. It tells of events related to the Beloved Disciple. It begins: “Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them; he was the one who had reclined next to Jesus at the supper and had said, ‘Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?’ ”113 The problem is that John describes the Beloved Disciple as if we hadn’t heard about him since the Last Supper. Yet, we have a major story about the Beloved Disciple at the crucifixion and we have another story about the Beloved Disciple at the empty tomb, and the Beloved Disciple also plays an important role in the preceding miracle story about Peter’s large catch of fish. On none of those other earlier occasions was it necessary to describe who the Beloved Disciple was by referring back to his role at the Last Supper. This strongly suggests that whatever happened in the story that follows this notice, it originally appeared earlier in John’s original narrative, describing an event that occurred between the Last Supper and the crucifixion. A later editor moved the story into this post-resurrection scenario. As the incident itself deals primarily with the Beloved Disciple it has no connection to the proposed common source. The story appears to be about some sort of problem in the Johannine community that involved the death of the Beloved Disciple. After Peter saw the Beloved Disciple, he turned to Jesus and said, “Lord, what about him?”114 Jesus

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responded, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!”115 To this John added a gloss. “So the rumor spread in the community that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’ ”116 The story implies that at the time of this writing in John 21, the Beloved Disciple had already died. Yet the following verse cites the Beloved Disciple as someone “who testified to these things and has written them.” Whether “these things” refers to just John 21 or the entire gospel, it is obvious that someone added on at least the last part of John 21 to whatever had been understood earlier as the gospel of John. If we remove this story of the Beloved Disciple and the added ending, what are we left with? Almost everything remaining is John’s reworked version of Peter’s miraculous catch of fish. We looked at the episode in detail in Chapter 6, at which time it was argued that John had moved the story from the earlier part of the gospel to the post-crucifixion portion of the gospel. In its original form, as it appears in Luke 5:1–11, the story told of how Jesus initially recruited his first disciples. I won’t repeat the arguments I made at that time or the explanations for how and why John changed the story around. But to summarize my conclusions, John took the story as Luke had it, and separated out the “Follow me” portion at the end and, as he frequently does with problematic passages, placed it in a different context. Here Peter already has followed Jesus and has met the resurrected Jesus on two prior occasions. So we are not dealing with an early invitation for Peter to become a disciple. Instead John inserts a conversation with Peter in which Peter confesses his love for Jesus three times and after each confession Jesus gives Peter an instruction, “feed my lambs,” “tend my sheep,” and “feed my sheep.”117 Jesus follows up with a prophecy that Peter will be persecuted and die.118 It is at this point that Jesus says, “Follow me.” The task here for Peter is much more difficult than in the early stage of the mission where he will just hang out with Jesus and listen to his teachings. That the Beloved Disciple story belongs to an earlier strata of John’s gospel reinforces the idea that John 21 is a Johannine composition added at a later time to the previously completed gospel that ended with John 20.

The Galilee Paradox In Mark’s redacted version of the empty tomb setting, the angel instructs Mary Magdalene to “tell [Jesus’] disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Gal-

The Resurrection | 623 ilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.”119 Mark doesn’t finish the story so we don’t know how his resurrection account would ultimately unfold. But he implies that the first post-crucifixion appearance (or at least an appearance) of Jesus will occur in Galilee. This is not Mark’s only indication that Jesus would initially appear to the disciples in Galilee. Immediately before Jesus predicted that Peter would deny his teacher three times, Jesus said, “But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”120 So, however Mark intended to end his gospel, it appears that he definitely had in mind an initial post-resurrection appearance in Galilee. John 21 actually depicts Jesus making a post-crucifixion appearance in Galilee but, as I argued above, this appearance is basically a Johannine creation built out of an earlier story about a miraculous catch of fish that led to the recruitment of the disciples. Both John and Luke, however, clearly say that the first postcrucifixion appearance of Jesus to the apostles occurred on the same day as the empty tomb was discovered and occurred in or around Jerusalem. It seems appropriate therefore to at least briefly address the question of whether the proposed common source included a post-crucifixion appearance of Jesus in Galilee. Luke has no post-resurrection appearance of Jesus in Galilee. Furthermore, in the beginning of Acts, Luke says that Jesus remained with the disciples for forty days, offered several proofs that he was resurrected, and taught them about the kingdom of God.121 At the end of the forty days he told them “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father [emphasis added].”122 Luke clearly suggests that there was no post-resurrection appearance in Galilee. But Mark implies that there would be one and John depicts one, suggesting at least the possibility of a tradition that Jesus appeared in Galilee, even if it wasn’t in the proposed common source. Although John’s Galilee appearance is clearly a Johannine construction, based on what we have learned about his editing techniques, if there were a Galilee appearance in the proposed common source and John found the story problematic (as he did with the Emmaus journey) we wouldn’t be surprised to find that John replaced the underlying Galilee story with his reconstructed version of the fishing miracle. Unfortunately, we can’t be sure that there would have been a Galilee appearance in the final version of the proposed common source. Luke and John show the first appearance to the disciples in or about Jerusalem; Luke, despite using Mark as a source, gives no indication of a Galilee appearance; John’s Galilee ending appears to be a Johannine construct that is used to solve many problems he found with the resurrection appearances in the proposed common source and

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we can’t be sure that he used the scene as a replacement for an earlier account of the Galilee appearance. This is not to say that there may not have been other traditions that did report such an appearance but only that we can’t say that such a claim appeared in the proposed common source. Therefore, I will exclude the post-Galilee appearance for the proposed common source.

Summary The evidence above shows that the post-crucifixion account of Jesus in the proposed common source consisted of a sequence of four main groupings, as follows.

• The burial of Jesus; • The empty tomb; • An appearance to one or more followers, none of whom were among the apostles; • An appearance to the apostles.

I have set forth above outlines of all the scenes in the proposed common source for each of these four groupings and won’t repeat the lists here. While Luke and John agree that Jesus hadn’t ascended to heaven at the time of his appearances to the disciples, only Luke shows Jesus actually rising up. It is possible, therefore, that the proposed common source had a fifth segment in which Jesus went to heaven, but we lack corroboration and I don’t include it in the reconstructed proposed common source. Mark, Luke and John all agree that Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for permission to take the body of Jesus from the cross so that it could be buried; that Joseph removed the body from the cross; that it was wrapped in linens; and that Joseph placed it in a tomb. Mark and Luke say that Mary Magdalene witnessed where Joseph placed the body of Jesus. John never specifically says Mary witnessed the placement but does leave a clue that this is the case. First, she knew where to go, and second, John says she saw that the stone had been moved away. For this reason, I accept that in the proposed common source Mary witnessed where the body was laid down. Mark and John agree against Luke that there was a concern that the body be removed from the cross before the Sabbath, but Mark and Luke say it was Joseph who had the concern while John says it was the Jewish authorities although, implicitly, Joseph had the same concern as he requested the body for burial. Mark

The Resurrection | 625 and John also agree against Luke that Pilate wanted to be sure that Jesus had died before agreeing to the release and had soldiers check if Jesus was dead. John and Luke agree against Mark that a member of the council who opposed its actions against Jesus participated in the burial. Luke says it was Joseph of Arimathea but John says it was Nicodemus. On the other hand, John does have Joseph primarily responsible for the burial. It was my suggestion that John gave Joseph’s credentials to Nicodemus to avoid having too many council members appear to have been opposed to the council’s actions. John and Luke also agree against Mark that the tomb had never been used before and that there was no mention of the stone being rolled in front of the door way. I accept that the above agreements of Mark and John against Luke and of Luke and John against Mark are based on the text of the proposed common source. John is the only one of the three to mention the piercing of John’s side as proof of death. Despite the lack of corroboration, it was my argument above that this incident probably belonged to the proposed common source and that Mark and Luke had motive to delete the scene. John’s added detail would be consistent with Mark’s claim that Pilate sent a centurion to verify that Jesus was dead. John has one other significant departure from Mark and Luke. He says that the Jewish authorities wanted to expedite the deaths of all the crucified prisoners in order that they be buried before the start of Sabbath. I suggested above that this detail was due to John’s effort to downplay the idea that the priests saw Jesus as a political rival. While John indicates that it was pursuant to this request by the authorities that a centurion pierced Jesus’ side, it was my view that the piercing was due to Joseph of Arimathea’s effort to claim the body of Jesus. John says blood and water gushed out. I suspect John added the water. Mark, Luke and John all agree that Mary Magdalene went to the tomb of Jesus after Sabbath ended and found the stone rolled away. Mark and Luke both indicate she went with at least one other woman. John leaves a clue that this was the case—“we do not know where they have laid him”—but never specifically says Mary was accompanied by someone else. All three also agree that inside the tomb, Jesus’ body was missing and that there was at least one mysterious figure inside. Mark says there was one man dressed in white sitting inside. Luke says there were two men in dazzling clothes standing. John says there were two men in white clothes sitting. Since John agrees with Mark against Luke about the white clothes and the sitting position and agrees with Luke against Mark about there being two men inside, John’s version seems to be the one most likely to coincide with the proposed common source.

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Inside the tomb, the men dressed in white made some sort of comments related to Jesus not being there, but Mark and Luke disagree on what was said and John radically truncates the dialogue. I suspect that Luke’s phrase “why do you look for the living among the dead?” may have been original to the scene and that Mark and John found the phrase problematic. In John’s case, the phrase could be interpreted to mean that Jesus never died on the cross, and that would undermine his gospel message. Mark’s version of the empty tomb episode appears to have cut off in the middle of the story, omitting the appearance of Peter at the tomb. John appears to have rearranged some verses for this same segment, and if we restore the sequence as I proposed above we have a very close sequential agreement between John and Luke. Luke and John agree against Mark that Mary Magdalene told the apostles what occurred in the tomb. Luke adds that they didn’t believe her. Although Luke is the only one to make this claim about the reception of Mary’s statement, I believe it was based on the proposed common source and that John and Mark deliberately altered the text to hide that fact. In John’s case, his reordered verses eliminated the possibility that Mary would be disbelieved. In Mark’s case, I think he had Mary remain silent to avoid saying no one believed her. Mark’s gospel originally ended with Mary’s departure from the tomb. John (after the verses are re-sequenced) and Luke agree that after Mary went to the disciples, Peter went to the tomb, saw the linen wrappings, and went home without saying anything to anybody. John and Luke both agree that at the time Jesus made his first post-resurrection appearance he had not yet ascended to heaven. John makes that claim in the course of the first appearance. Luke places the actual ascension at the end of his gospel. Luke says the first witnesses to the resurrected Jesus were two travelers on the road to Emmaus. John says the first witness was Mary Magdalene outside of the tomb. Luke is more likely to reflect what is in the proposed common source. The two also agree (subject to the resequencing of John) that the first appearance of Jesus took place right after Peter went home, that it took place on the day after the Sabbath, that the first witness or witnesses were followers of Jesus but not among the apostles, that the first witness or witnesses did not recognize Jesus at first, and that after they finally recognized Jesus the witness or witnesses went and told the apostles. Luke adds some additional details missing from John’s first appearance account. Luke has Jesus pick up and break bread while at the dinner table with the two travelers. Suddenly, the witnesses recognize Jesus and he disappears. The

The Resurrection | 627 picking up and breaking of bread proved that the person they saw was not a spirit image but an actual human being. It was my argument above that John moved the bread meal into his account of the third appearance of Jesus to the disciples, which episode also included two unnamed disciples, in order to eliminate the need for physical proof to his followers that showed Jesus was not just a spirit. Given the context of John’s placement of the bread meal and the later fish meal, it was my view that Luke’s account of the journey to Emmaus more closely reflected what the proposed common source had to say than did John’s account of the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. It is my position that John substituted the faithful Mary Magdalen for the less faithful travelers to Emmaus as the occasion of Jesus’ first appearance. Luke’s Emmaus account, however, also threw in a claim that Jesus appeared to Peter before appearing to all of the apostles but provided no description of what took place. It was my suggestion (as well as that of many scholars) that Luke was influenced by the claims made by Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, which described an appearance by Jesus to Peter alone, followed by a second appearance to the entire group. I pointed out in my discussion of the Eucharist ceremony that Luke appeared to have access to a written copy of that very letter. Luke describes only one appearance by Jesus to the apostles. John reports on three appearances. It was my argument above that John’s second and third appearances were Johannine creations designed to re-locate offensive passages into a different narrative context. Luke and John agree that Jesus first appeared to the apostles on the day after Sabbath and that he came to the house in which they were staying. Both agree that Jesus greeted them by saying “Peace be with you.” Both also agree that Jesus showed off his body to the disciples, but only Luke says Jesus invited them to touch his body. In neither account do any of the apostles actually touch Jesus. In Luke’s account, he says that Jesus taught the apostles that it was necessary for him to die and rise up. John doesn’t have that scene in his version of the first appearance but when he tells us about Peter’s appearance at the empty tomb, he reports that Peter (and presumably the other disciples, Beloved Disciple excluded,) did not yet understand that Jesus had to die and rise up. This suggested that the proposed common source indicated in some fashion that the disciples had not yet absorbed this teaching when Jesus first appeared to them. Both gospels also indicate that in this first appearance Jesus said that the apostles would be authorized to forgive sin and that they would receive the Holy Spirit. John shows Jesus bestowing the Holy Spirit then and there. Luke says the apostles were to go to Jerusalem and wait to receive the power from on high.

628 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

While we can’t determine who has the correct sequence, it seems highly probable that within the proposed common source there was some indication in the first appearance to the apostles that Jesus said they would receive the Holy Spirit and be authorized to forgive sins. The parallels between Luke and John regarding the first appearance of Jesus to the apostles are quite substantial and show reliance on a common source, but Luke has a few features missing from John’s account. According to Luke, when Jesus first appeared to the apostles they were frightened. Even though Jesus displayed his body to them and invited then to touch him, the apostles still remained in doubt and thought Jesus was only a ghostly spirit. Jesus asked them if they had any food and they provided a grilled fish. Because a spirit image couldn’t eat food, the meal Jesus ate proved that he was indeed a resurrected human. In John, the apostles were not frightened and exhibited no doubts. There was no meal to prove that Jesus was indeed a resurrected human. However, John appears to have off-loaded these problematic issues into the second and third appearances that are missing from Luke’s gospel. After the first appearance to the apostles, John tells us for the first time that one of the apostles, Thomas, wasn’t there when Jesus arrived. This is the first we hear about this. Thomas didn’t take the word of the other disciples and said he would need physical proof that a human Jesus has returned. A week later Jesus arrived and offered Thomas the opportunity to touch him, but he didn’t do so. With Thomas now satisfied, Jesus rebuked him for a faith based only on seeing, and said those who believed without seeing were blessed. This should be taken as a reference back to the appearance of the Beloved Disciple at the empty tomb, who believed Jesus had been resurrected without needing to see him. It was my argument that John diminished the doubts of the disciples at Jesus’ appearance and foisted them all on a single disciple. This disciple was then contrasted with the Beloved Disciple. I proposed that both the Beloved Disciple incident and the appearance to Thomas were Johannine creations designed to protect the apostles as a group from charges that they didn’t believe in a resurrected Jesus without physical proof. John, as I argued above, also relocated the fish meal, the physical proof that Jesus was not a spirit, to a third appearance of Jesus to several of the disciples in Galilee. John brought the bread meal and the fish meal together into a single setting that changed the context. Jesus had now appeared twice before to the apostles and they had no doubts that he had died and risen up. In this context, the meals no longer served as physical proof that Jesus was not a spirit image.

The Resurrection | 629 As was observed above, virtually all of John 21, which contained the bread and fish meal, was an artificial creation of John built around the miraculous catch of fish that belonged to the early stage of Jesus’ mission. It was this context for the two meals that indicated to me that Luke’s Emmaus story was more likely to reflect what was in the proposed common source than John’s appearance to Mary Magdalene. Taking all of the above, it seems reasonably clear that, despite John’s many alterations, he and Luke knew a common written source for the entire sequence of events from the death on the cross to the appearance of a resurrected Jesus to the apostles, and that when an adjustment is made for John’s minor resequencing of certain verses and the shuffling of a few details into different contexts, John and Luke unfold these events in close sequential parallel.

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

(Hurtado 2011), 287. John 20:30–31. John 21:24–25. Mark 15:42. Mark 15:43. Mark 15:43. Mark 15:44. Mark 15:45. Mark 15:46. Mark  15:46. Mark  15:47. Luke 23:50–51. Luke  23:51. Luke  23:52. Luke  23:53. Luke  23:53. Luke  23:54. Luke  23:55. Luke  23:56. Luke  24:2. John  19:31. John  19:32. John  19:33. John  19:34.

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25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

John  19:35. John 19:36–37. John  19:38. John  19:38. John  19:38. John  19:39. John  19:40. John  19:41. John  19:42. John  20:1. John  20:1. (Wahlde 2010), 842–43. Mark 16:6–7. Mark  16:8. Mark  16:8. Luke  24:10. Luke  24:5. Luke 24:5–7. (Wahlde 2010), 842–43. (Wahlde 2010), 847–48. (Wahlde 2010), 842. John  20:13. John  20:2. John  20:8. John  20:9. John  20:10. Luke  24:13. Luke  24:10. Luke  24:18. See, for example, John 19:25 in the KJV. Luke 24:14–16. Luke  24:17. Luke 24:18–21. Luke 24:21–24. Luke 24:25–26. Luke  24:27. Luke 24:28–29. Luke  24:29. Luke  24:30. Luke  24:31. Luke 24:32–33.

The Resurrection | 631 66. Luke 24:34. 67. 1 Corinthians 15:4–5. 68. Luke 24:35. 69. Luke 24:36. 70. John 21:2. 71. John 1:46. 72. John 20:25. 73. John 6:66–67. 74. John 21:4. 75. (Mays 1988), 1075–76. 76. John 21:9. 77. John 21:12. 78. John 20:14. 79. John 20:15. 80. John 20:15. 81. John 20:16. 82. John 20:17. 83. John 20:18. 84. John 20:18. 85. Luke 24:36–39. 86. John 20:19–20. 87. Mark 6:49–52. 88. Luke 24:40. 89. Luke 24:41. 90. Luke 24:41. 91. Luke 24:42–43. 92. Luke 24:44–47. 93. Luke 24:48–49. 94. Luke 24:50–51. 95. Luke 24:52–53. 96. John 20:19. 97. John 20:19. 98. John 20:14. 99. John 20:19. 100. John  20:20. 101. John  20:20. 102. John  20:21. 103. John  20:22. 104. John  20:23. 105. Luke  24:47. 106. John  20:24.

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107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

Case for a Proto-Gospel

John  20:25. John  20:26. John  20:27. John  20:28. John  20:29. John 20:30–31. John  21:21. John  21:21. John  21:22. John  21:23. John 21:15–17. John 21:18:19. Mark  16:7. Mark  14:28. Acts  1:2–3. Acts  1:4.

Bibliography Hurtado, L. W. (2011). Mark. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. Mays, J. L. (1988). Harper’s Bible Commentary. San Francisco: Harper & Row. Wahlde, U. C. (2010). The Gospel and Letters of John (Vol. 2). Grand Rapids: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co.

15

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary

At this point we have worked our way through the entire non-speech narrative of John’s Gospel. With just a few exceptions—primarily in parts of the second Baptist arc (John 3:22–31), the sojourn in Samaria (John 4:4–42), the adulterous woman (John 7:59–8:11), and various references to the Beloved Disciple—I have attempted to show that virtually every episode (but not necessarily every scene in each episode) in John’s non-speech narrative has a literary parallel in either Mark or Luke, and usually both, even though it is not always obvious what the parallel is. Since our effort to reconstruct the proto-gospel narrative depends upon our ability to establish literary and sequential agreements between John and the synoptic gospels we can go no further at this time. It remains, therefore, to summarize what we have recovered and see what conclusions we can draw. In this chapter, I will set out my proposed reconstruction of the proto-gospel. In the next chapter I will summarize the evidence and make the argument that John must have worked from Mark’s written source and not directly from Mark and/or Luke.

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Case for a Proto-Gospel

Overview of the Reconstructed Proto-gospel Based on the analysis in the previous chapters, I have identified 339 scenes that I have assigned to the proto-gospel. Each has been assigned a PG (for protogospel) number, indicating my proposed sequential order. (See the listing below.) Mark’s last scene is number 313. These scene totals aren’t fixed in stone and are open to some reasonable disagreements that could either reduce or expand the total number of scenes, but not by so much that it would affect the underlying thesis. Nor is it intended to encompass all of the scenes in the proto-gospel. Mark and Luke have several additional episodes missing from John and some of those may well have been part of this earlier source. Nor is this collection of scenes intended to be a critical edition of the proto-gospel. It is only a starting point for further discussion. To identify these parallel elements, I broke the gospel accounts into small story units that sometimes separated larger gospel story units into smaller pieces. This could lead to some charges of cherry-picking, even though there isn’t very much excess material from which I can choose. Nevertheless, I thought it best for further discussion to assign groups of scenes to larger story units that reflected the gospel narrative structures. This permits us to focus on a smaller number of stories rather than the hundreds of individual scenes. Therefore, I decided to align the scenes, in their proposed narrative order, alongside an independent established database of verses and stories. I opted for the pericope subdivisions as set forth in the Thomas Nelson edition of the New Revised Standard Version. This provides an independent constraint on my organization of the data that hopefully eliminates possible biases on my part in identifying parallel story units. I relied primarily on the Markan pericopes and added in four Lukan pericopes where the corresponding episode was missing in Mark but present in John. My analysis of Mark’s gospel indicated that if we set aside duplicative material, unaccounted for exorcisms, parables and discourses, Mark’s core biography of Jesus consisted of 71 pericopes. Of this total, Mark had 53 parallels with the proposed proto-gospel.1 This indicates that at least 75% of Mark’s core biography of Jesus may derive from the proto-gospel. With just a couple of minor glitches, this arrangement worked out very well. All but eight of the 313 proto-gospel scenes overlapping Mark could be assigned

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 635 to one of his 53 parallel pericopes. The 8 missing scenes (PG–25 through PG– 32) belonged to the original proto-gospel story of Jesus recruiting his first disciples, as presented in Luke 5:4–11, an episode missing in Mark but repurposed in John 21. Proto-gospel scenes 314–339, which continue after the ending of Mark, were assigned to three pericopes in Luke. In total, then, I had 57 pericopes, 53 in Mark and 4 in Luke. In order to preserve the integrity of the proposed proto-gospel sequence for the purpose of aligning groups of consecutive proto-gospel scenes with specific pericopes, I had to break up two of Mark’s pericopes into two parts each, creating a total of 55 Markan story units in 53 pericopes. One of these told the story of Jesus’ appearance before Pilate. The protogospel sequence (and John) had three parts, the Barabbas incident, the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus, and the call for crucifixion. Mark placed the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus into a separate pericope that followed after the call for crucifixion. It was my argument that Mark’s mockery pericope/story was out of order and belonged between the Barabbas incident and the call for crucifixion. Since Mark put the mockery story after the call for crucifixion, it was necessary to divided Mark’s crucifixion episode into two parts, with the mockery story falling in between the two portions The second difficulty concerned Peter’s three denials of Jesus. Mark placed them into one pericope but John divided them into two pericopes with some narrative separation between the two events. It had been my argument that John’s arrangement may have been closer to that in the proto-gospel than Mark’s. So, I divided Mark’s pericope into two parts to coincide with the distribution of scenes in both John and the proto-gospel. For purposes of analysis, I will treat the two parts of Mark’s two pericopes as if they were four separate pericopes, each being separately identified. For analytical purposes, this means that I will treat Mark as having 55 pericopes out of a potential source of 73 total pericopes. Statistically, this will make no difference in the below analysis. Either arrangement, 53 divided by 71 or 55 divided by 73, rounds off to 75% of Mark’s core base, a strikingly high alignment. Adding in Luke’s four additional pericopes gives us a total of 59 pericopes in our database. For the most part, the 18 unassigned Markan pericopes encompass material that John would have excluded if it had been in the proposed proto-gospel, such as arguments over the law, unsatisfactory teachings about getting into heaven, and

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Case for a Proto-Gospel

problematic behavior by some of the apostles. While these episodes might have been part of the proto-gospel, John’s lack of sufficient corroboration leaves us without grounds for including them in the master list at this time. Table 15.1, The Proposed Reconstruction of the Proto-gospel, which I have appended to the end of this chapter, lists all 339 proto-gospel scenes as assigned to the 59 story/pericope units. The listing reflects my proposed sequential order of both story units and scenes within the story units. Before looking at the data, let me explain how it is organized. Because the Markan pericope titles don’t always reflect Johannine parallels, I have given each story unit a new title that more closely reflects John’s parallels. Below that title, I have placed in italics the NSRV pericope title along with the verse citations. Each story/pericope unit has been assigned an “S” number (for Story unit) to signify its place in the proposed sequential order. They have been labeled S–1 through S–59. Each of the 339 individual scenes has been assigned to one of the 59 story units. Mark’s gospel ends at PG–313, in the middle of S–56. In several instances, at the beginning of each story unit I have embedded a brief commentary intended to remind the reader of relevant issues related to the story and which occasionally explain why there are differences between John and the synoptic gospels. I do not rehash the arguments made in the earlier chapters to justify my claims in these brief explanations. The reader is invited to go back and look at the relevant sections of the text for further guidance. Column One provides each scene with a PG (for proto-gospel) number. The number indicates what I believe to be a scene’s sequential relationship with respect to the other scenes. Highlighted PG numbers signify that those scenes have been moved around by John for the purposes of changing the plot line with regard to the raising of Lazarus and the reason why the priests wanted to put Jesus to death. Column Two provides each scene with a short description intended to reflect what the scene was about when it appeared in the proto-gospel. Because we don’t have the original proto-gospel text and we don’t have verbal agreements between Mark and John, we can’t recover the original language of the proto-gospel. Scene descriptions, therefore, provide only a guide to what the scene entailed. The three Verse columns for Mark, John and Luke contain the verse citations in the respective gospels that correspond to the PG scene. Here I need

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 637 to emphasize that while the scene descriptions in John often look very different from those in Mark (or Luke) they take on a parallel role within the story context. The verse alignments between each of the gospels and the proto-gospel scenes might more properly be thought of as “points of contact” rather than parallel details. Where a story unit in a particular gospel departs from the proposed protogospel story order, all the scenes in that gospel’s story unit are highlighted to indicate a sequential departure from the proto-gospel order. For example, Luke has moved the story of the anointing at Bethany out of the order in which Mark and John have it. So I highlighted the cells in the Luke column for that story. John has moved a number of stories around and I have highlighted those as well. As noted above, in those instances where John has moved a story out of sequence in order to accommodate his change in plot related to Lazarus and the reason why the Jewish council wanted to put Jesus to death, the PG number is also highlighted. In some instances, frequently in John and occasionally in Luke, a scene from a story has been moved out of a literary unit and placed in a new narrative location in a different context. On those occasions, only the verse cells for that particular scene in that particular gospel have been highlighted. In several instances, within a story, one gospel or another displays a scene out of the sequential order given in the proto-gospel but it remains within the story unit. I have placed the relevant verses in brackets. It is my general view that when a scene in a story is out of story-order sequence, it is usually of trivial significance, often reflecting the author’s judgement that the change makes the narrative read better for theological and/or literary reasons, Since Luke frequently makes such changes to Mark’s stories, we shouldn’t consider these divergences an indication that we lack a common source. What follows is my proposed reconstruction of the proto-gospel. In the next chapter, I provide some statistical analysis showing a very high degree of parallel agreement and sequential alignment. I will also look at evidence indicating that John could not have relied on either Mark and Luke as his primary literary source and that there must have been an earlier proto-gospel used by Mark, John and Luke.

638 | The

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Table 15.1:  The proto-gospel restored, with points of contact in Mark, John, and Luke. Source: Author PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–1. The Proclamation of John the Baptist The Proclamation of John the Baptist (Mark 1:1–8) John refers to Jesus as the son of God twice in his opening section but begins his gospel with an enhanced description of the son of God as “the Word” responsible for creation. Luke has moved the first two scenes into birth stories about Jesus and John the Baptist, but begins the gospel with John’s birth. So Luke has reversed the order of the first two scenes. John and Luke include a scene in which the crowd asks John if he is the messiah. 1 The author declares that Jesus is the son of 1:1 1:1, 14, [1:32] God. 18 2 John the Baptist was ordained before birth 1:2 1:6–7 1:11–17 to be a messenger from God according to the prophecies of Malachi. 3 John the Baptist appeared. [1:4–6] 1:19 3:1–3 4 A quotation from Isaiah 40:3 identifies John 1:3 1:23 3:4–6 the Baptist as a voice in the wilderness sent as a messenger from God. 5 The crowd asked John the Baptist if he was [1:20–22] 3:15 the messiah. 6 John the Baptist proclaimed, “The one who 1:7–8 1:26–27 3:16–18 is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” S–2. John Baptized Jesus The Baptism of Jesus (Mark 1:9–11) Mark, Luke and John all have variations on this story. Mark reveals the spirit and voice from heaven just to Jesus. Luke is a little vague about who witnessed the events. John has the Baptist as the only direct witness other than Jesus. 7 8 9

John baptized Jesus. 1:9 The Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and 1:10 descended upon Jesus. A voice from heaven declared, “You are my 1:11 son.”

1:29–31 1:32

3:21 3:22

1:34

3:22

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 639 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–3. Jesus met Peter and some other future disciples Jesus Calls the First Disciples (Mark 1:16–20) See the commentary on S–8. John and Mark have merged the recruitment of the first disciples with the meetings of future disciples for the first time. Luke’s notices in Acts 1:21, together with his recruitment story, indicate that the first meetings and the recruitment were separate events. The first meetings took place at the camp of John the Baptist or on the way back to Bethsaida. Mark placed the first meetings at Bethsaida by the Sea of Galilee. Luke has the original recruitment story at S–8. 10 11 12

13

Peter’s brother Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist at this point. Jesus was known as “Jesus, son of Joseph.” Jesus met Peter and Andrew for the first 1:16 time while they are in the camp of John the Baptist, but they didn’t become disciples of Jesus yet. Jesus met two more future disciples for the 1:19 first time, prior to beginning his mission, but they hadn’t become disciples yet.

1:40 [1:45] 1:41–42

3:23 Acts 1:21

1:43–51

Acts 1:21

S–4. The Mission Begins The Beginning of the Galilean Ministry (Mark 14–15) Mark says Jesus began his first missionary tour after the death of John the Baptist. John placed the first missionary tour about two years earlier than Mark did and says John the Baptist was alive at the time. Luke is vague as to when John was arrested visa-vis the start of the mission. Although, chronologically, John began the missionary tour much earlier than Mark, in terms of narrative structure, John has moved the tour out of its original sequential location and placed it after S–7. This is because of geographical changes he made to S–5, when he suddenly moved Jesus from Capernaum to Jerusalem for the performance of his first major public act. 14 15

In connection with the first missionary tour, 1:14 [3:24] the arrest of John the Baptist is mentioned. Jesus begins his first missionary tour. 1:14–15 3:22–23

3:20 4:14–15

Continued 

640 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–5. Jesus performed his first major public act The Man with an Unclean Spirit (Mark 1:21–28) In the proto-gospel, the first major public act of Jesus was an exorcism of an unclean spirit corrupting the body of a man in a Capernaum synagogue. John didn’t show exorcisms and a contextual analysis showed that he substituted the chasing (nondemonic exorcism) of persons corrupting the Jerusalem Temple (his “Father’s house.”) John has also switched around the first and second notices of public acclaim. This is consistent with the first public notice leading directly to the second major public act of Jesus. John kept that two-sequence arrangement but moved the two scenes to a later point in time in order to accommodate his geographical shift in the story of the first public act. 16 17 18 19 20 21

Jesus went to Capernaum with his family. Jesus entered a Jewish religious building. A man had an unclean spirit. The demons asked to be left alone. Jesus conducted his first major public act, an exorcism of an unclean spirit. This first public act brought Jesus widespread fame in Galilee.

1:21 1:21 1:23 1:24 1:25–26

2:12 2:14 2:14 [2:18] 2:15–16

4:31 4:31–32 4:33 4:34 4:35

1:27–28 4:43–45

4:36–37

S–6. Jesus performed his second major public act Jesus Heals Many at Simon’s House (Mark 1:29–34) Jesus’ second major public act in the proto-gospel was also an exorcism, the curing of a fever in Peter’s mother-in-law. Again, since John didn’t show exorcisms he altered the story by substituting a story about Jesus curing a fever in the son of a royal official in a manner that precluded exorcism, by having Jesus heal from a different city than the beneficiary. Both fever patients were in Capernaum at the time of the cure. John’s substitute story was derived by merging the fever aspects of the original story with portions of the story of healing/raising Jairus’s daughter (see S–17). John’s second round of acclaim appears, in narrative sequence, ahead of the first round of acclaim. See S–5 for explanation. 22

23

Immediately afterwards, Jesus’s cured Peter’s 1:29–31 4:46–54 4:38–39 mother-in-law of a fever by rebuking a Cf. Mark spirit. 5:21–23 Jesus received a second round of acclaim for 1:32–34 2:23–25 4:40–41 healing the fever.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 641 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–7. Jesus proclaimed the gospel A Preaching Tour in Galilee (Mark (1:35–39) In the proto-gospel, Jesus proclaims the gospel and casts out demons. John replaced the scene with Jesus teaching the gospel to Nicodemus, a Jewish teacher and member of the council. 24 Jesus went on a mission to proclaim the 1:35–39 3:1–21 4:42–44 gospel and heal the sick. S–8. Jesus recruited his first group of disciples Jesus Calls the First Disciples (Luke 5:1–11) This story has to be considered in connection with S–3, Jesus’ meeting the disciples for the first time. It was argued in Chapter 6 that Mark and John altered the recruitment story as it appeared in the proto-gospel (and Luke), making the first two meetings look like the recruitment of the disciples. Luke has the original form of the recruitment story and John has a parallel to that story but has moved it into the post-resurrection period, giving it a different context. Mark and John make it appear that Jesus recruited Andrew together with Peter at the first meeting but Luke (and John’s parallel version) shows Andrew missing from the recruitment scene. This is because Andrew was still a disciple of John the Baptist at the time of the recruitment. In Luke, after Peter declared Jesus to be the Lord (PG–27) he declared himself a sinner (PG–28). John omitted that declaration and substituted a notice that Peter had been naked and put on clothes. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Peter, James, John and others were fishing. Jesus approached them. Jesus urged them to cast nets. Following Jesus’ instructions led to a large catch. Peter called Jesus “Lord” because of the size of catch. Perter confessed to being a sinner and told Jesus to stay away. Jesus said to Peter, “Follow me.” Peter, James, and John became followers of Jesus. (Andrew was still with John the Baptist. See PG–10.)

1:16 21:2–3 1:17,19 21:4–5 21:6 21:6

5:5 5:4 5:4 5:6–7

21:7

5:8

21:7

5:8

1:17, 20 21:19 1:18, 20

5:10 5:11

Continued 

642 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–9. Jesus healed a leper Jesus Cleanses a Leper (Mark 1:40–45) John’s use of this story is a bit complicated. In the proto-gospel (and Mark) Jesus healed a leper and as a result of his actions had to leave the area. It is my argument in Chapter 10 that John used this incident in developing his Lazarus cycle. Consequently, he substituted a different story to explain why Jesus had to leave the region. In John, Jesus was still in Judea, and successfully recruiting adherents through baptism. This upset the Jerusalem officials and Jesus had to leave (flee?) the area. Essentially, John took the synoptic “political rivalry” theme in the Passion story and switched it with this much earlier leper healing, trivializing the jealousy theme and transforming the leper episode into the raising of Lazarus incident, making that the underlying reason in the Passion account for why the officials wanted to put Jesus to death. Since Lazarus (the leper) was dead in John’s version of the story, it was Lazarus’s sister who begged Jesus for a cure. Also, it was witnesses to the raising of Lazarus who went around telling everybody what happened. The description of Lazarus coming out of a cave corresponds to the Leviticus instructions for how a leper should appear. 33 34

35 36 37 38 39

Jesus encountered a leper. The leper was by a cave and wrapped in torn strips of bandaging and wore a cloth across his face. The leper begged for a cure. Jesus healed the leper. The leper went around telling everybody what Jesus did for him. Jesus became popular as a result of curing the leper. Because of his popularity, Jesus was no longer allowed in the city.

1:40

11:17 [11:44]

5:12

1:40 11:22 5:12 1:41–42. 11:43 5:13 1:45 11:44–45 5:15 1:45

11:45

5:15

1:45

4:1–3 11:45

5:16

S–10. Jesus healed a paralytic Jesus Heals a Paralytic (Mark 2:1–12) In John, S–10, S–11, and S–12 form an integrated unit dealing with the authority of Jesus. In Mark’s individual stories, Jesus’ authority might be seen as limited to the specific incidents. John substituted an all-encompassing authority under a single narrative.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 643 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–10 begins with the healing of the paralytic. Since John placed this incident on a Sabbath, he had to alter many details of the proto-gospel/synoptic version in order to avoid the problem of numerous Sabbath violations. John substituted the goal of reaching the pool for a cure for the goal of reaching Jesus for a cure. In S–11 John substituted the healed paralytic for the disciples who violated the Sabbath and in S–12 he substituted the healed paralytic for the man with the withered hand whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath. John’s minor sequential scene disorders are due to the merger of all three stories wrapped around a single individual. See Chapter 3 for a full discussion. 40 41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

49

Jesus went to Capernaum, or possibly Jerusalem. A paralyzed man was on a mat. Mat-bearers, seeking a cure for the man, brought him to Jesus. A crowd blocked the paralytic from reaching Jesus. The mat-bearers lowered the paralytic through the roof of the house in order to reach Jesus. The paralytic met Jesus inside the house. Jesus said the man’s sins were forgiven. Jews accused Jesus of blasphemy because only God could forgive sins. To prove the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins Jesus told the man to “stand up, take your mat.” The man picked up his mat and left.

2:1

5:1

5:17

2:3 2:4

5:5 5:7

5:18 5:18

2:4

5:7

5:19

2:4

5:7.

5:19

2:5 2:5 2:6–7

[5:6] [5:14] [5:18]

5:19 5:20 5:21

2:8–11

5:8, 27

5:24

2:12

5:9

5:25

S–11. Jesus authorized someone to violate the Sabbath Pronouncement about the Sabbath (Mark 2:23–28) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) Jesus authorized the disciples to pluck grain on the Sabbath. Since John’s narrative currently placed Jesus in and about Jerusalem, with no grain fields, he replaced the disciples with the healed paralytic, whom Jesus authorized to carry a mat in violation of the Sabbath law. John didn’t use the Sabbath defense described in PG–53 but relied instead on the all-encompassing authority granted Jesus by the Father. See commentary on S–10 for further details. 50

A Sabbath day arrived.

2:23

5:9

6:1 Continued 

644 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 51 52 53

Mark

John

Jesus authorized the disciples to violate the 2:23 [5:8] Sabbath by plucking grain. Jews objected to the Sabbath violation by 2:24 5:10–12 the disciples. Jesus responded, “The Sabbath was made 2:27–28 [5:27] for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath; so the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.”

Luke 6:1 6:2 6:5

S–12. Jesus healed on the Sabbath The Man with a Withered Hand (Mark 3:1–6) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on a Sabbath day and defended his actions as lawful. John substituted the paralytic from S–10 and S–11 for the man with the withered hand in this story. In the proto-gospel Jesus defended his actions under the law (PG–55) but John’s Jesus didn’t come under the law. His authority was greater. So John substituted a theological argument for Jesus’ authority and moved the legalistic argument out of John 5 and placed it in John 7:21–24, in a different context related to his alternative plot as to why the priests wanted to put Jesus to death. See commentary on S–10 for further details. 54 On that same Sabbath day, Jesus 3:1 5:5 6:6 encountered a man with a withered hand. 55 Jesus made an argument that it was legal to 3:4 [5:17] 6:9 heal on the Sabbath. [7:21–24] 56 Jesus healed the invalid. 3:5 5:8–9 6:10 57 The Jews wanted to kill Jesus for healing on 3:6 5:16–18 6:11 the Sabbath. S–13. Crowds followed Jesus to the Sea of Galilee A Multitude at the Seaside (Mark 3:7–12) Luke slightly altered the sequential position of this story, switching it around with S–14. John omitted the exorcisms. 58 Jesus crossed (fled towards?) the Sea of 3:7 6:1 Galilee. 59 A large crowd followed after him. 3:7 6:2 6:17 60 The crowd came because of his reputation 3:8 6:2 6:18 for healing. 61 Jesus healed many people through 3:10–11 6:18–19 exorcisms.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 645 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–14. Jesus summoned the twelve apostles to a mountain. A Multitude at the Seaside (Mark 3:13–19) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) the twelve disciples are named and Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter. John omitted the naming of the apostles. His is the only gospel that fails to include the names of all twelve disciples. He also moved Peter’s name change to the first meeting with Jesus (see S–3). 62 Jesus went up on a mountain with his 3:13 6:3 6:12 disciples. 63 Jesus appointed twelve disciples to be his 3:14 6:13 apostles. 64 The twelve apostles are named. 3:16–19 6:14–16 65 Jesus said Simon shall be called Peter. 3:16 1:42 6:14 S–15. Jesus defended himself against charges of being a sinner. Jesus and Beelzebul (Mark 3:20–30) This story and the next are linked together in what has come to be called a Markan Sandwich. The beginning and end relate to one narrative line and the middle tells a different story that might be linked to the surrounding parts. This pericope includes the sandwich opening and the middle portion; the next story constitutes the sandwich closing. The beginning and end stories describe problems between Jesus and his family members. The middle dealt with accusations that Jesus was a sinner who conducted exorcisms in league with the devil. John had problems with both story lines. He moved both storylines out of their original sequential order and placed them into his account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. I’ll address the sinner issue here and the family issue in the commentary on the next story (S–16). John didn’t show Jesus doing exorcisms so he had to develop a story that addressed the sinner issue without putting Jesus on the defensive. He did this in John 9, merging two stories about healing a blind man (S–22 and S–30) and placing the event on a Sabbath day. He also says the man was born blind and had no demon. The healing, therefore, couldn’t be an exorcism. When Jesus healed the blind man on the Sabbath, a debate broke out among the Jews. Some said Jesus was a sinner for healing on the Sabbath; others said God wouldn’t let a sinner heal a blind man on the Sabbath. Jesus, himself, didn’t engage in the debate. The healing of the blind man serves as a substitute for the exorcism (PG–66). John’s debate over sin serves as a substitute for the original Jesus parable (in PG–71) arguing that he couldn’t be a sinner because of the exorcism. Continued 

646 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

Luke has also broken up the narrative arc, placing different pieces of the two stories into different locations in a different context, while also deleting indications of a family conflict. 66 Jesus conducted an exorcism. 9:6–7 11:14 67 Jesus’ behavior during the exorcism led the 3:21 8:48 crowd to think he was mad. 68 Jesus’ family tried to restrain him. 3:21 8:59 69 Officials from Jerusalem accused Jesus of 3:22 10:19–21 11:15 conducting exorcisms through the aid of Beelzebul. 70 The officials accused Jesus of being 3:30 8:52 11:24–27 possessed by an unclean spirit. 71 Jesus made a logical argument that he 3:23–27 9:16 11:17–23 couldn’t be in league with Satan. “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” 72 Jesus accused the officials of committing an 3:28–29 8:44 12:10 unforgiveable sin by blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. S–16. Jesus defined his true family The True Kindred of Jesus (Mark 3:31–35) This story continues the narrative in S–15. See that commentary for further information. In the proto-gospel (and Mark), Jesus’ earlier behavior (during an exorcism) led the family to think he was mentally unstable. Later, when the family sent him a message, Jesus rejected them, saying that those who follow his word were his true family. John, in order to sanitize the family’s relationship to Jesus, substituted a different blood-line family for his immediate family. The new blood-line consisted of the descendants of Abraham, who challenged Jesus’ teachings and accused him of being demented. Jesus, himself a descendant of Abraham, rejected this Abrahamic bloodline family and said his true family was those who followed his teachings. Luke eliminated PG–75, removing an indication of family conflict. 73 Jesus’ mother and family called out to him. 3:31 8:19 74 The crowd relayed the message. 3:32 8:20 75 Jesus asked who his real family was. 3:33 8:33–37 76 Jesus said his true family included those 3:34–35 [8:31] 8:21 who did the will of God.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 647 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–17. Jesus raised someone from the dead A Girl Restored to Life and a Woman Healed (Mark 5:21–43) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) this story is about the daughter of Jairus, a synagogue leader whose child is near death. Jairus begged Jesus to save his daughter but before Jesus arrived, the daughter died. Jesus said she was only sleeping and raised her from the dead. Mark’s pericope includes two separate stories. (See commentary on S–6.) It begins with the story of Jairus’ daughter, switches to a different story in the middle section, and returns to the Jairus story at the end. John omitted the middle story and bifurcated the Jairus story, using part for the curing of a fever (S–6) and merging the raising of the child from death with the leper story (S–9) to create the story of raising Lazarus from the dead. In John, Lazarus’s sister substituted for Jairus. The verses in John 11 refer to John’s raising of Lazarus. See Chapter 10 for further discussion of this incident. 77 Jairus begged Jesus to help his daughter. 5:23 [4:47] 8:41 11:3–4 78 The daughter was ill. 5:23 4:46 8:42 11:1 79 She was near death. 5:23 4:46 8:42 11:1 80 Jairus’ daughter was pronounced dead. 5:35 11:14 8:49 81 Jesus said, “Don’t fear. Only believe. 5:36 4:48 8:50 11:26–27 82 Jesus said, “the child is not dead, but 5:39 4:50 8:52 sleeping.” [11:11] 83 Jairus’ daughter rose up and walked. 5:42 4:51 8:55 11:44 S–18. Hometown synagogue congregation rejects Jesus The Rejection of Jesus at Nazareth (Mark 6:1–6) In the proto-gospel, Jesus appeared in his hometown synagogue (probably in Capernaum but possibly Nazareth) and proclaimed some sort of status as a messenger from God. He offered as proof of his status an ability to heal but, when tested, he failed, and the congregation turned against him. Jesus then offered several defenses that showed he should still be accorded respect as a prophet. Mark, Luke and John offer three very different versions of this story.

Continued 

648 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

Mark has a very short heavily-redacted version that alludes to the failure to heal as if it were an irrelevant afterthought (PG–93). Luke presents a much longer version of the story, clearly not derived from Mark, that I identified as the one that comes closest to the proto-gospel version. Luke never specifically mentions the failure to heal but the entire story is built around a defense of Jesus for not being able to do so. Luke has placed the story much earlier in his gospel than Mark did. Since John didn’t use routine healing as proof of Jesus’ status and would never portray Jesus as failing in whatever action he undertook, he merged this story with the Eucharist teaching to create his Discourse on Bread. In John, the Eucharist teaching is what caused the congregation to turn against Jesus. He also moved the story slightly out of order, placing it after the multiplication of the loaves instead of just before that miracle. A point-by-point analysis of the rejection story in Luke and John showed that they were both built around the same literary structure, a first century Jewish homily, an occurrence unique to both gospels. John replaced the failure to heal with a failure to convince the congregation of his (Eucharist) teaching. Since the proverb about prophets not being accorded honor (PG–95) related to the failure to heal, John moved the quote out of this narrative arc and placed it in a different setting in a different context and substituted a different statement at the original location. John also transformed the arguments about the gospel of healing to one about his gospel of eternal life. During the story, the congregation mentions Jesus’ family members by name. In John and Luke, they name only Jesus’ father, Joseph. Mark never mentions the existence of Jesus’ human father and substitutes the names of Jesus’ mother and brothers. 84 Jesus returned to his (unidentified) 6:1 [6:24–25] 4:16 hometown, probably Capernaum but possibly Nazareth. 85 Jesus taught at the hometown synagogue. 6:2 [6:59] 4:16 86 Jesus presented his gospel message based on 6:2 6:27 4:17–19 healing in the here and now. 87 Jesus said he was the fulfillment of the 6:35 4:21 gospel message. 88 The congregation wondered where Jesus 6:2 6:41 4:22 received this teaching from. 89 The congregation knew of Jesus’ prior 6:2 6:26 4:23 deeds.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 649 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

90

The congregation said they didn’t expect 6:3 6:42 4:22 such a teaching from a member of the family that they knew. 91 The congregation mentioned Jesus’ father, 6:3 6:42 4:22 Joseph, by name. 92 The crowd asked Jesus to heal someone as 6:30 4:23 proof that he was the one who he said he was. 93 Jesus was unable to heal. [6:5] 6:41 4:23 94 The congregation reacted angrily to Jesus 6:3 6:42 4:23 failure to prove his authority. 95 Jesus responded to the anger by saying, 6:4 [4:44] “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” 6:44 4:24 96 Jesus made a scriptural argument in the 6:45–54 4:25–27 literary form of a homily that taught that his failure to heal didn’t mean that he was not the one sent by God to bring about the gospel. 97 Jesus was disappointed by the congregation’s 6:6 [6:36] lack of faith. S–19. Jesus fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread Feeding the Five Thousand (Mark 6:30–44) Mark has two versions of this story, using different numerical figures. John and Luke have only one version. The Mark version used here is the one that agrees with John and Luke as to the numeric figures. 98 Jesus wanted the disciples to feed a large 6:37 6:5–6 9:13 crowd. 99 The cost was estimated at over 200 denarii. 6:37 6:7 100 There were only five loaves of bread. 6:38 6:9 9:13 101 There were only two fish. 6:38 6:9 9:13 102 The crowd consisted of 5,000 people. [6:44] 6:10 9:14 103 Jesus blessed the food. 6:41 6:11 9:16 104 The available food fed the entire crowd. 6:42 6:12 9:17 Continued 

650 | The

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Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

105

6:43

6:13

9:17

There are enough leftovers to fill twelve baskets.

S–20. Jesus walked on water and performed a second miracle at sea Jesus Walks on the Water (Mark 6:45–52) In the proto-gospel version of this story, Jesus walked on water while the disciples were sailing in a boat on a stormy sea. After catching up to the disciples, Jesus got in the boat and calmed the stormy sea. The disciples were hungry and Jesus chastised them for not understanding about the miracle of the loaves. He warned them against the “yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of the Herod.” The reference to yeast (i.e., bread,) was a symbolic term for “teachings.” Mark had two versions of the sea voyage and needed to edit them in order to reduce the appearance of duplicate stories. The proto-gospel story is spread across at least two separate pericopes in Mark. In this first pericope, Mark ends the story with the calming of the sea, and a non-verbalized criticism of the disciples for not understanding the miracle. As I demonstrated in Chapter 2, the natural continuation of Mark’s first pericope, ending at Mark 6:52, resumed at Mark 8:14–21. The second pericope is discussed below in S–21. Mark placed a large narrative distance between the two versions of the sea crossing, and the intervening stories are missing in Luke and John, although Luke moved some portions of the narrative to other places in his gospel and gave them different contexts. For example, he moved the “yeast” warning into a different context, on land on a different occasion, where Jesus addressed persons who weren’t witnesses to the bread miracle. John’s parallel to Mark’s story also skips over the intervening narrative and resumes at the precise location where Mark’s second version of the story picks up from the first version, an indication he worked from a source other than Mark. John altered the story in a different way than Luke in order to eliminate the chastisement of the disciples. He replaced the calming of the stormy sea with a different miracle, teleporting the boat to shore without Jesus in it. When Jesus arrived on shore, he encountered a different set of witnesses to the bread miracle and they took on the role originally assigned to the disciples. As a result of the changes John made, the witnesses were astonished to find that Jesus, without a boat, somehow arrived on shore from the other side of the sea. Jesus engaged these other witnesses with similar dialogues, here warning them against bread that perishes.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 651 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

106

6:45

[6:16–17]

6:46 6:48

6:15 6:18

6:48

6:19

107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114

After feeding the crowd, Jesus told the disciples to get in a boat and sail to Bethsaida. Jesus went up on a mountain to pray. While the disciples were at sea they encountered a storm. Jesus walked across the sea to catch up to the boat. The disciples were terrified when they saw Jesus on the water. Jesus said to the disciples, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” Jesus got into the boat. Jesus calmed the storm. The disciples were astounded by what they saw.

Luke

6:49–50 6:19 6:50

6:20

6:51 6:51 6:52

6:21 6:21 6:22–25

8:24 8:25

S–21. Jesus warned the witnesses to the miracle of the loaves against a certain kind of bread. The Yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod (Mark 8:14–21) See the commentary on S–20. 115 Jesus chastised the disciples for not [8:17– 6:26 understanding about the miracle of the 21] loaves. 116 The disciples on the boat were hungry but 8:14 6:26 lacked bread. 117 Jesus warned the disciples against the “yeast 8:15 6:27 12:1 of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.” 118 The disciples didn’t understand the meaning 8:16 6:28 of what Jesus said about bread. S–22. Jesus healed a blind man with saliva Jesus Cures a Blind Man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22–26) John moved this story out of its narrative location in the proto-gospel and transferred it into his account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. At that sequential location John transformed this healing episode into a substitute for the exorcism in S–15. See the commentary on S–15 for further details. Continued 

652 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

119 120

8:22 8:23

[6:24–25] 9:6

8:24

9:6–7

8:25

9:7

121 122

Jesus landed the boat at Bethsaida. Jesus acted to heal a blind man by using saliva. In the first stage of the healing, the blind man’s vision was obscured. In the second stage of the cure the blind man regained full sight.

Luke

S–23. A crowd asked Jesus for a sign The Demand for a Sign (Mark 8:11–13) Mark moved this episode out of its original order in the proto-gospel, possibly to make S–22 a symbolic dividing point between the first and second parts of his gospel. John used this episode as a lead-in for the Discourse on Bread. Luke significantly reworked Mark’s story and setting. 123 A crowd asked Jesus for proof of his 8:11 6:30–31 11:16 authority. 124 Jesus chastised those who asked for a sign. 8:12–13 6:32–33 11:29 S–24. Peter’s understanding of Jesus Peter’s Declaration about Jesus (Mark 8:27–30) In the proto-Gospel, this story is part of a larger narrative. In this portion of the episode, Peter identified Jesus as the messiah but in the second part (S–25) Peter’s understanding of the messiah’s nature appears to have been in error. John, as part of an effort to rehabilitate Peter’s image, had persons other than Peter make an erroneous identification of Jesus, and moved around portions of both S–24 and S–25. 125 Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do people 8:27 9:18 say I am?” 126 The disciples said that people saw Jesus as a 8:28 6:14 9:19 prophet. 127 Jesus asked Peter, “But who do you say 8:29 6:67 9:20 I am?” 128 Peter identified Jesus as the messiah. 8:29 6:69 9:20 S–25. Jesus predicted his death, rebuked a disciple, and explained how to get eternal life Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection (Mark 8:31–9:1) This story in Mark introduces the first instance in which Jesus talks about dying and rising up. Mark and John use different language to describe Jesus’ prediction that he would die and rise up. John talks about Jesus being lifted up; Mark says Jesus would be killed and rise up in three days.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 653 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

I accepted Raymond Brown’s analysis that John’s language is more primitive than Mark’s and I decided, therefore, to take John’s language as more representative of what was in the proto-gospel. Even if we accept Mark’s version as the original form of the prophecy, it would not undermine any aspect of the argument for the existence of the proto-gospel. In the proto-gospel (and Mark), when Peter heard the prediction, he rebuked Jesus for such a teaching, and Jesus accused him of being influenced by Satan. This demonstrated Peter’s failure to understand who Jesus really was. John, in order to rehabilitate Peter, did a lot of reworking. He changed the Satan accusation such that no disciple was identified and added a gloss saying that Jesus referred to Judas. He also depicted Peter making an accurate identification of Jesus. John transferred the accusation about worldly focus from Peter to an earlier encounter with Nicodemus. Luke omitted Peter’s rebuke of Jesus and transferred a very softened version of the Satan accusation to the pre-arrest scenes, where it takes on a different context with a different meaning. The main conflict here had to do with the story order. Mark placed the speech about eternal life right after Jesus’ rebuke of Peter. John placed it just before his version of the rebuking of a disciple, whom he identifies as Judas instead of Peter. I usually follow Mark’s setting over John’s as a matter of convention, but we can’t be sure as to which order is correct. However, in John, this teaching is fused into the Discourse on Bread and, as I previously indicated that teaching was an artificial creation merging the rejection of Jesus (S–18) and the Eucharist teaching (S–42), John’s sequencing strikes me as unreliable. 129 Jesus made the first of three declarations 8:31 6:62 9:22 that the Son of Man “must be lifted up.” 3:14 130 Peter rebuked Jesus for this teaching. 8:32 6:66 131 Jesus rebuked Peter by saying, “Get behind 8:33 6:70 22:31 me, Satan! For you are setting your mind 3:12 not on divine things but on human things.” 132 Jesus taught the crowd how they could 8:34–37 6:35–58 9:23–25 obtain eternal life. 133 Some of Jesus’ followers were embarrassed 8:38 6:60, 66 9:26 by his words and abandoned him. S–26. Jesus predicted his death for the second time Jesus Again Foretells His Death and Resurrection (Mark 9:30–32) I continue here with John’s language instead of Mark’s. John, however, inserted this prediction into the middle of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem whereas the proto-gospel (and Mark) placed it just before the last visit. Continued 

654 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 134

Mark

John

Luke

Jesus made the second of three declarations 9:31 8:28 9:44 about how the Son of Man had to be lifted up. S–27. Jesus went to the Jordan river. Teaching about Divorce (Mark 10:1–12) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) this happened on Jesus’ way to Jerusalem for the final visit. In John, who places the last visit earlier in time than Mark does, it happened right after Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem. In this pericope, we are only interested in Mark’s first verse. The balance deals with teachings about divorce. 135 Jesus went to the river Jordan. 10:1 10:40 136 Crowds gathered around him. 10:1 10:41 S–28. The incident with the rich man and the Parable of Lazarus The Rich Man (Mark 10:17–31) The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) The Parable of Lazarus appears only in Luke but I proposed that it also appeared in the proto-gospel. However, it was my suggestion in Chapter 10 that Mark’s story about the rich man who wanted to go to heaven was an historicized version of the parable and that Luke saw Mark’s rich man story as an additional incident rather than a version of the parable. He therefore added Mark’s story into his own gospel. The evidence also suggested that John knew the parable and also historicized it, but in ways different than Mark did. In John, most of the references are buried into John 5 with another connected to John’s Lazarus story. It is my further proposal that John has fused the parable of Lazarus with the healing of the leper (S–9) and the raising of Jairus’s daughter to construct his Lazarus narrative. In the verse citations below I have given the verses for Luke’s parable as well as his version of Mark’s rich man story. 137 Part 1 of the parable: Rich man versus poor 10:21–22 5:28–29 16:19–22 man. 18:22 138 Part 2 of the parable: The rich man in hell. 10:23–25 5:29 16:23–26 18:24–25 139 Part 3a of the parable: Send Lazarus back to 10:29–30 [11:43] 16:27–28 earth to warn the rich man’s children. 18:29–30 140 Part 3b of the parable: If you didn’t believe 10:19 5:45–47 16:29–31 what Moses said you wouldn’t believe what 18:20 Jesus said.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 655 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–29. Jesus predicted his death for the third time A Third Time Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection (Mark 10:32–24 In the proto-gospel, the third death and resurrection prediction appeared shortly before the Triumphal entry episode. John placed it in the aftermath of that episode. I continue to use John’s language here instead of Mark’s. 141 Jesus made the third of three predictions 10:32–34 12:32–34 18:31–34 about the need for the Son of Man to be lifted up. S–30. Jesus healed a blind beggar The Healing of Blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46–52) I proposed in Chapter 4 that John merged this story with the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida and that the new version of the story served as a substitution for the story of the exorcism in S–15. See commentaries on S–15 and S–22. 142 On the way to Jerusalem Jesus met a blind 10:46 9:1,8 18:35 beggar. 143 The beggar called Jesus “son of David.” 10:47 [9:17] 18:38 144 Jesus healed the blind man. 10:52 9:7 18:43 145 The man who regained his sight became a 10:52 9:38 18:43 follower of Jesus. S–31. Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (Mark 11:1–11) The proto-gospel (and Mark) placed the Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem before the plot to kill Jesus (S–38) and before the anointing in Bethany (S–39). John placed it after those stories. This is because John has moved those other stories to a chronologically earlier point in his narrative. However, Mark and John both place the Triumphal Entry at about the same point in time, five days before Passover. In John, therefore, the Triumphal Entry interrupts the narrative flow from S–39 to S–40. Sequentially, though, John’s versions of S–38, S–39, and S–40 follow the proto-gospel order of events. Luke and John have longer versions of the Triumphal Entry scenes and both agree with each other on the presence of three additional scenes missing from Mark (PG– 152, PG–154, PG–155). John slightly altered the story. In the proto-gospel (and Mark) Jesus rode the donkey towards the city gate, suggesting Solomon’s donkey ride in his effort to seize the throne from David’s lawful heir. This suggested political rivalry. In John, Jesus walked before the crowds as they hailed him and later only sat on the donkey but didn’t ride it, eliminating the issue of political rivalry. Continued 

656 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

146

11:1

12:1

19:29

11:1–2

12:12

19:29–30

11:7 11:7 11:8

12:14 12:14 12:13

19:35 19:35 19:36

11:9

19:36 12:17–18 19:37

147 148 149 150 151 152

153

154 155 156

Six days before Passover Jesus arrived at Bethany. Five days before Passover Jesus sent two disciples to retrieve a donkey. The disciples returned with a donkey. Jesus mounted the donkey. Crowds greeted Jesus by laying cloaks on the road and waving branches. Jesus rode the donkey to the Jerusalem gate. Crowds turned out to greet Jesus because they had witnessed the signs he had performed. Crowds shouted out “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—the king of Israel. Hosanna in the highest heaven.” The Pharisees were unhappy over the enthusiastic reception received by Jesus. Jesus lamented the blindness of the Jewish authorities. Jesus left Jerusalem without engaging the authorities.

11:9–10 [12:13– 14]

12:19

19:38

19:39

12:37–40 19:41–44 11:11

[12:36]

S–32. Jesus chased the money-changers Jesus Cleanses the Temple (Mark 11:15–19) This episode led the priests to see Jesus as a political rival and they sought a way to put him to death. John changed the plot-line. Consistent with his alternative plot, John moved the first two scenes to an earlier point in time, where they functioned as a substitute for Jesus’ first major public act (S–5). In John’s gospel, therefore, chasing the money-changers did not lead to fear of a political opponent and there was no death threat. However, both John and Mark indicated that during Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem, on the first day of confrontation between Jesus and the authorities, the authorities wanted Jesus dead. In Mark, it was because of the chasing the moneychangers. In John, it was because of the earlier Sabbath healing conflict (see S–12). So, John has retained the initial death threat at the beginning of the last visit to Jerusalem but the threat has nothing to do with political rivalry.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 657 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 157 158 159

Mark

John

Jesus chased the money-changers from the 11:15–16 2:14–15 Temple. Jesus expressed his anger at the 11:17 2:16 moneychangers. The chief priests wanted to kill Jesus for his 11:18 7:25 actions.

Luke 19:45 19:46 19:47

S–33. Priests challenged the authority of Jesus to chase the money-changers Jesus’ Authority Is Questioned (Mark 11:27–33) After determining that they wanted to kill Jesus, the authorities asked him what authority he had for his actions in chasing the money-changers. John moved these two scenes, along with the chasing of the money-changers, to the earlier position in his gospel. Mark and John give very different responses to this question. I am inclined towards Mark’s version but it is long and I have omitted the details in PG–161. 160 161

The authorities ask Jesus by what authority 11:27–28 2:18 he chased the money-changers. Jesus responded to the question with a 11:29–33 2:19–21 challenge the authorities couldn’t meet.

20:1–2 20:3–8

S–34. The Parable of the Wicked Tenant The Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1–12) In the proto-gospel (and Mark), The Parable of the Wicked Tenant follows after the challenge to Jesus’ authority. The parable talks about a landlord (i.e., God) sending his son (i.e., Jesus) to collect the rent and the tenants killing the son. As a result, the landlord would take back his property. The priests saw this as an attack on the authorities by Jesus as a political rival and they wanted to arrest him but they feared the crowd. In John’s account of the last visit to Jerusalem, following the debate over the authorities wanting Jesus killed, Jesus said that they knew where he is from but didn’t know who sent him because they didn’t know God. After this, an attempt to arrest Jesus failed. It is my argument that John has historicized the Parable of the Wicked Tenants here. But, conspicuously, John omitted the threat that the property would be taken back from the tenants, eliminating the issue of the political rivalry. 162 163

Jesus recited the Parable of the Wicked Tenant. The authorities want to arrest Jesus for the criticism in the parable but fail to do so.

12:1–11 7:28–29

20:9–18

12:12

20:19

7:30

Continued 

658 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–35. Jesus recited the most important commandment The First Commandment (Mark 12:28–34) In the proto-gospel, this story was used to illustrate how someone would get into heaven. John didn’t accept the tenets of this story as he believed the only way to get into heaven was to believe in Jesus as the one sent by God to bring eternal life. Therefore, he made changes. John shifted the commandment to love God into the post-resurrection narrative where Jesus told Peter of the dangers he would face when Jesus was gone, and asked Peter if he loved Jesus enough to care for his flock. John placed the second commandment, love your neighbor, into the Last Supper narrative as a substitute for John’s version of the Eucharist teaching, the original of which he moved into the Discourse on Bread. 164 A scribe asked Jesus which commandment 12:28 10:25 was most important. 165 Jesus responded, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord 12:29–30 21:15–18 10:26–27 our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.” 166 Jesus added a second commandment: “You 12:31 13:34 10:27 shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 167 Jesus said that following these 12:34 13:35 10:28 commandments would bring you close to heaven. S–36. Jesus raised a question about the son of David The Question about David’s Son (Mark 12:35–37) In the course of Jesus’ Temple appearances, the proto-gospel (and Mark) depict portions of a debate about the nature of the messiah. The issue raised is whether a son of David could be the messiah and, implicitly, whether Jesus could be the messiah even if he was not a son of David. Under the earthly understanding of messiah, this hints at Jesus as a political rival. John changed the narrative construct of the episode. Instead of Jesus debating the Temple authorities, John shows members of the crowd arguing back and forth over the characteristics of the messiah, with pro and con positions as to whether the messiah has to be a son of David. But Jesus, himself, does not engage in these discussions, so he does not appear as a potential rival to the political authorities.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 659 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

168

12:35–37 7:40–43

Jesus argued with the priests and said that the Son of David cannot be the Messiah.

John

Luke 20:41–44

S–37. Jesus talked about rebuilding a destroyed Temple The Destruction of the Temple Foretold (Mark 13:1–8) Jesus Cleanses the Temple (John 2:13–25) In Mark, witnesses at trial accused Jesus of saying that he would tear down the Temple and rebuild it in three days but the witnesses couldn’t agree on what Jesus actually said. The synoptic gospels do not show Jesus actually making such a statement on an earlier occasion. John, on the other hand, specifically says Jesus made a similar statement in front of witnesses in connection with the chasing of the money-changers and adds that they didn’t understand what he meant by that statement. Mark does, however, have a statement suggesting (when read together with Luke) that Jesus did predict that the Temple would be torn down but that he said nothing about rebuilding it. It was my suggestion that the proto-gospel had Jesus make such a statement but that the proto-gospel was written before the destruction of the Temple. The gospel authors, writing after the destruction of the Temple, may have found it embarrassing that the Temple wasn’t rebuilt, so Mark redacted the statement to eliminate the rebuilding portion and simply made a prediction (based on knowledge of what actually happened) that the Temple would be torn down. Given that the population would have known about the Roman destruction of the Temple, the prediction was now used to enhance Jesus’ reputation. 169 Jesus said, “destroy this temple that is made 13:1–2 2:19 21:5–6 with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.” S–38. The Jewish authorities plotted to kill Jesus The Plot to Kill Jesus (Mark 14:1–2) The proto-gospel (and Mark) placed the plot to kill Jesus two days before Passover. John placed it at some undefined earlier point in time, at least six days before Passover. It is in this story that John sets forth his change of plot, changing the motive for killing Jesus from one of political rivalry to one of fear that Rome would destroy the Temple and the nation.

Continued 

660 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

In the burial story Luke says that Joseph of Arimathea was a member of the council who opposed the plan to kill Jesus. John indicates that Nicodemus, a member of the council, defended Jesus’ right to be heard before the council acted against him. John has Joseph involved in the burial scene but says nothing about his role on the council. But he does add Nicodemus to the burial party. So there is agreement between John and Luke that at least one member of the council disagreed with its actions and that member also assisted in the burial of Jesus. 170 Two days before Passover the Jewish 14:1–2 11:47–53 22:1–2 authorities plotted to kill Jesus. 171 One or more members of the council 7:50–51 23:50–51 opposed the council’s decision and said that Jesus had a right to be heard. 172 Officers were sent to bring Jesus before the 7:32 council. 173 Jesus had left the scene before the officers Implicit Implicit Implicit arrived. S–39. A woman anointed Jesus at Bethany The Anointing at Bethany (Mark 14:3–9) Jesus Visits Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38–42) This is a problematic story. Both Mark and John share enough features to indicate they knew the same story and that it happened close in time to the last Passover. Luke placed it much earlier in the narrative and had numerous details that varied from both Mark and John. At the same time, John included some details about sisters named Mary and Martha, which details are missing from Mark. Luke, on the other hand, has a story about sisters named Mary and Martha, with similarities to details in John’s anointing story, but in Luke the story is separate and apart from his account of the anointing. It is my suggestion that the Mary and Martha scenes were originally part of the anointing story and that Luke separated them out. But a reasonable case can be made that they were separate stories to start with, as Luke has it.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 661 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

As a side note, Mark says that the house belonged to Simon the Leper. John doesn’t say who the house belonged to but Lazarus, after his resurrection, makes a cameo appearance in John’s anointing story. Since I argued that the Lazarus story was originally based on a leper that was healed (S–9), this may provide some confirmation for my thesis. Aside from Mark’s description of Simon as a leper, Mark’s story has no indication that an actual leper was present at the table, so Simon may be a healed leper and correspond to Lazarus. At the end of the story of Jairus’s daughter being raised from the dead, Mark says that Jesus told the guests to give the girl a meal. In John, after raising Lazarus from the dead, we find Lazarus appearing for a meal, but playing no other role in the story. 174 Jesus visited Simon the Leper/Lazarus in 14:3 12:1 7:36, 40 Bethany. 175 Mary and Martha were there. 12:2–3 10:38–39 176 Martha served a meal. 12:2 10:40 177 Mary sat devotedly at Jesus’ feet. 12:3 10:39 178 Martha complained about Mary not 10:40 helping. 179 Jesus defended Mary’s behavior. 10:41–42 180 Mary wept over Jesus’ fate. 7:38 181 Her tears fell on Jesus’ feet. 7:38 182 She wiped the tears off with her hair. 12:3 7:38 183 A woman (Mary?) had a jar filled with 14:3 12:3 7:37 ointment. 184 She poured the ointment in the jar over 14:3 12:3 7:38 Jesus’ head to comfort him. cf. 7:46 185 Some of those present complained about 14:5 12:5 7:39 wasting money on expensive oil instead of helping the poor. 186 The anointment was worth three hundred 14:5 12:5 denarii. 187 Jesus defended the woman’s actions. 14:6 12:7 7:40–43 188 Jesus rebuked the critics, saying, “For you 14:7–8 12:8 7:44–46 always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me.” 189 Jesus said that the ointment was for his 14:8 12:7 burial preparation. Continued 

662 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–40. Judas decided to betray Jesus Judas Agrees to Betray Jesus (Mark 14:10–11) Luke and John both say that Satan entered into Judas prior to his decision to betray Jesus. Mark omitted that detail. 190 Satan entered into Judas. 13:2 22:3 191 Judas decided to betray Jesus. 14:10 13:2 22:4 S–41. At the Last Supper Jesus announced that he would be betrayed by one of the disciples. The Passover with the Disciples (Mark 14:12–21) This pericope has two portions. There is a preparation for the Last Supper and Jesus announces at the Last Supper that a disciple will betray him. Mark and John disagree on the Last Supper chronology. John says it happened on the night before the Passover lamb was sacrificed. Mark says it was the night after the Passover lamb was sacrificed. In Mark, the preparation for the Last Supper consisted of setting up the Passover meal. John has a scene where Jesus washed the feet of the disciples before they sat down to eat. Mark and John each place their preparation stories in the same narrative location in the sequence of surrounding events. There is no clear evidence one way or the other as to who has the correct holiday schedule so I am not identifying individual scenes within the preparation story. The unfolding of the betrayal prediction is affected by the Eucharist teaching that follows after it. In the synoptic version of the Eucharist, Jesus handed bread to the disciples and no bread was handed to Judas when Jesus predicted his betrayal. In John, Jesus did not hand out bread to the disciples as a group, and there was no Eucharist story at the Last Supper. John does say, however, that Jesus handed bread to Judas when he predicted the disciple’s betrayal. I have accepted John’s version of the Eucharist teaching as closer to the protogospel version and follow his outline of the prediction that Judas will betray Jesus. Luke, in reaction to the bread issue, reversed the order of the betrayal prediction and the Eucharist teaching. See S–42 for further discussion. 192 Jesus and the disciples prepared for the Last 14:12–16 13:3–11 22:7–13 Supper. 193 Jesus predicted one of the disciples would 14:18 13:21 22:21 betray him. 194 The disciples inquired as to the identity of 14:19 13:22–25 22:23 the betrayer.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 663 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 195

196 197 198 199

Mark

Jesus said, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Jesus dipped bread into the bowl. 14:20 Jesus handed bread to Judas but did not verbally identify him as the betrayer. Jesus told Judas to leave and do what he had to do. Judas left. implicit

John

Luke

13:26

13:26 13:26 13:27 13:30

implicit

S–42. The Eucharist Teaching The Institution of the Lord’s Supper (Mark 14:22–25) As noted in the commentary on S–41, I have opted for John’s very different version of the Eucharist teaching over the synoptic version. Mark’s version is loosely based on Paul’s alleged revelation in 1 Corinthians. Luke appears to have incorporated Paul’s version word for word, suggesting he had a copy of Paul’s letter before him, and merged that teaching with Mark’s version. Analysis is further complicated by the fact that John has integrated his Eucharist account into his Discourse on Bread and has substituted a version of the commandment to love one’s neighbor (see commentary on S–35) as a substitute for the Eucharist teaching at the Last Supper. In both John and Mark, the present scene involves ways to remember Jesus. Because we don’t know in what ways John may have altered the proto-gospel version of the Eucharist teaching when merging it into the Discourse on Bread, I can’t break the story down into individual scenes. 200 The Eucharist teaching: Jesus taught the 14:22–25 13:31–35 22:14–20 disciples that if they want to obtain eternal 6:35–58 life they must eat his body and drink his blood. S–43. Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him Peter’s Denial Foretold (Mark 14:26–31) Luke and John agree that Jesus predicted that Peter would defy him before the cock crowed (one time). Mark says there would be two cock crows. I follow Luke and John against Mark. 201 Jesus warned the disciples of hard times 14:27 13:36 22:31–32 ahead. 202 Peter said he would lay down his life for 14:29, 13:37 22:33 Jesus. 31 Continued 

664 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 203

Mark

John

Luke

Jesus challenged Peter’s claim and predicted 14:30 13:38 22:34 that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crowed. S–44. Jesus contemplated his fate Jesus Prays in Gethsemane (Mark 14:32–42) In the proto-gospel (and in Mark) Jesus expressed deep anguish and concern over his fate and prayed to the Father to remove the “cup” if it all possible. This was highly offensive to John’s image of Jesus and he broke the story into pieces, distributing the parts into different contexts. Although admitting that Jesus’ soul was troubled, John shows Jesus willingly and unflinchingly accepting the “cup” that the Father has given him. Luke added two scenes that many scholars think was a late addition. One involves an angel comforting Jesus in his anguish. The other has Jesus sweat great drops of blood. In John, after Jesus said his soul was troubled, onlookers heard a voice from heaven and listeners thought an angel had spoken. Because John never depicts Jesus as needing help, I have taken John’s verses as an alternative version of Luke’s angel scene. However, I have removed the great drops of blood portion from the reconstruction of the proto-gospel. Mark omitted the angel scene. 204 Jesus went to the Mount of Olives with his 14:32 18:1 22:39 disciples. 205 Jesus told the disciples that he was 14:33–34 12:27 [22:44] distressed. 206 Jesus prayed to the Father to remove the 14:35–36 [18:11] 22:41–42 cup that had been given to him, if the Father was willing to do so. 207 An angel comforted Jesus in his anguish. 12:28–30 22:43 S–45. Authorities arrested Jesus The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus (Mark 14:43–52 While Mark, Luke and John all agree that one of Jesus’ disciples cut off the ear of the High Priest’s slave, Luke and John add that it was the right ear and that Jesus directed his disciples to stop the violence. John moved the criticism of the arrest party (PG–215) into the post-arrest questioning by the High Priest and changed the context from a complaint to a directive, reinforcing the image of Jesus as one who is in control. John also moved the notice that the hour had come (PG–208) from this narrative setting and placed it together with PG–205 and PG–207 in S–44.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 665 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

208 209 210 211 212

Jesus said the hour had come. 14:41 12:27 Judas arrived with an arrest party. 14:43 18:2–3 22:47 Judas approached Jesus. 14:44–45 18:4–5 22:47 Authorities placed Jesus under arrest. 14:46 [18:12] [22:54] One of the disciples cut off the ear of the 14:47 18:10 22:49–50 High Priest’s slave. 213 It was the slave’s right ear. 18:10 22:50 214 Jesus ordered the disciples to stop the 18:11 22:51 violence. 215 Jesus complained about the arrest party, 14:48–49 18:20 22:52–53 saying, “Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I was with you in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me.” 216 Jesus was taken to the house of the High 14:53 18:13 22:54 Priest. 217 Annas and Caiaphas were the High Priests 18:13 3:2 that year. S–46. Peter denied Jesus for the first time Peter Denies Jesus (Mark 14:66–72) Peter Denies Jesus (John 18:15–18) Mark and Luke both depict Peter’s three denials as a single narrative but disagree slightly as to where in the sequence of events the incident belongs. John divides the denials into two parts, one agreeing with Mark’s chronology and one agreeing with Luke’s. I have followed John’s arrangement but would not strongly object if a decision was made to keep the two parts together in a single narrative. Although Mark places all three denials into this pericope, because I am treating John’s account of the second and third denials as a separate later incident, I will list John’s two later denials at the narrative location where they occurred in the protogospel and will cite John’s pericope at that location. See S–48. 218 Peter entered into the courtyard of the High 14:54 18:16 22:55 Priest. 219 A servant girl accused Peter of being a 14:66–67 18:17 22:56 disciple of Jesus. 220 Peter denied Jesus for the first time. 14:68 18:17 22:57 Continued 

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Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S–47. Jesus placed on trial Jesus before the Council (Mark 14:53–65) John divided the trial narrative of Jesus before the Jewish authorities into separate sections and redistributed them into various locations in his account of Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem. In John’s reworked version, the conflicts took place primarily among unidentified persons in a crowd. This arrangement was due to John’s change of plot as to why the authorities wanted Jesus put to death. Luke omitted Mark’s testimony portion of the trial and made some additions and changes to the interrogation of Jesus. John, in disguised form, includes both the witness testimony and the interrogation of Jesus. As to the interrogation, John agrees in part with Luke’s version of the interrogation and in part with Mark’s version. The two chief differences are that 1) John and Luke both divided the interrogation into two separate inquiries where Mark combines the two parts into a single question, and 2) Mark and John agree against Luke that Jesus admitted to being the son of God. 221 The High Priest asked Jesus to explain his 18:19 teachings. 222 Jesus explained his gospel 8:12 223 Witnesses were called to testify about 14:55 8:18–19 statements made by Jesus. 224 The witnesses disagreed with each other. 14:56 225 The witnesses gave conflicting versions of a 14:57 statement by Jesus about tearing down the Temple and rebuilding it. 226 Jesus and/or the authorities argued over the Implicit 8:13–18 legal principles concerning the validity and credibility of witness testimony. 227 The High Priest asked Jesus, “If you are the 14:61 10:24 22:67 messiah, tell us.” 228 Jesus responded by saying either he told 10:25 22:67 them and they didn’t believe or if he told them they wouldn’t believe. 229 Jesus added an additional response that 10:25 22:68 explained how he planned to prove his case. 230 Jesus provided a secondary description of 14:62 10:30 22:69 his identity.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 667 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

231

[14:61] Implied 22:70 by 10:36 14:62 10:36 22:70 14:63–64 [10:33] 22:71

232 233 234

The High Priest asked Jesus if he was the Son of God. Jesus said, “I am.” The High Priest declared Jesus guilty of blasphemy based on Jesus’ own words. The council voted to put Jesus to death.

14:64

John

Luke

[10:31] [11:53]

S–48. Peter denied Jesus again. Peter Denies Jesus (Mark 14:66–72) Peter Denies Jesus Again (John 18:25–27) As noted in the commentary on S–46, John separates Peter’s three denials of Jesus into two separate incidents. Mark includes all three denials in a single pericope, but I follow John’s arrangement. Therefore, I split Mark’s pericope into two parts, here and in S–46. 235 Peter was accused for the second time of 14:69 18:25 22:58 being a disciple of Jesus. 236 Peter denied Jesus for the second time. 14:70 18:25 22:58 237 Peter was accused for the third time of 14:70 18:26 22:59 being a disciple of Jesus. 238 Peter denied Jesus for the third time. 14:71 18:27 22:60 239 A cock crowed. 14:72 18:27 22:60 S–49. Pilate interrogated Jesus Jesus before Pilate (Mark 15:1–5) Luke omitted any nighttime trial and placed a redacted and altered version of the trial in the morning period. Mark says there was a morning consultation before handing Jesus over to Pilate but he doesn’t describe what took place in the morning period. John describes a transfer of Jesus after the inquiry at the house of Annas to Caiaphas but doesn’t actually say it was a morning transfer. He also placed the transfer just before Peter’s last denials and, therefore, before the cock crows at the beginning of morning light. As in Mark, John says nothing about what transpired at this second occasion before the Jewish authorities. Following the morning proceeding, the Jewish authorities handed Jesus over to Pilate. John and Luke divided the interrogation of Jesus into two parts and show Pilate making three separate declarations of innocence. Luke placed the second interrogation before Herod instead of Pilate. John placed both interrogations before Pilate but placed some narrative distance between the two parts. Mark has a single interrogation and no declarations of innocence. I follow John and Luke with respect to those issues. Continued 

668 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

Luke placed the second interrogation in front of Herod. I accept that Jesus was sent to Herod and returned from Herod but I rejected Luke’s version of what occurred there. John made a number of changes to how the interrogation unfolded in order to conform the dialogue to his editorial agenda. His goal was to place Jesus’ kingship outside the realm of petty earthly disputes over political rivalry. 240 The Jewish council met the next morning. 15:1 18:24 22:66 241 The authorities took Jesus to Pilate. 15:1 18:28 23:1 242 The Jewish authorities accused Jesus of [19:7] 23:2 claiming to be the King of the Jews. 243 Pilate asked Jesus if he was the King of the 15:2 18:33 23:3 Jews. 244 Jesus responded, “You say so.” 15:2 18:37 23:3 245 Pilate declared Jesus innocent of any 18:38 [23:6] wrongdoing. (First of three occasions.) 246 Jewish authorities accused Jesus of stirring 15:3 [18:30] 23:5 up trouble from Judea to Galilee. 247 Pilate asked the Jews where Jesus came 19:9 23:6 from. 248 Pilate sent Jesus to Herod. 23:7 249 Herod returned Pilate to Jesus. [23:11] 250 Pilate asked Jesus why the authorities have 15:4 [18:35] 23:9 brought charges against him. 251 Jesus remained silent in response to Pilate’s 15:5 19:9 23:9 question. 252 There was an angry reaction to Jesus’ 19:10 23:10 silence. S–50. The crowd called for the release of Barabbas Pilate Hands Jesus over to Be Crucified (Mark 15:6–11) In Mark, the Barabbas incident and the crowds call for crucifixion appear in the same pericope but the mockery of Jesus by the Roman soldiers appears in the next pericope. In the proto-gospel, however, the Roman mockery belongs between the Barabbas incident and the crowd calling for the crucifixion of Jesus. In order to preserve the correct order of scenes in the proto-gospel, it was necessary to break the Markan pericope about the call for crucifixion into two parts, the first part dealing with the Barabbas incident (Mark 15:6–11) and the second part relating to the call of the crowd for crucifixion (Mark 15:12–15). Mark’s separate pericope about the Roman mockery belongs between those two parts. See S–51 and S–52.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 669 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

253

A Passover custom allowed Pilate to release 15:6 18:39 one prisoner from custody. 254 Pilate wanted to release the “King of the 15:9 18:39 23:16 Jews.” 255 Jews called for the release of Barabbas. 15:11 18:40 23:18 256 Barabbas is described as a revolutionary. [15:7] 18:40 23:19 S–51. The Roman soldiers mocked Jesus The Soldiers Mock Jesus (Mark 15:16–20) Mark, Luke and John disagree with each other as to where in the sequence of events this mockery story belongs. Mark placed it after Pilate’s handing over of Jesus for crucifixion and outside of Pilate’s presence. Luke placed a substantially muted version of the mockery before Herod. John kept the mockery in front of Pilate and before the decision to hand over Jesus. I followed John’s sequential order with regard to the mockery. 257 Pilate had Jesus flogged. 15:15 19:1 [23:16] 258 Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by draping 15:16–17 19:2 23:11 him in a purple robe. 259 Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by placing a 15:17 19:2 crown of thorns on his head. 260 Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by shouting 15:18 19:3 23:11 “Hail, King of the Jews.” S–52. The crowd called for crucifixion Pilate Hands Jesus over to Be Crucified (Mark 15:12–15) In Luke and John, the first call for crucifixion used the word “crucify” twice. Mark only has a single appearance of the word. In the proto-gospel, Pilate challenged the Jews by asking what evil Jesus had done (PG–264). John substituted an altered version of the statement that shares a similar theme. “Take him yourselves and crucify him.” John omitted the decision to release Barabbas (but does not deny that he was released) and does not say Pilate succumbed to pressure from the Jews. Mark is the only one to specifically say that the soldiers removed the mock royal uniform and placed Jesus back in his original clothes, but the later casting of lots for Jesus’ clothing in all versions indicates that the clothing must have been changed. 261 Pilate declared Jesus innocent of 19:4 23:13–15 wrongdoing for the second time. (Second of three occasions.)

Continued 

670 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

262

15:12

19:5

23:20

15:13

19:6

23:21

15:14

19:6 19:6

23:22 23:22

19:12 19:15

23:22 23:23

263 264 265

266 267 268 269 270 271

Pilate made a sarcastic remark ridiculing Jesus in an effort to get Jewish consent to release Jesus. The crowd called for the crucifixion of Jesus, shouting “crucify” twice. Pilate asked, “Why, what evil has he done?” Pilate declared Jesus innocent of wrongdoing for the third time. (Third of three occasions.) Pilate wanted to release Jesus. The crowd called a second time for crucifixion. Pilate succumbed to Jewish pressure. Pilate released Barabbas. Pilate handed Jesus over for crucifixion. Soldiers removed the purple robe from Jesus and dressed him in his original clothes.

15:14 15:15 15:15 15:15 15:20

23:23 23:25 19:16 23:25 Implied Implied by by 19:23 23:34

S–53. The soldiers crucified Jesus The Crucifixion of Jesus (Mark 15:21–32) In the proto-gospel (and Mark) a bystander helped Jesus carry the cross. John didn’t believe Jesus ever needed help and says specifically that Jesus carried the cross by himself, a gloss that suggests he is refuting what was in his source material. John does not show Jews mocking Jesus (victory over a political rival) but does say that Pilate had the inscription “King of the Jews” printed in three different languages and that the Jewish authorities begged Pilate to change the inscription to show that Jesus only claimed to be King of the Jews. It is my view that the Jewish complaint against Pilate’s three inscriptions were a symbolic substitute for the mockeries of Jesus by the Jewish onlookers. This is another instance of John trying to downplay the issue of political rivalry as the reason why the Jewish authorities wanted Jesus put to death. 272 Soldiers led Jesus towards the crucifixion 15:20 19:16 23:26 site. 273 The soldiers force a by-stander to aid Jesus. 15:21 19:17 23:26 274 The soldiers took him to Golgotha. 15:22 19:17 23:33 275 Golgotha is a Hebrew name meaning “Place 15:22 19:17 of the Skull.”

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 671 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

276 277 278 279

15:24 15:27 15:27 [15:26]

19:18 19:18 19:18 19:19

23:33 23:33 23:33 23:38

280

281

Jesus was crucified. Two bandits were crucified along with Jesus. Jesus was placed between the two bandits. An inscription, including the words “King of the Jews,” was placed on the cross. Jewish leaders mocked Jesus, taunting the “king of the Jews” to save himself and come off the cross. Soldiers cast lots for the clothing worn by Jesus.

15:31–32 19:20–22 [23:35]

[15:24] 19:23–24 [23:34]

S–54. Jesus died on the cross The Death of Jesus (Mark 15:33–41) There is a lot of conflict within Mark, Luke and John as to how Jesus’ death story played out, particularly with regard to his final words. I have gone with Mark’s version of Jesus’ last words and organized the reconstruction of this story in the proto-gospel around that decision. Another major issue is that John depicts Jesus saying that he was thirsty and that bystanders placed wine on a sponge and lifted it up with a stick and Jesus drank the wine. This conflicts with the synoptic version of the Eucharist story, where Jesus pledges not to drink wine again until the kingdom comes. John’s Eucharist account has no such pledge. Mark does agree with John that onlookers placed wine on a sponge and lifted it up to Jesus, but he doesn’t say that Jesus drank the wine. Luke omitted the handing up of wine to Jesus but has an earlier scene where Jesus was offered wine in mockery by Roman soldiers and Jesus refused it. John also appears to have tinkered with the scenes about unidentified women and Mary Magdalene watching the crucifixion from afar. In John, Mary and the other women come up to Jesus while he is still alive on the cross. 282 Jesus’ final words were, “Eloi, Eloi, lema 15:34 [19:30] [23:46] sabachthani,” an Aramaic phrase translated as “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 283 Some of those in the crowd thought he had 15:35 called out for Elijah. 284 Jesus said he was thirsty. 19:28 Continued 

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Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description 285

Mark

John

Luke

Someone fetched sour wine for him to 15:36 19:29 drink. 286 Someone said they should wait to see if 15:36 Elijah came. 287 The wine was placed on a sponge and the 15:36 19:29 23:36 sponge was placed on a stick and lifted up to Jesus’ mouth. 288 Jesus drank the offered wine. 19:30 289 Jesus cried out. 15:37 290 Jesus died on the cross. 15:37 19:30 23:46 291 Unnamed woman watched from afar. 15:40 [19:25] 23:49 292 Mary Magdalene and another woman 15:40 [19:25] named Mary also watched from afar. S–55. Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus The Burial of Jesus (Mark 15:42–47) Jesus was crucified on the Day of Preparation but Mark, Luke and John do not agree as to what the Day of Preparation signified. All, however, agree that the following day was a Sabbath. Mark and Luke say that Joseph of Arimathea wanted to remove Jesus from the cross and bury him. John altered the story, saying that it was the Jewish authorities who wanted Jesus buried before the Sabbath. This reinforced the idea that the Jewish authorities had no jealous opposition to Jesus, and that their decision was based on other reasons. John does, however, admit that Joseph went to ask for the body of Jesus. Luke says that Joseph was a member of the council and opposed its plans. John omits that notice but brings back Nicodemus as a member of the burial party. John previously depicted Nicodemus as an opponent of the council’s actions. So John and Luke agree that a member of the burial party served on the council and opposed its actions. John is the only gospel showing a soldier piercing Jesus’ side to see if he was dead, but Mark says a soldier was sent to see if Jesus was dead and doesn’t say how the soldier confirmed that this was the case. I accepted John’s piercing as a part of the proto-gospel. Luke and John agree that the tomb had never been used before. 293 Jesus died on the Day of Preparation. 15:42 19:31 [23:54] 294 It was the day before the Sabbath. 15:42 19:31 [23:54] 295 Jesus had to be buried before the Day of 15:42 19:31 [23:54] Preparation was over.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 673 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

296

15:42

19:31

[23:54]

15:43

cf. 23:50 7:50–51 cf. 23:50 7:50–51 [19:38] 23:52. 19:31–32

297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307

Joseph of Arimathea wanted to remove Jesus from the cross and bury him. This Joseph was a member of the Jewish council. This Joseph also opposed the council’s actions. Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Pilate sent a centurion to see if Jesus was dead. A soldier pierced Jesus’ side to make sure he was dead. The centurion reported back that Jesus had died. Pilate authorized Joseph to take the body of Jesus. Joseph took the body from the cross and wrapped it in linens. There was a nearby tomb that had never been used. Joseph placed the body in a tomb. Mary Magdalene and others saw where Joseph placed Jesus.

15:43 15:44

19:34 15:45 15:45

19:38

15:46

19:38–40 23:53

15:46 15:47

19:41

23:53

19:42 Implicit per 20:1

23:53 23:55

S–56. Jesus’ body was missing from the tomb. The Resurrection of Jesus (Mark 16:1–8) The Resurrection of Jesus (Luke 24:1–12) The Resurrection of Jesus (John 20:1–10) Mark’s gospel ends in the middle of the empty tomb scene, before Peter came and looked. Mark says that Mary told nobody what she saw. Luke says that Mary told the disciples what she saw but they didn’t believe her. John also says that Mary told the disciples what she saw but John rearranged the scenes so that her notice comes after Peter has looked into the tomb. Both John and Luke end the empty tomb scene with Peter going home without saying anything to anybody. Mary encountered mysterious strangers when she went to the tomb and each of the gospels has some variations on details as to what took place. I accepted John’s description as to the number of strangers and where they were located but I accepted Luke’s version of what the strangers said to Mary (PG–312). Continued 

674 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

308

16:1–2

20:1

24:1

16:4

20:1

24:2

16:5

[20:11]

24:3

16:5

[20:12]

24:4

16:6–7

[20:13]

24:5–7

16:8

20:2

24:9–10

20:3 20:6 20:6 20:10

24:11 24:12 24:12 24:12 24:12

309 310 311 312

313 314 315 316 317 318

After the Sabbath, Mary Magdalene and others went to the tomb. They saw that the stone had been rolled away. They looked in the tomb and saw that Jesus wasn’t there. Two men in white sat on the bier where Jesus had been placed. One of the men said something to the women that probably included the words, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” Mary Magdalene and others told the apostles what they saw. The apostles did not believe her. Peter went to the tomb anyway. Peter looked inside the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings in a pile. Peter went home but didn’t tell anybody what he saw.

S–57. Jesus made his first post-resurrection appearance to non-apostles. The Walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35) Mark has no post-resurrection appearances. Luke follows the empty tomb scene with a lengthy account of two travelers leaving Jerusalem. These appear to be two minor followers of Jesus not previously mentioned in the gospel, and they appear to have lost faith in Jesus as the messiah as a result of the crucifixion. Jesus appeared to them but they didn’t recognize him. Eventually, they all shared a meal. Jesus broke bread and handed it to them, a sign that he was a living human being and not a spirit image that can’t break bread. The travelers immediately recognized him and Jesus disappeared. The travelers raced back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples what they saw. After they arrived, Jesus appeared to the disciples. It was my argument that Jesus knew this version of the story from the protogospel but was offended by Jesus appearing first to individuals who lacked faith and needed physical proof (the breaking of bread) to show that Jesus had been resurrected. John says that the first appearance was to the faithful Mary Magdalene, who didn’t recognize Jesus at first but, when she did recognize him, she ran over to hug him as if he were a flesh and blood human.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 675 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

John folded the rest of the story into Jesus’ third appearance to the disciples, where two unidentified disciples were present with some of the twelve disciples and none of the individuals recognized Jesus at first. Jesus had a meal with them including bread and fish (see S–58). In this context, the meal no longer served as proof that Jesus was not a spirit. That issue was resolved earlier with the first appearance to the disciples. 319 On the same day that the tomb was found 24:13 empty, two disciples (who were not among the Twelve) traveled from Jerusalem to Emmaus. 320 Jesus appeared to them but they did not 20:14 24:15–16 recognize him. 21:4 321 The travelers indicated a loss of faith in 24:21 Jesus as a result of his crucifixion. 322 Jesus sat down to a meal with the two 21:12 24:30 disciples. 323 Jesus broke bread and gave a piece to the 21:13 24:30 travelers. 324 Suddenly the travelers recognized Jesus. 20:16 24:31 21:14 325 Jesus disappeared. 20:17 24:31 S–58. Jesus appeared to the apostles Jesus Appears to His Disciples (Luke 24:36–49) Luke has only one post-resurrection story about Jesus appearing to the apostles but John spread the details across three post-resurrection appearances. I have accepted Luke’s version as the one that most closely resembles the proto-gospel version of this story. In Luke’s story, Jesus appeared to the disciples and they thought he was a ghost. (The two travelers were still present.) Jesus offered to have them touch his body as proof but they don’t take him up on the offer. Finally, Jesus ate a grilled fish to prove he was not a spirit. John had several problems with the story and did some reworking. In both Luke and John, the disciples were joyous when they saw Jesus but in John, during the first appearance to the disciples, there was no indication that any of those present doubted that Jesus was fully human. Instead, John says Thomas was not present during the first appearance and he separately expressed doubts when the disciples told him what happened. This eliminated any negative image of the other ten disciples. (Judas was also missing.) Continued 

676 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

When Jesus appeared before the disciples the second time, Thomas was present and now accepted that Jesus had risen from the dead, but Jesus chastised him for needing proof by seeing the body. (John established a contrast between Thomas and the Beloved Disciple; the latter, when seeing the empty tomb, simply accepted that Jesus had arisen from the dead.) John also eliminated the fish meal from either of these first two appearances to the apostles. On the third appearance, now that the disciples have accepted that Jesus had risen from the dead, he shared a meal with them, consisting of bread (from the travelers story) and fish (from the first appearance to the apostles). The meals no longer served as proof that Jesus was not a spirit. 326 The travelers returned to Jerusalem to tell 20:18 24:35 the apostles what they saw. 327 While the travelers were with the apostles, 21:2 24:36 Jesus appeared before them. 328 Jesus said, “Peace be with you.” 20:19 24:36 329 The apostles were startled, thinking they 24:37 were seeing a spirit image of Jesus. 330 Jesus displayed his hands and side to the 20:20 24:39 disciples and offered to let them touch him. 331 No one touched him. 20:20 24:40 332 The apostles were joyous. 20:20 24:41 333 But they still were not convinced that Jesus [20:24– 24:41 was not a spirit image. 25] 334 Jesus asked for something to eat. [21:10] 24:41 335 Jesus ate a grilled fish in their presence. [21:13] 24:42–43 336 Jesus reminded the apostles about his [20:9] 24:46 teaching that Jesus the messiah must suffer and rise up on the third day. 337 Jesus said the apostles would receive the 20:22 24:49 Holy Spirit. 338 Jesus told the apostles that they would be 20:23 24:47 given the power to forgive sin.

The Proto-gospel Restored with Brief Commentary | 677 Table 15.1:  Continued PG# Scene Description

Mark

John

Luke

S– 59. Jesus did not ascend to heaven until after he appeared to the Apostles. The ascension of Jesus (Luke 24:50–53) Luke places the ascension of Jesus after the appearance to the disciples. John has Jesus appear to Mary Magdalene at the tomb and Jesus tells her that he hasn’t ascended yet. That same day, Jesus made a first appearance to the apostles. John continued the story through two more appearances to the apostles but John does not address the question of when Jesus ascended to heaven after appearing to Mary. 339 Jesus had not yet risen to heaven. 20:17 24:51.

Notes 1. These are the 18 Markan pericopes excluded from the master list. Mark 1:12–13; 2:13–17; 2:18–21; 5:25–34; 6:7–13; 6:17–29; 9:2–8; 9:9–13; 9:33–37; 10:1–12; 10:13–16; 10:35–45; 11:12–14, 20–25; 12:13–17; 12:18–27; 12:38–40; 12:41–44.

Bibliography The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

16

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel

At the start of this study I indicated three types of evidence that taken together would be needed to establish the existence of a proto-gospel. These are (1) the presence of a large number of stories in John that have a substantial number of parallels in Mark; (2) a high degree of sequential agreement in the order of parallel stories in Mark and John; and (3) evidence that John did not rely on either Mark or Luke as the primary source for these many parallel episodes. As summarized below, all three of these criteria have been met. I’ll begin with a statistical overview of the proposed proto-gospel. Next, I’ll look at the sequential evidence. After that, I’ll look at the evidence that shows why John must have relied on Mark’s written source for his various parallels and sequential agreements, and not on written copies of Mark and/or Luke. At the conclusion, it should be evident that Mark, John and Luke all knew and made use of versions of the same written proto-gospel source, what I believe should now be referred to as the Alpha Gospel.

Statistical Overview of the Proto-gospel The first 56 stories (through the end of Mark) have 313 proto-gospel scenes, averaging 5.6 proto-gospel scenes per story unit. In seven instances, the story unit

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has only one scene.1 This doesn’t necessarily mean that the underlying story had only one scene but only that we could recover just one scene or could only summarize the story. S–41 (Preparation for the Last Supper) and S–42 (the Eucharist teaching), for example, can only be given the one-scene descriptive title because we lack sufficient information to identify multiple scenes that may have appeared in the proto-gospel. Most of the other one-scene story units align with very short pericopes. If we subtract those seven one-scene pericopes from 56-pericope total, the remaining 49 pericopes would have an average of 6.2 scenes per pericope. Of the first 313 scenes, John has 202 parallels to a scene that appeared in both Mark and Luke. John has another 43 scenes in parallel to Mark alone. That means Mark and John have direct points of contact in 245 scenes, 78% of all scenes listed in the Markan portion of the proposed proto-gospel. In addition, Mark and John share at least one scene in each of Mark’s 55 pericopes, which argues for a very strong literary connection between John and Mark that depends on a written manuscript. We’ll look at sequential agreements in a moment. Also in these 313 scenes, John has 34 scenes in parallel only to Luke. Additionally, of the 26 scenes (314–339) that pick up where Mark leaves off, John and Luke have 22 parallel scenes. All in all, then, John and Luke have parallels for 258 scenes, or 76% of the total number of scenes assigned to the proto-gospel. However, a very large percentage of those parallels may be due to Luke’s use of Mark as a source. Luke is also missing a couple of stories known to both Mark and John.2 If we take John’s 43 parallels with just Mark and John’s 56 parallels with just Luke, and add in the joint alignment on 202 scenes in all three gospels, we have 301 out of 339 scenes, or 89% of the total, in which John aligns with Mark and/ or Luke. Of the remaining 38 scenes, 11 appear only in John; 10 appear in both Mark and Luke; 6 appear just in Mark; 10 appear in just Luke; and 1 is implied in all three gospels but not specifically cited (PG–173). Even though they lack a specific John-synoptic parallel, they have been included because the context suggests that the scenes belong to the underlying story in the proto-gospel. In each of these instances, however, these isolated scenes appear within a longer pericope and if they were removed the number of parallel story-units would remain the same. If we take the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (S–31) as a reasonably good literary divider between the gospel narrative of Jesus as a missionary and the gospel narrative of Jesus in his final days, we find 30 stories with 145 scenes occurring before the Triumphal Entry (4.8 scenes per pericope) and 26 stories (to the end of Mark) with 168 scenes (6.5 scenes per pericope). Luke and John add three post-resurrection stories (S–57, S–58, and S–59) with 26 scenes belonging to the

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 681 proto-gospel. This shows a fairly wide distribution of stories throughout all phases of the gospels. If I have fairly identified the scenes in John as literary parallels to Mark and/ or Luke, then we have approximately 245 points of contact between Mark and John and over 250 points of contact between John and Luke, widely distributed across each of the gospels. This strongly suggests some sort of literary relationship between Mark, Luke and John based on a common written source. This meets the first of our three criteria needed to establish the existence of a proto-gospel, that John knows a very large number of stories that appear in Mark and/or in Luke.

Sequential Agreements Having established a large number of parallels (or “points of contact”) between Mark and John on both the individual scene level and the larger story level, we now look at the second element of our proof for the existence of a proto-gospel, a significant number of sequential agreements between Mark and John Establishing a strict one-to-one sequential parallel between Mark and John is complicated by the latter’s editorial practices. To begin with, John has moved some stories out of their original locations and into a different sequential location where they serve as a parallel to a different story. A good example of this is the chasing of the money-changers (S–32). John has moved almost the entire set of story units related to the chasing of the money changers from the last week of Jesus’ life to the beginning of Jesus’ mission, where it served as a substitute for the story unit in Mark involving the exorcism of an unclean spirit (S–5). I examined this substitution in detail in Chapter 6. This means that John’s money-changers story has a triple function. First, it serves as a sequential parallel to Mark’s exorcism of the unclean spirit, in which both gospels depict the first major act of Jesus to bring him wide-spread fame in Galilee. Second, John’s story also constitutes an out-of-sequence parallel to Mark’s money-changers story (S–32). Third, John has moved this story unit to an earlier time period in order to diminish its role as a reason why the priests wanted Jesus put to death. This triple function presents a few challenges as to how to present John’s account within the list of scenes and stories. Therefore, I double-listed it in the collection of 339 scenes. That is, the money-changers scene story appears initially as a sequential parallel to Mark’s exorcism scene, but later as a non-sequential parallel to Mark’s money-changer story. In the latter instance, it is also marked off

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as one of the stories John moved out of order in order to accommodate his plot change. In the first instance, though, I listed it as a sequential parallel to Mark in that it occupies the same narrative location as Mark’s exorcism story and it serves a similar literary/narrative function. In other instances, John moves one story into a different location and places a parallel substitute story at the original location. A good example of this is the Eucharist teaching. (See Chapters 2, 7 and 8.) Putting aside the differences between Mark and John concerning the content of the teaching, we have other problems. John has moved the Eucharist teaching from the Last Supper to act as an alternative to the explanation given in Mark as to why Jesus was rejected by his hometown congregation (see Chapter 5). In that situation, the Eucharist teaching substituted for Jesus’ failure to heal (S–18). At the same time, John has replaced the Eucharist teaching during the Last Supper with a different teaching about how to remember Jesus, directing the apostles to love each other so that the public would know who they were (S–42). John has taken this love teaching from a version of Mark’s story of Jesus and a scribe discussing the most important commandments, the second part of which was to love one’s neighbor (S–35). And if that isn’t confusing enough, John has taken the first part of the teaching about the most important commandment, to love God, and relocated it into his third post-resurrection meeting with Peter. Again, this presents several problems in how to track parallels and sequences. John also has a practice of taking pieces of one story and relocating them inside another story in a different context, creating two potential locations for the sequential placement of the episode. For example, John has taken the legalistic defense that should belong to the Sabbath violation story in John 5 and moved it out of context into John 7, where it serves as an attack on the Jews for wanting to kill Jesus during the last visit to Jerusalem. In addition, John also combined stories that have similar themes or issues into a single story unit, such as the three stories about Jesus’ authority (see Chapter 3) or the two separate stories about healing a blind man (see Chapter 4). This creates several sequential disruptions, some major, some minor. To a large extent, all of the above problems can be handled with some attention to detail. But John has presented one insurmountable problem for some portions of the sequential analysis. He has made a major plot change regarding why the priests wanted to put Jesus to death and related it to the raising of Lazarus, a story that appears only in his gospel. In order to do this, he took a number of stories that had parallels with Mark and/or Luke and moved them out of location and took bits and pieces of those stories and moved them around to develop

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 683 his alternative narrative. Still, while these stories are out of sequence, in many instances several scenes within the stories often follow the order of the parallel stories in the other gospels. Consider for example, the story of the Triumphal Entry to Jerusalem (S–31), which John has moved out of sequence but which still, for the most part, follows the same order of scenes as in Mark and Luke. Because John’s story order varies from the synoptic gospels in several instances due to his change of plot, it was necessary to separate out those stories from the other stories for the purpose of sequential analysis. In reviewing the 55 pericopes overlapping Mark, I identified 12 story units that belonged to John’s reworked theme, leaving a total of 43 stories for sequential analysis. In Table 15.1, those 12 stories have been identified by highlighting their PG numbers in Column One. Of the remaining 43 pericopes, Mark and John agree on the sequential order of 29.3 Even without accounting for John’s movement of other stories out of order, Mark and John agree on the sequential order of more than half of the 55 parallel pericopes, and on 40% of the 73 relevant pericopes in Mark. Additionally, six of Mark’s other stories are just slightly out of order. Mark has inverted S–3 and S–4 and also S–51 and S–52. Additionally, Mark has moved S–23 ahead of S–21, but it still remains within the same narrative arc. If we adjust for these very minor shifts in sequence, we can add 6 additional stories to the narrative sequence, or 35 in total in virtual sequential agreement. That gives us sequential alignment between Mark and John on 35 out of the 41 pericopes that the latter did not move around for plot purposes, or 85%. These 35 alignments also raise the sequential agreement to 63% of the 55 parallel pericopes and 48% of Mark’s 73 core pericopes. This is an overwhelmingly high degree of sequential alignment that can only reasonably be accounted for if there is a significant literary connection between Mark and John based on a written source. At the same time, Luke and John agree on the sequential order of only 21 pericopes in the Markan overlap, and 23 stories out of the full list of 59 pericopes.4 Here, too, there are a few instances where some additional stories are in very close, if not exact, sequential order. For instance, Luke has inverted the order of S–13 and S–14, S–41 and S–42 and S–51 and S–52. Reversing the order would add six more stories to Luke’s agreement, for a total of 29 pericopes parallel to John. Luke’s agreement with John’s order is less substantial than Mark’s. To a large extent, Luke’s agreements with John might be due to his use of Mark as a source, so sequential agreements between Luke and John are less significant than agreements between Mark and John. Luke also omits three pericopes that appear in both Mark and John.5

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On the other hand, there are some episodes known to Luke and John that are missing from Mark. These include the dinner with Mary and Martha (that I incorporated into the anointing in Bethany at S–39, as John did,) the parable of Lazarus (S–28), Peter’s miraculous catch of fish (S–8), the second half of the empty tomb scene (S–56), the first appearance of Jesus after his crucifixion (S–57), and the later appearance of Jesus to the apostles (S–58). There also many places where Luke and John agree on details missing from Mark. So, we can’t easily dismiss a literary connection between Luke and John.

Did John Know Mark? The evidence above clearly demonstrates that a complex literary relationship exists between Mark and John and this relationship depends upon a written source or sources. John either knew Mark or another written source that contained a very large percentage of Mark’s non-speech narrative. In the latter case, that written source would have to be either a proto-gospel behind Mark or written Luke. If John depended upon Mark as his source, then Mark becomes the proto-gospel behind the other three. That John could have derived his parallels to Mark from Luke rather than Mark or Mark’s source seems highly improbable. For starters, John’s sequential agreement with Mark is far more substantial than it is with Luke. That is very strong evidence that Luke couldn’t be John’s source for Markan parallels. Additionally, as the following (non-exhaustive) list shows, there are far too many instances where Mark and John agree against Luke for the latter to have been John’s Markan source. Consider:





• Mark and John agree that at the beginning of Jesus’ mission there was an issue as to whether John the Baptist was still alive. While Mark and John disagree on the Baptist’s status, they specifically relate the issue to the start of Jesus’ mission. Luke is very vague about when the Baptist died and doesn’t place the reference in direct connection to the start of the mission. (PG–14) • After the Sabbath healing conflict (Mark 3:1–6; John 5) Jesus traveled to the Sea of Galilee, was followed by a large crowd, and then went up on a mountain with the disciples. Luke omits the reference to the Sea of Galilee and reverses the order of events, having Jesus go up on the mountain with the disciples before the crowd follows after Jesus. (S–13, S–14) • Mark and John placed the Hometown Rejection of Jesus in a synagogue close in time to the miracle of the loaves. Luke placed it at the beginning of Jesus’ mission. (S–18)

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• Mark and John agree that the cost of buying bread to feed the crowd of 5,000 would be 200 denarii. Luke omitted the cost. (PG–99) • Mark and John agree that after Jesus fed the 5,000 he went up on a mountain. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–107) • Mark and John agree that after Jesus went up on the mountain, the apostles set sail across the sea. Luke omitted the sea voyage. (PG–108) • Mark and John agree that while the apostles were sailing across the sea, Jesus walked on water. Luke omitted the story. (PG–109) • Mark and John agree that Jesus chastised the witnesses to the bread miracle for not understanding its meaning. (In Mark it was the apostles who didn’t understand. In John it was non-apostles.) Luke omitted the incident. (PG–115) • Mark and John warn the witnesses to the bread miracle about a special kind of bread. In Mark it is a warning about the yeast of the Pharisees. In John it is about bread that perishes. Luke has a warning about the yeast of the Pharisees but it is at a different sequential and narrative location and the warning is not to witnesses to the bread miracle. (PG–117) • Mark and John show Jesus healing a blind man with saliva. Luke omitted the story. (S–22) • Shortly after the bread miracle, Mark and John show followers of Jesus rebuking him for his teaching about the need to rise up. Luke omitted this incident. (PG–130) • Shortly after this rebuke Mark and John show Jesus accusing one of the apostles of being in league with Satan. Luke omitted that accusation but appears to offer a sanitized version of the charge just before the arrest of Jesus. (PG–131) • Mark and John show Jesus going to the Jordan River area just before the final days. Luke omitted this journey. (PG–135) • During the Triumphal Entry story, Mark and John have the crowd begin its cheer with “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Luke substitutes “King” for “one.” (PG–153) • Mark and John placed the anointing at Bethany during the final week of Jesus’ life. Luke placed it earlier, in the middle of Jesus’ missionary efforts. (S–39) • Mark and John indicate that the oil used to anoint Jesus cost three hundred denarii. Luke omitted the cost. (PG–186) • Mark and John say that during the anointing at Bethany story, Jesus said, “you always have the poor with you but you won’t always have me.” (Mark inserted some additional words in the middle of the saying.) Luke omitted the rebuke. (PG–188) • Mark and John indicate that the oil was for Jesus’ burial. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–189) • Mark and John say that during the Last Supper Jesus dipped bread into a bowl. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–196)

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• Mark says that witnesses testified against Jesus at trial. I argued that John 8:12–20 was a disguised parallel to the witness testimony at trial. Luke omitted the trial testimony. (PG–225) • Mark and John both agree that Jesus directly admitted to being the Son of God when interrogated by Jews. Luke shows Jesus evading the answer. PG–231, PG–232) • Mark and John agree that the Jewish interrogators specifically accused Jesus of blasphemy. Luke omitted the actual accusation. (PG–233) • Mark and John agree that the council voted to put Jesus to death. Luke omitted the specific verdict. (PG–234) • Mark and John both show a nighttime Jewish interrogation after Jesus was arrested. Luke has no nighttime interrogation. (PG–216, S–47) • Mark and John both describe a Passover custom in which the Governor released someone requested by the Jewish authorities. Luke makes no mention of this custom. (PG–253) • Mark and John say that Jesus was mocked by placing him in a purple robe. Luke says only that it was an elegant robe. (PG–258) • Mark and John say that Jesus was mocked by Roman soldiers who placed a crown of thorns on his head. Luke doesn’t mention the crown of thorns. (PG–259) • Mark and John say that Roman soldiers mocked Jesus by saying “Hail, King of the Jews.” Luke omitted that detail. (PG–260) • Mark and John say that Jesus was brought to a place called Golgotha and that it was translated as “Place of the Skull.” Luke omitted the name “Golgotha.” (PG–275) • Mark and John say that onlookers placed wine on a sponge and used a stick to offer it up to Jesus. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–287) • Mark and John say that Mary Magdalene watched the crucifixion. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–292) • Mark and John say that Pilate sent a centurion to see if Jesus was dead before handing over the body to Joseph of Arimathea. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–300) • Mark and John say that Pilate specifically authorized Joseph to take Jesus’ body. Luke omitted that detail. (PG–303) • Mark says there was one stranger in the tomb and John say two strangers, but both say the stranger(s) were in the tomb when Mary Magdalene looked in. Luke says they appeared after Mary looked in. (PG–311) • Mark and John say the stranger(s) was dressed in white. Luke says they wore dazzling clothes. (PG–311) • Mark and John say that the stranger(s) was sitting inside the tomb. Luke says they were standing. (PG–311)

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 687 This list shows that John knew many significant details in Mark’s gospel that he couldn’t have gotten from Luke. To this we add John’s far more substantial agreement with the story sequences in Mark’s gospel than with Luke’s gospel, that John has at last one scene in common with Mark in each of Mark’s 55 pericopes, and Luke is missing some important stories. Particularly of interest is that Mark and John both show that following the miracle of the loaves, there were several incidents in sequential order and that several of those events are missing in Luke or placed in a different narrative location. These include the going up on the mountain, the sea voyage of the apostles, the walking on water, rebuking witnesses to the bread miracle, and the warning to witnesses about a special kind of bread. Also of note is that some of Luke’s missing stories appear to reflect his attempt to eliminate Mark’s negative depiction of the apostles as the ones who didn’t understand the meaning of the miracle of the loaves and as the ones who were chastised and warned about the special bread. But John and Luke diverge from Mark’s depiction of the apostles in completely different ways. In Luke the stories were eliminated. So, if John relied on Luke and didn’t know Mark or Mark’s source, how would John know to sanitize the negative image of the apostles in Mark’s gospel in the same sequential locations that Mark has if those scenes are missing in Luke. The latter has also omitted Mark’s story about healing a blind man with saliva. This story plays an important role in John’s gospel and all of John 9 interacts with it. Luke can’t be the source for the parallel to Mark on this story either. The evidence strongly indicates that Luke couldn’t be John’s source for the many parallels to Mark’s gospel. This means that John either knew Mark or some significant written source that pre-dated Mark and contained a very large percentage of Mark’s non-speech narrative (i.e., the proto-gospel). Did John know Mark? Evidence suggests he didn’t. One of the most significant collections of evidentiary pieces comes from my reconstruction of Mark’s chronology of events following the miracle of the loaves, examined more fully in Chapter 2. More specifically, following the miracle of the loaves, Mark has Jesus walk on water and cross over the sea, with a silent condemnation of the apostles for not understanding the miracle. The sea voyage ended at Mark 6:52. As I pointed out in Chapter 2, Mark has a chronological break at that point and the logical continuation of the sea voyage should resume at Mark 8:14, and that Mark 8:10–13 was out of order and should appear after Mark 8:14–27. Mark has inserted a good deal of narrative between 6:51 and 8:14, some of it duplicative of other narratives in Mark and all of it missing in both John and

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Luke. (The latter has moved a few pieces into other sequential locations into a different context.) Yet John’s parallel narrative unfolds in the correct unbroken sequential order that should have been in Mark’s narrative but which appears to have been changed from what was in Mark’s source. This suggests that for this sequence of events John knew a sequential narrative that appears to match Mark’s source rather than Mark. Another indication that John had a source other than Mark is the Eucharist story. John’s version is very different from Mark’s. The latter’s version, as I argued in Chapter 8, is loosely based on Paul’s revelation and Luke’s version is virtually identical, word for word, with Paul’s revelation. In my analysis, by John’s time the Pauline version of the Eucharist may have been well established. I suggested that Paul had transformed an earlier version of the teaching into its present form, and that John presented the earlier form. I question whether John would have utilized his much more difficult version (i.e., you must eat Jesus to obtain eternal life) if he was familiar with Mark’s version of the ceremony unless he had an alternative source with a different version of the ceremony. There is also a problem with John’s three parallels to Mark’s three predictions of Jesus being killed by his enemies and rising up on the third day. As I noted at the time, Brown suggests that John’s version is more primitive than Mark’s and may represent an earlier version than Mark. I question whether John would have had such a different form of the predictions if he knew Mark’s more expansive versions. As previously demonstrated with regard to the Hometown Rejection story, both John and Luke use a sophisticated literary form, a first century Jewish homily, to describe the episode. The form is unique in the gospels to just these two parallel uses, and the two versions differ significantly in detail. Mark’s very short and heavily redacted version looks nothing like the homily form and is unlikely to have been the inspiration for the unusual format used by both John and Luke. It would be far too much of a coincidence for both John and Luke to independently decide to retell just this one story in homiletic form if they both relied only on Mark. Luke’s version of the homily is also broken in that it eliminates two key form elements to cover up the fact that Jesus failed to heal. So it is very unlikely that John could have gotten the correct formula from Luke. That means he had to have had an independent source instead of Mark’s version of the story. As I argued at the time. the evidence strongly suggests that there was a source story in homiletic form that defended Jesus’ prophetic status even though he failed to heal and that Mark heavily redacted the story.

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 689 For the above reasons, I think John knew Mark’s source, the proto-gospel, but not Mark itself. But if I am wrong, then Mark becomes the proto-gospel, the narrative source behind Matthew, Luke and John.

The Problem of Luke and John Versus Mark Although the evidence strongly suggested that John couldn’t have used Luke as the primary source for his numerous parallels to Mark, we still have some evidence that John and Luke both knew a large number of details that disagreed with Mark. Consider the following (non-exhaustive) list.







• In Luke and John, the crowd wondered whether John the Baptist was the messiah. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–5) • John and Luke both say, just prior to the start of Jesus’ mission, that Jesus was the son of Joseph. Mark omitted this detail. (PG–11) • Mark, John and Luke all have different versions of how Jesus recruited his first disciples. (S–3) This was due to Mark and John combining the recruitment of the disciples with the meeting of the first disciples. Luke has what I argued was the original recruitment story of the first disciples, and it omitted Andrew from the listing. (S–8) John has a variation of Luke’s recruitment story that also omitted Andrew but placed it in the post-resurrection period. I explained why John altered Luke’s version. Mark’s version looks nothing like Luke’s version, so both Luke and John have similar versions of the recruitment story, both of which contains several similar details missing from Mark’s version. (See, for example PG–27, 28, 29, and 30) • John placed the healing of the paralytic in Jerusalem. Mark placed it in Galilee, in Jesus’ home. Luke followed Mark’s story details but was very vague about where the story took place, and included some details that suggest it may have happened in Jerusalem. In any event, Luke and John agree against Mark about the healing taking place in Jesus’ home. (S–10) • As I argued in Chapter 5, John and Luke built up their story of the Hometown Rejection in the form of a first century Jewish homily, the only instances in any of the gospels where that happens. Neither could have gotten this homily format from Mark’s very heavily redacted version of the same story. (S–18) • John and Luke both say that during the Hometown Rejection story the congregation referred to Jesus’ father Joseph, by name, and mentioned no other family member by name. Mark made no mention of the father at all and had the congregation mention Jesus’ mother and brothers by name. (PG–91)

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• John and Luke agree that the crowd greeting Jesus during the Triumphal Entry turned out because they had witnessed his miraculous acts. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–152) • John and Luke say that during the Triumphal Entry story the Pharisees complained about what was taking place. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–154) • John and Luke say that after the Triumphal Entry Jesus lamented the blindness of the Jewish authorities. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–155) • John and Luke both say that a member of the Jewish council opposed its actions against Jesus. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–171) • John and Luke both show Jesus having a meal in the home of the sisters Mary and Martha. Mark omitted the details. (See S–39) • John and Luke both show this Mary sitting devotedly at Jesus’ feet. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–177) • John and Luke both depict a woman wiping Jesus’ wet feet with her hair. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–182) • John and Luke both say that prior to Judas betraying Jesus, Satan entered into the disciple. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–190) • John and Luke both say that Jesus predicted that Peter would deny him three times before the cock crows. Mark says that the cock would crow twice. (PG–203) • Just before Jesus was arrested John and Luke indicate an angel may have appeared while Jesus was anguished. Mark has no reference to an angelic presence. (PG–207) • John and Luke do not depict Judas actually kissing Jesus as a sign to the arresting party (although Luke mentions the intention to do so.) Mark says that Judas kissed Jesus as a sign to the arresting party. (PG–210) • John and Luke say that during the arrest scene a disciple cut off the High Priest’s slave’s right ear. Mark doesn’t say which ear was cut off. (PG–213) • John and Luke say that after the attack on the slave Jesus ordered the violence to stop. Mark omitted that directive. (PG–214) • John and Luke both say that Annas and Caiaphas were High Priest that year. Mark never mentions the name of the High Priest. (PG–217) • John and Luke show the Jewish interrogation of Jesus broken down into two separate questions about his identity. Mark combined the two questions together. (S–47) • Luke and John say that when Jews asked Jesus if he was the messiah he said either that he already told them and they didn’t believe or that if he told them they wouldn’t believe. Mark says only that Jesus said “I am.” (PG–228) • Luke and John show Jesus adding an additional response to this answer indicating how Jesus would prove his claim. Mark omitted a similar addition. (PG–229)

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• John and Luke say that Jewish authorities told Pilate that Jesus claimed to be the king of the Jews. Mark omitted that accusation. (PG–242) • John and Luke show Pilate making three separate declarations declaring Jesus innocent of wrongdoing. Mark has no such declarations. (PG–245, 261, 265) • John and Luke say that Pilate wanted to know where Jesus came from. Mark omitted that inquiry. (PG–247) • John and Luke say that after Jesus remained silent to a question from Pilate (or Herod, in Luke’s case) the Jews reacted in an angry manner. Mark omitted that reaction. (PG–252) • John and Luke say that the first time the Jews called out to crucify Jesus, they used the word “crucify” twice. Mark records only one “crucify.” (PG–263) • John and Luke say that after the second call for crucifixion Pilate wanted to release Jesus. Mark omitted that desire. (PG–266) • John and Luke say that the inscription “King of the Jews” was placed on the cross after Jesus was placed between the two bandits. Mark says it was before being placed between the two bandits. (PG–279) • John and Luke say that Jesus was placed in a tomb that had never been used. Mark omitted that detail. (PG–305) • John and Luke say there were two mysterious strangers greeting Mary Magdalene in the tomb. Mark says there was only one. (PG–311) • John and Luke say that Mary Magdalene told the apostles what she had seen in the tomb. Mark says that Mary Magdalene told no one what she had seen in the tomb. (PG–313)

At this point Mark’s gospel ends but we have some additional parallels between John and Luke that occur in the portion after Mark’s ending. Obviously, neither John nor Luke could have gotten these additional scenes from Mark. They include:

• Peter went to the tomb after Mary Magdalene told him what she had seen at the tomb. (PG–315) • Peter looked inside the tomb. (PG–316) • Peter saw the linens wrapped in a pile. (PG 317) • Peter went home without telling anybody what he saw at the tomb. (PG–318) • Jesus first revealed himself to someone who wasn’t a member of the Twelve. (PG–320) • The person who saw Jesus didn’t recognize him at first. (PG–320) • Suddenly the person recognized Jesus. (PG–324) • The witness returned to Jerusalem to tell the apostles about the revelation. (PG–326) • Jesus appeared before the apostles. (PG–327)

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• Jesus said, “Peace be with you.” (PG–328) • Jesus displayed his body to the disciples and offered to let them touch him. (PG–330) • No one touched him. (PG–331) • The apostles were joyous. (PG–332) • The apostles were not all convinced. (PG–333) • Jesus ate fish with the apostles. (PG–335) • Jesus said the apostles would receive the Holy Spirit. (PG–337) • Jesus said the apostles would have the power to forgive sins. (PG–338) • Jesus had not yet risen to heaven. (PG–339)

John and Luke share a large number of significant scenes that neither could have gotten from Mark. In several instances some of these common scenes belong to stories that are also missing from Mark, including the dinner with Mary and Martha, the miraculous fish catch with Peter, and the parallel resurrection episodes. Some of Luke’s parallel agreements with John against Mark seem odd. In the Hometown Rejection story, why would Luke change the names of the family members mentioned by Mark such that he agreed with John? In the healing of the paralytic, why would Luke not follow Mark’s simple claim that the incident happened in the home of Jesus and instead make the location vague in a way that suggests John’s placement in Jerusalem? Why does Luke’s version of the interrogation of Jesus so closely follow John’s disguised version of the interrogation rather than Mark’s version? These oddities suggest that Luke worked from a source that disagreed with Mark and raised questions in Luke’s mind about whether Mark had it right. However, the many parallels between John and Luke that disagree with Mark suggest some sort of literary relationship between Luke and John independent of Mark. What is its nature? I see three possibilities.

• John knew Luke. • Luke knew John. • John and Luke knew the proto-gospel

Did Luke Know John? If Luke knew John it could explain why he diverges from Mark in such odd ways. It would mean that John’s gospel contained many details missing in Mark and other details that paralleled Mark but disagreed with Mark. While I have already

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 693 argued that John knew the proto-gospel and not Mark, John’s non-Markan material, in theory, could be from some source other than the proto-gospel and Luke’s use of John could explain why he occasionally diverges from Mark. Consequently, that portion of my proposed proto-gospel that depends on agreements between John and Luke against Mark might be a little shorter. But is there a good case for Luke knowing John? I think not. The overwhelming objection to this thesis is that almost all New Testament scholars believe that Luke was written before John. The latter is almost universally referred to as the Fourth Gospel. So at the time Luke was writing, he wouldn’t have known John. However, there has been a recent tendency among some scholars to move the date of Luke’s composition later, perhaps even into the second century, raising the possibility that Luke could have been written after John. Putting aside the composition date, there are other reasons for rejecting Luke’s use of John. The literary transmission seems more likely to flow from a source to John rather than from John to Luke. To examine this issue we should look at the major instances where John and Luke either include material missing from Mark or diverge from Mark in significant ways. Stories missing from Mark but present in Luke and John include Mary Magdalene’s report on the tomb visit, Jesus’ first post-resurrection appearance, Jesus’ appearance to the apostles, and possible Johannine elements of Luke’s Lazarus parable. In both John and Luke, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and reported back to the apostles what she saw. Mark says she told nobody what she saw. So John and Luke both diverge significantly from Mark and add material that he lacks. But, In John, the apostles believe Mary. In Luke, they disbelieve her. I find it difficult to accept that Luke would read John’s version of Mary Magdalene’s report and change it so that the disciples didn’t believe her, especially given her important role in the early Christian tradition. The more likely explanation, as we saw in Chapter 14, is that John enhanced her reputation, suggesting that the transmission went from a source (i.e., proto-gospel or Luke) to John rather than from John to Luke. John also says that the first appearance of Jesus was to the faithful Mary Magdalene, who then reported what she saw to the apostles. This led Peter and the Beloved Disciple to race over to the tomb. Luke says Jesus first appeared to two previously unknown followers of Jesus who appear to have lost faith in Jesus and it was they who reported the first appearance of Jesus. If Luke knew John, it seems unlikely that Luke would have changed the identity of the person to whom Jesus first appeared and leave Peter’s trip to the tomb

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unexplained, as he does in his gospel. And why would Luke have omitted the Beloved Disciple who accompanied Peter to the tomb? Furthermore, Luke’s version of the first appearance is far lengthier and more developed than John’s and filled with a large number of details missing from John’s parallel version with Mary Magdalene. At the same time, John’s version of the story appeared to have been tampered with, scholars believing that he changed the order of some verses. Luke seems to be working from a source other than John for this story yet John seems to know the basics of the story. Again, it looks like John is the endpoint of the literary transmission rather than being a pre-Lukan source. John and Luke both know a story about Peter’s miraculous fish catch. But Luke places it early in the mission and has Peter declare that he is a sinner. In John, the story takes place in the course of a third resurrection appearance to the apostles, and Peter’s declaration of sin is missing. If Luke knew John’s story, it seems unlikely he would throw in a reference to Peter admitting to be a sinner, especially when you consider that Luke redacted out some of Mark’s negative depictions of Peter and the apostles. Additionally, I question whether Luke would take what John offers as proof of Jesus’ resurrection and change it into an early recruitment story. And again, why would Luke have removed the reference to the Beloved Disciple as a witness to the events. In John, when Jesus first appeared to the disciples, only one apostle questioned whether Jesus was fully human (and that apostle, Thomas, wasn’t present for the appearance). In Luke, all the apostles hesitate until proof is provided. Here, again, I don’t think Luke would transform negative behavior by one apostle into negative behavior by all the apostles. In my analysis of Luke’s Lazarus parable in Chapter 10, I pointed out Raymond Brown’s observation that there appear to be some historicized variations on Luke’s parable. This suggests that John knew the parable and changed it rather than Luke having built up the parable from some vague references in John. Another important indication of Lukan priority over John comes in the Hometown Rejection story. Luke’s substantially detailed account clearly cannot be derived from Mark’s short heavily redacted version nor does it make sense that it would be derived from John’s very different version of why Jesus was rejected. In Luke, the reason for rejection, not explicitly explained, is that Jesus failed to heal and his credentials were being questioned. In John the rejection was over the reception of John’s Eucharistic story about eating Jesus. More importantly, both Luke and John use the literary form of a Jewish homily to tell the story, a form that is unique in the gospels to just these two parallel versions in John and Luke.

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 695 I don’t see Luke creating his version of the homily out of John’s story, but I can easily see why John would want to change the story of Jesus’ failure to heal to one about a rejected teaching. Luke, as we saw, deleted and moved a lot of material related to Mark’s negative treatment of the disciples after the miracle of the loaves. If Luke knew John, why wouldn’t Luke have simply adopted John’s alternative treatment of the narrative arc, including the walking on water unit that Luke omitted? Based on the almost universally accepted view that Luke preceded John and the various disagreements between John and Luke as to stories or major story details missing from Mark, the evidence seems to suggest that in several important instances where John and Luke agree against Mark but disagree on details, John is moving away from Luke’s version rather than Luke moving away from John’s.

Did John Know Luke? The next question is whether John knew Luke. Again we need to look at some of the instances in which Luke and John depart from Mark and see if Luke could serve as John’s source. In the story of John the Baptist, both John and Luke say that the crowd asked the Baptist if he was the messiah, but the narrative in the two gospels had some significant differences. Immediately after John’s prologue, we are told that priests and Levites (a priestly sub-group) questioned the Baptist. This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”6

The questions are direct and they run through the gamut of possible holy figures sent by God. John answers with the Isaiah quotation about the voice in the wilderness. The priests, whom he now says were sent by the Pharisees, then ask why he is baptizing if he is none of these figures. John answers that he baptizes with water and gives the first of John’s two partial declarations by the Baptist about the one to come. In Luke, the evangelist begins with the Isiah prophecy and then has the Baptist attack the crowd as a “brood of vipers.”7 There is further dialogue with tax

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collectors about what they should do. After this, Luke says that the crowd was questioning in their hearts, whether John was the messiah. It is not clear that they actually asked him the question. John, either in response to the question, or knowing what was in their hearts, says that he baptizes with water, but one who is more powerful is coming. John never specifically denies being the messiah but only indicates that someone more powerful is coming. Luke makes no mention of priests or Pharisees, and in reaction to his announcement about someone more powerful coming, no one asks the Baptist if he is Elijah or the prophet. John’s version of the events differs substantially from Luke. Significantly, John’s version of the conversation references not only the messiah but also those who would announce the coming of the messiah and seems to be the more fully rounded conversation. Luke’s version, especially when compared to John, has the sense of redaction, of eliminating the questions about the other possible holy figures. Luke’s version is also influenced by Q source material. John’s version includes priests and Pharisees in connection with the interrogation. Luke has no such references. Luke has John insult the crowd. John has no attacks on the crowd. John’s version of the dialogue doesn’t appear dependent on Luke, and Luke’s version appears to have been redacted. After the baptism of Jesus, just prior to the mission, both John and Luke says the Jesus was the son of Joseph but they do so in very different contexts. It is one of only two occasions where both authors makes such a declaration. (The other occurs in their respective versions of the Hometown Rejection story.) Luke’s version of the reference seems rather oddly placed. He tells us that Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his mission and then proceeds to give us a genealogical tree of Jesus that stretched back to Adam, beginning with “He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli.”8 Luke had already presented a full narrative of the birth of Jesus and the Baptist and has moved the genealogical story into the adult years of both figures. Placing a full genealogy at this location seems out of place. The birth story would seem to be a more sensible location. Luke also downplays the idea that Joseph was the biological father of Jesus. The sense is that Luke found a reference to “Jesus, son of Joseph” at the beginning of the mission and used it as a hook on which to hang the genealogy and diminish Joseph’s role. In John, the reference comes in the context of Jesus meeting up for the first time with Philip and Nathanael. Philip tells Nathanael, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”9 Note here that John describes Joseph as “from Nazareth” and Luke describes him as “son of Heli.”

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 697 In John, this is Jesus’ meeting with the second set of two disciples that Jesus meets after being baptized. Mark has a different set of two disciples at this point, so there is some question about whether John modified this story from the protogospel source. Mark, however, omitted the reference to the one about whom Moses wrote. If the phrase was in the proto-gospel, Mark would have removed it because of his secret messiah theme. So I suspect that John took the phrase from the source but may have assigned it to a different disciple. Luke, on the other hand, has eliminated the stories of Jesus meeting up with two sets of two disciples at the start of his mission, rejecting Mark’s accounts also, and appears to have used the “son of Joseph” reference as a genealogical hook. This suggests to me that John got the reference from the proto-gospel, not Luke, and that Luke also appears to have known the proto-gospel reference. In Luke’s version of the recruitment of the first disciples, involving Peter’s miraculous catch of fish, and which I argued was the original version of the recruitment story (and which John moved into a post-resurrection setting), Luke omits the presence of Andrew, a direct contradiction of Mark, who makes Andrew one of the first two disciples recruited by Jesus. John says that Andrew started off as a disciple of John the Baptist and when Jesus left John’s encampment, there was no reference to either Andrew or Peter leaving with him. Luke, in his gospel, makes no reference to the presence of disciples at the Baptists’ camp, but in his Acts sequel, he does say that the disciples were with Jesus in the camp of John the Baptist.10 Andrew is also missing in John’s version of the fish miracle.11 It was my judgment that Andrew had remained in the camp of John the Baptist. (See PG–10 and PG–32.) The absence of Andrew from this recruitment scene in both Luke and John, even though Luke knew Mark’s version, suggests that the story came from the proto-gospel. Therefore, I don’t think John took it from Luke. John and Mark both have versions of the healing of the paralytic. John’s account is quite complicated and I won’t review it here. See Chapter 3 for more information. The important point here is that Mark places the story in Jesus’ home in Galilee and John places it in Jerusalem. However, Luke who follows Mark’s basic narrative, omits the claim that the healing happened in Jesus’ home in Galilee and instead uses very vague language consistent with the healing happening in Jerusalem. It strikes me that Luke wouldn’t have made such a change unless he was confronted with an alternative source that situated the story in Jerusalem, as John has it, and Luke chose to fudge the issue of location. In my analysis of the Hometown Rejection story (see Chapter 5) I pointed out that both Luke and John each made a unique use of the Jewish homily form

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in their accounts. Neither could have developed that story based on a reading of Mark. However, Luke’s version of the homily omits two of the formula elements that should have obviously been included if you knew the underlying story but which Luke didn’t want to tell you about, and he removed them. This might have made Luke’s version of the homily unrecognizable as such to the untrained eye. Therefore, I think both John and Luke took it from the proto-gospel. In Mark, Jesus accused Peter of being in league with Satan. Luke dropped the scene but appears to have inserted a sanitized version of the accusation in the scenes just before Jesus is arrested. In Luke’s telling, Jesus said, “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”12 If John was familiar with both Luke and the negative depictions of the disciples in the proto-gospel, we might expect to see some of Luke’s methods influencing John. But on all such occasions, including this Satan reference, John moves in an entirely different direction. At a minimum, this suggests that John may not have known Luke. Luke’s version of the anointing at Bethany differs significantly from Mark and John. (See Chapter 8.) Luke places it much earlier than the other two and his details differ. John has a number of details that agree with Mark’s version but there are some differences. Both Luke and John say that the oil was placed on Jesus’ feet instead of his head, although, as I pointed out in the discussion of this story, Luke hints that in the original story the oil was to be poured on the head, as Mark has it. But John differs from Luke on the details of the anointing. In Luke, the woman’s tears wet Jesus’ feet and she dries him off with her hair; then she puts the oil on his feet. John, on the other hand, makes no reference to the tears, and says that the woman wiped his feet with her hair after the oiling. This makes little sense. The whole point of the oiling is to be soothing. Why put it on in the first place if you are going to wipe it off right away. While it is likely that John’s version is a departure from the original story, it’s hard to imagine that if he read Luke’s version of the story he wouldn’t have used that more sensible arrangement. The evidence above suggests not only that Luke did not know John and John did not know Luke but that both knew a common source, which is almost certainly the prosed proto-gospel.

Summary The evidence above shows that almost every non-speech episode in John can be organized into 55 Markan stories/pericopes plus four Lukan pericopes where the

Proving the Case for a Proto-gospel | 699 Johannine episode is missing in Mark. Of these 55 Mark episodes, John shows 35 appearing in either the precise (or very close to precise) sequential order followed in Mark. At least 12 of the remaining 20 stories appear to have been deliberately moved by John in order to develop a new plot line to explain why the Jewish council wanted to put Jesus to death. In addition, there are approximately 250 points of contact between John and Mark. John also has at least one scene in common with each of Marks 55 pericopes. This indicates a high degree of probability that Mark and John have a literary relationship based on a written source. For reasons explained above, there are several parallels between Mark and John that the latter couldn’t have obtained from the former. This strongly indicates that Mark and John made independent use of an earlier written source, and this source was the proto-gospel. The evidence also demonstrates that there is a substantial literary relationship between John and Luke based on a written source, both sharing a large number of scenes and stories that couldn’t have been obtained from Mark. The sequential agreement between John and Luke is less strong than it is for John and Mark but it is still substantial, agreeing on the order of 29 out of 59 pericopes, although much of that agreement could be due to Luke following Mark’s order of events. Above I offered some evidence indicating that John did not know Luke, and Luke did not know John, and that both appear to have known a common source, the proto-gospel. The existence of this earlier written source has several important implications for New Testament studies.







• It establishes a pre-Markan (and, based on the Eucharist teaching, possibly pre-Pauline) date for a biography of Jesus that contains almost all of the major non-speech events in the story of Jesus, significantly reducing the time frame between the death of Jesus and the appearance of a written account of his life. • It provides new insights into what the earliest Christians believed about Jesus and his role as a messiah or as a descendant of David. (Mark and John appear to reject a Davidic connection.) • It provides some new insights as to how Jesus was perceived by Jews before his death. Some of the evidence suggests that Jesus may have been seen more as a prophet than a messiah. The Hometown Rejection story suggests that early in the Jesus tradition, it was widely recognized among both Jews and Christians that Jesus failed to heal somebody while proclaiming his gospel. This led many Jews to reject Jesus as a prophet and to a counter argument by Christians that a failure to heal doesn’t change Jesus’ status as a prophet. • It provides an earlier trajectory starting point for how views of Jesus changed from the time of his death to the time of John’s major transformations of the gospel message.

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• It provides major new insights into how the gospel of John was composed. • It suggests that some theories of Johannine sources and transmission will have to be re-evaluated, especially with regard to the Book of Signs theory. • It allows us to more fruitfully harmonize John with the synoptic gospel accounts. • It means that almost all of the major gospel stories about Jesus’ life trace back to a single uncorroborated lost manuscript, the Alpha Gospel, and brings into question whether any of the gospels can be used for independent attestation as to the non-speech elements of Jesus’ biography

Lastly, I want to reiterate that this study is intended as only a first step for further exploration of the proto-gospel. There are obviously areas where reasonable scholars can disagree as to whether certain specifics should be included or excluded and some tinkering around the edges and debate is still necessary before we can move to a critical edition.

Notes 1. Stories 7, 26,29,36,37,42, 59. 2. Luke is missing the stories of Jesus walking on water (S–20), the healing a blind man with saliva (S–22), and the departure from Galilee to the Jordan (S–27). 3. Stories 1, 2, 5–7, 10–14, 19, 20, 25, 38–50,53–56. 4. Stories 1–3, 5–7, 10–12, 19, 25, 40–46, 49, 50, 53–58. 5. S–20 (walking on water), S–23 (healing a blind man with saliva), and S–29 (departure from Galilee to the Jordan). 6. John 1:19–22. 7. Luke 3:7. 8. Luke 3:23. 9. John 1:45. 10. Acts  1:21. 11. John  21:2. 12. Luke 22:31–32.

Bibliography The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. (1989). Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Index

A

479, 482, 492, 493–94, 637, 684, 698 and Luke’s Mary/Martha story 493–94, 495 meal during 402–3, 493, 494, 498, 684 messianic anointing  404 and raising of Lazarus  493–94 sequential issues 394, 398–99, 442, 581–82, 637 Triumphal Entry, chronological issues 354–55, 357, 401

Abraham 133, 158, 166, 483–85, 486, 497 descendants of 163, 164, 173–74, 180

adulterous woman story 345, 461, 463, 633 Akiba, Rabbi  128 Aland, Kurt 53, 118, 130, 188, 202–3, 209, 210 Alpha Gospel 1–2, 679, 700 See also proposed common sourceproto-gospel

Andrew 261, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285–88, 289, 292, 294–95, 296–97, 298, 300, 308, 309, 319, 333, 689, 697 and John the Baptist 295, 333

angel comforting Jesus 425, 428–29, 442 anointing at Bethany 4, 11, 20–21, 400–2, 403, 405, 406, 442, 478,

apostles. See disciples (apostles)

B Babylonian Talmud 306, 468 baptism of Jesus 273–74, 275, 362, 696 comparison of gospels  276 and meeting of disciples. See disciples (apostles)recruitment of

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placement of 271, 277 purpose of 260, 264, 275, 277 sequential issue  274 See also John the Baptist

bread warning 75, 76, 77 and eternal life  80 and Hometown Rejection story 188, 212, 238 Johannine imagery in  40–41 and Mark 39–40, 73 and request of sign  230 sequential problem  76 witnesses to miracle of the loaves  74

Barabbas incident 505–8, 518, 524, 528, 534, 538, 542, 635 Beelzebul accusation 4, 160, 161, 164–65, 174, 179, 180 See also exorcisms; Sabbath violations

Beloved Disciple 7, 290, 293, 294, 418, 419, 478, 554–55, 566–67, 569, 571, 594, 597, 603, 604, 605, 606, 611, 612–13, 619, 627, 628, 633, 693–94 and crucifixion  566 identification of Jesus by  293 and resurrection  621

blasphemy accusation against Jesus 111, 113–14, 115–16, 118, 120, 122–23, 124, 133, 166, 177, 179

bread warning 75, 76, 77 See also Bread of Life Discourse; Jesus, as special bread

Brown, Raymond 3–4, 7, 8, 39–40, 162, 164–65, 258, 259, 260, 296, 312, 314, 318–19, 325, 327, 375, 387, 478, 480, 481–82, 483, 484, 485, 688, 694 Bultmann, Rudolf  8–9 burial of Jesus 578, 595–97, 617, 624, 625 and day of Preparation 585, 624–25 and Joseph of Arimathea 585, 595, 596, 597, 600, 624, 625 proposed common source 617, 618 and resurrection. See resurrection before the start of Sabbath  624–25 timing of  586 and use of oil 20–21, 402, 403, 442 witnesses 599–600, 625

and death threat  124 See also Sabbath violations

blind man, sight restored/given 158, 168, 169, 171, 174–77, 179, 181–82 born blind 168–69, 171, 180 healing in Bethsaida 169, 175, 178–79, 344, 382 healing near-by Jerusalem (road from Jericho) 169, 171, 177, 179, 344, 377, 382 omission of  40 original narrative sequence of events  178 two-stage process 170, 171, 175–77, 181, 182 use of saliva 13, 40, 71, 78, 158, 169, 170, 171, 175, 177, 180, 382 use of saliva with dirt 13, 171, 181

Booths, Festival of  19 bread multiplication miracle. See loaves, multiplication of Bread of Life Discourse 8, 62–63, 72, 73, 80–82, 89, 187, 211, 225

C Capernaum exorcisms in 24, 26–27, 262 healing of a centurion’s slave in  311 Jesus visit to 23, 24, 25, 26–27, 262, 302, 314–15 rejection story 234, 235, 236–37 signs and witnesses in 113, 136, 301, 302, 315

Centurian’s slave, healing of 311, 312, 313

Index | 703 Cephas. See Simon Peter circumcision, law of  133–34 circumcision argument 133–34, 135, 146–47 commandments, most important. See love teaching Cribbs, F. Lamar  6 Criterion of Embarrassment  239 crowd believers and non-believers 160 (See also true family) blocking the paralytic’s path  150 following Jesus in Galilee 48, 49–51, 53 in Hometown Rejection story 192–93, 195, 208 and popularity  320–22 request for a sign 78, 79–80, 96, 219–20 shouting in Triumphal Entry  351–53 See also Jesus, public recognition of

crucifixion 547–50, 553–54 and burial of Jesus. See burial of Jesus centurion piercing Jesus’ side 597, 598–99, 615, 625 centurion’s statement after Jesus death 568, 572 and day of Preparation. See day of Preparation female witnesses  571 Jesus’ last moments  555 and Jesus’ mother and Beloved Disciple  566 journey to skull/Golgotha  551 mockeries 562, 569–71, 635 and mysterious rending of the Temple curtain  572 removal of Jesus body from cross before Sabbath  624–25 supernatural occurrences  562 three-hour darkness during  572 time of  568 verdict of 538, 635

verification of Jesus’ death 597, 598–99, 615, 625 witnesses 559, 571

D David, son of. See son of David day of Preparation 10, 577–78, 590 and Evangelists’ calendar  578 and Last Supper  588 meaning  578 proposed common source  590 schedule  578

deaf man healed  170 Decapolis  59 deformed man healed  13 Dewey, Arthur J.  53 disciples (apostles) 281, 296, 332 authorization to forgive sin and receiving of the Holy Spirit  627–28 going up on a mountain with Jesus 48, 50, 51, 53–54 identification of Jesus  170 Jesus’ accusation against one of the disciples for being a devil 12, 92, 94 Jesus’ appearance after death 615–21, 627–28, 684 John’s apostle filter  93 plucking grain in a field on the Sabbath. See Sabbath violations reaction to Jesus walking on water  74 reaction to stormy sea crossing/calming  63 recruitment of 4, 16, 40, 72, 95, 136, 261, 281–88, 309, 319, 696–97 recruitment of, reconstruction  293 rejection of Jesus  93 rejection of teaching  91 See also specific disciples

divine glory  488–89 divine will  318–19 divine word 206, 225, 257 divorce 492 dropsy healed 144–45, 151

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E

Farrar theory  5 Father  81

Eleazar, Rabbi 128, 132 Elijah 254, 255 Elisha  226 Emmaus story 606–14, 626, 627, 629 empty tomb 4, 600, 601–5, 626 second half of story  684 witnessed by Mary Magdalene  625

eternal life 14, 80–85, 123, 124, 171–72, 226 authority to determine  116–17 good news about 78, 82, 83, 197–98, 216, 490–91 Mark on  83

Eucharist ceremony 73, 82, 85, 230, 408–9, 410–12, 413, 441, 442–43, 682, 688 John’s substitute story  416 original version  415 See also John, Gospel of, eucharistic ceremony

Evangelists’ calendar  578 Exodus 79, 324 Red Sea crossing  63

exorcisms 23–24, 25, 26, 50–51, 113, 159, 160, 166, 167, 238, 262, 299, 301–2, 315, 317, 333–34, 374, 375 Beelzebul accusation 4, 160, 161, 164–65, 174, 179, 180 John, Gospel of, omission from 50, 51, 61, 167, 180 unclean spirit in a Capernaum synagogue 24, 26–27, 262

Jesus’ prayer of submission at Gethsemane 383, 424, 425, 441–42 judgment by  15

fever removed 262, 299, 308–9, 312, 313, 314, 315, 333–34 fish catching miracle 261, 290, 333, 684, 692, 694, 697 foot-washing story  441 forgiving of sins  122 Fourth Way  369

G genealogy 253–54, 696 Genesis  133–34 Gethsemane 423–425, 441–42 Golgotha  551 Goodacre, Mark  5 good news 223, 225–26, 228, 263, 275, 279 about alleviating suffering 197, 198, 216, 220, 222, 470–71 about eternal life 78, 82, 83, 197–98, 216, 490–91

“Good Shepherd” speech  173–74 Gospel message. See good news

H Herod and the Baptist 275, 280 rebuilt Temple  306

F faith  120 and healing  113 in Jesus 15, 315

Holy Spirit 160, 166, 167, 180, 271, 272, 627–28 hometown 190–91, 197, 206, 219, 227, 234

Index | 705 versus own country  205 rejection. See Hometown Rejection story See also Galilee; Jerusalem; Judea; Nazareth

Hometown Rejection story 189, 190, 193, 196–202, 203, 210, 229, 240, 282–83, 688, 692, 694–95, 697–98 and Bread of Life Discourse 188, 238 chronological gap  238 crowd’s disbelief 195, 208 crowd’s knowledge about Jesus and his family 192–93, 208 crowd’s response  192 defects in Mark  195–96 Jesus’ deeds of power  194–95 Jesus’ hometown  190–91 Jesus’ reaction to the offense  194 man of learning  209 missing “gracious words” 198, 217–18, 228 names of Jesus’ family members  230 place of rejection  234 prophet without honor  204 purpose of  239 Rejection at Nazareth 4, 12, 130, 189–90, 323 sequential location 237, 238 teaching on Sabbath  191 homiletic form of teaching 188, 240, 688

homiletic structure, in John and Luke 188, 211, 213, 227, 688 concluding paraphrase  226 exegesis on Bread from Heaven  221 exegesis on “eating”  226 exegesis on “Father givers” explanation, absence of  222 interpretive paraphrase omission  220 Objection Proper  223 Objection to Thesis  222 quotation of scripture  219 reaction to the objection  224 scriptural citations  227

story setting  219 subordinate quote from scripture  224

Hurtado, L. W.  320

I “I Am” sayings 1–2, 9, 32, 73, 79, 80–81, 82, 83 immortality. See eternal life Ishmael, Rabbi  127

J Jairus’s daughter raised from the dead 313, 314, 488, 496 James (son of Zebedee) 281–82, 283, 286, 289 Jerusalem  302 witnesses  302

Jerusalem, last visit to 19, 343–46 alteration to the chronology  385 chorological differences  343 chronology of  383 and Jesus’ brothers  378 and lifting up of Son of Man  372 placement of  381 sequential agreements  383 in synoptic gospels  19 and Triumphal Entry. See Triumphal Entry

Jesus accuses his opponents  180 accuses one of his disciples of being a devil 12, 92, 94, 698 angel providing comfort and relief 425, 428–29, 442 anguished cry in Aramaic  572–73 baptism by  280 baptism of. See baptism of Jesus and Beelzebul. See Beelzebul accusation

706 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

as Bread of Life. See Bread of Life Discourse as Bridegroom  326 brothers of 378, 388 and carpentry  202 criticism, response to 217, 224 crowd following Jesus in Galilee 48, 49–51, 53, 78, 79–80, 219–20 and Davidic messianic tradition  267–68 death of 10, 19, 20, 21, 233, 383, 553, 563, 565–66, 585, 595 death threats 47, 124, 361–62, 385 (See also Jewish plot to kill Jesus) deeds of power 194–95, 198, 201, 205, 223, 349 demon accusation. See Beelzebul accusation direction to the disciples to follow him  332 encounter with a rich man 372, 483–85, 490–91, 492, 494, 497, 498 exorcisms. See exorcisms failure to heal 217, 223 faith in 15, 315 first mission (Galilean ministry) 279–80, 281, 297, 321 genealogy 277, 696 glory, disclosure of  300 going to the Jordan River 372 going up on a mountain with his disciples 48, 50, 51, 53–54 healing powers 13, 148 (See also specific miracles) healing reputation 48–49, 50, 53, 200, 315 hometown. See hometown inability to perform deeds of power  201 and Judas  443 last visit to Jerusalem. See Jerusalem, last visit to love teaching 368, 387, 443–44, 682 mother of  571 nonexistent “signs” 302, 309–10, 312, 317, 318 opponents, response to  307

Passover notice  51 and Peter 284, 334 Peter’s identification of 86, 88–89, 90, 170, 289, 292 popularity of 320–22, 326, 345 post-resurrection meetings with the disciples 290, 291, 292–93, 294, 595, 603, 610, 611, 614, 623, 682, 693 prayer of submission at Gethsemane 424, 441–42 praying by  60 proclamation of the Gospel 317–18, 319–20, 375 public recognition, first  298 public recognition, second  316 rejection of 17–18, 86, 93 (See also Hometown Rejection story; Nazareth, rejection of ) rising up and ascendance 86, 89–91, 93, 94, 624 (See also resurrection) satanic alliance charge, and defense 159, 165, 167, 172–73, 179, 180 and scribes 160, 370 Sea of Galilee, departure to. See stormy sea, crossing/calming of signs problem  262 sinner accusation 157–58, 173, 179, 180 Son of God admission  472 son of Joseph description  277 speaking on God’s behalf  130 as special bread 77–79, 82, 83, 85 (See also Bread of Life Discourse) teleporting power 61, 63, 65–66, 68–69, 75 temptation by Satan 279, 281 unclean spirit, encounter with 298–99 visit to Capernaum 23, 24, 26–27 wandering in the wilderness  332 wisdom of  192 and witnesses to the miracle of the loaves 72, 74, 83

Jesus, arrest of 430

Index | 707 handover of Jesus to Pilate 440–441 (See also Roman proceedings) and Jewish proceedings 304–5 (See also Jewish trial of Jesus) morning proceedings  350 nighttime proceedings 349, 444 and Peter’s denial of Jesus 434 placement of  441 proceedings before the High Priest 402, 438, 440, 444 right ear of the slave that was cut  442 striking and mockeries  438 striking by guards  439

Jesus, authority of 15–17, 27, 112, 114, 123, 132, 134–35, 139, 146, 151, 189, 276, 292–93, 299, 304, 307, 344, 387, 682 See also Sabbath violations; Temple cleansing

Jesus, identification of 60–62, 80, 85–88, 92, 170, 176–77, 181, 255, 289, 291 as an ancient prophet  85, 94 as an earthly human king 85–86, 87, 88–89, 92 as Davidic messiah 255, 266, 268, 351, 352–53, 354, 355–56, 366, 370, 453 as King of Israel 348, 351, 352–53, 357 as lord of the Sabbath  139 as new law-giver  134 public perception  88 as Son of God 7–8, 193, 194, 254, 258, 260–61, 263, 264, 275, 277–78, 296, 353, 364, 366, 452–53, 454–55, 459–60, 472, 481, 490, 505, 521, 522, 523, 535, 560, 568, 598, 619 as son of Man  10

Jesus, predictions by disciple’s betrayal 417–18, 419, 442 his death and resurrection 318–19, (See also Son of Man, lifting up of ) Peter’s denial 420–21

Jesus’ body eating and drinking of 81–82 (See also Bread of Life Discourse; Eucharist ceremony) as symbol of Temple 28, 304, 305–7

Jesus’ family 207, 223, 235 immediate family  163 Markan Sandwich  158 relationship between family members 157–58, 236 thought him mad and possessed 66, 159–60, 161–62, 163, 164–65, 166, 180, 181, 194, 201–2, 235, 236 true family 162–66, 167, 179–80

Jesus-ghost imagery  96 Jesus’ words and healing  311–12 as proof of his authority  216

Jewish plot to kill Jesus 18, 124, 376, 393–98, 399, 400, 401, 402, 403, 409, 410–11, 412, 413 Jewish proceedings 304–5, 456, 457, 458, 459, 466–67, 468–69, 470, 471–72, 473 Jewish trial of Jesus 344, 451–52 council’s questioning of Jesus’ identity  472 High Priest interrogation 469, 473 interrogation  457–61 legal testimony, argument over  463 Nicodemus and the council  461 in proposed common source  472–74 witness testimony  464 See also Jewish proceedings

Johannine source  7 John, Gospel of on accusation of Jesus being mad and possessed  166 adaption of Mark’s True Kindred story  162 adulterous woman story 345, 461, 463, 633 alteration of passage  91 alterations, in circumcision argument  133 alternative bloodline family for Jesus  166

708 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Andrew in  333 anointing at Bethany in 402, 406, 478, 479, 684 apostle filter 93, 102–3 apostles, omission of negative image of 84, 289–90, 293 baptism of Jesus  274 Baptist arcs 253, 255, 256, 257–61 blind man, sight restored/given 168, 169, 171 Book of Signs  313 change of plots  472 changes to original account  158 chasing of money-changers in 18, 20, 23, 25, 262, 300, 360 chronological and sequential disagreements with synoptic gospels  9 chronological displacement issue  8, 133 combination of stories with similar themes  682 coming of John the Baptist in  264 composition in stages  7–8 on credibility of witnesses  472–73 crowd following Jesus in Galilee in  48 crowd request for a sign 48, 78, 79–80 crowd shouting in Triumphal Entry 351, 352, 353 crucifixion  554 deliberate alterations  271 disciple’s betrayal prediction  417 disciples recruitment  283 Discourse on Bread. See Bread of Life Discourse downplaying of apostles  51 earthly human king, Jesus as  89 editing techniques  16 editorial adjustment  23 editorial practices 14, 496 Emmaus story 609, 614 empty tomb  603 on eternal life 14, 80–82, 238 Eucharist ceremony 18, 230, 409, 416 exorcisms, omission of 50, 51, 61, 167, 180

extra scenes  324 faith in Jesus  15 familiarity with centurion story in Luke and Matthew  312 familiarity with Luke  695 first mission (Galilean ministry) in 279, 280, 281 fish catching miracle in 290, 291, 610 gospel message  9 healing of a royal official’s son in 48–49, 262, 302, 309–11, 313, 333–34 healing reputation of Jesus  48–49 Hometown Rejection story in 229, 235–36, 237–38 homiletic structure in. See homiletic structure, in John and Luke and Isaiah prophecy 263, 332, 350 Jerusalem, Jesus’ last visit to 19, 343 Jesus accuses one of the disciples of being a devil  92 Jesus’ appearance to apostles 617–19, 621 Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene  612 Jesus’ authority  15–16 Jesus being lifted up  345 Jesus’ failure to heal, omission of  217 Jesus going up on a mountain with his disciples in  48 Jesus in elevated Johannine terms  326–27 Jesus meeting the disciples, sequence problem  261 Jesus’ response to satanic alliance charge 159, 165 Jesus’s brothers 378, 388 Jesus’ true family  162 Jesus’ visit to Capernaum 23, 25, 26–27, 314–15 Jewish plot to kill Jesus 376, 402, 405, 409 Jewish trial of Jesus  457–64 John 6, expanding the prelude to  147 John the Baptist’s proclamation about Jesus  270 first version 270, 271, 273 second version  270–73

Index | 709 on judgment  15 Last Supper  82, 85 Lazarus, raising of  479–81 Lazarus parable  497 legal argument context  17 leprosy cured  321 life restored  313–14 link between John 8:31–59 and John 9  173 loaves miracle 41, 42, 48, 51 major plot change in  682–83 Mark and Luke, parallels to 680, 681 merging of stories 149, 150 paralytic walks 114, 134 passages movement  8, 52 passion and resurrection source  8 Passover announcement  49 Passover incidents  9, 382 Peter in 87, 89, 92, 94, 293 Peter’s denials  421 placement of morning proceeding  442 popularity of Jesus  326 on praying by Jesus  60 proclamation of the Gospel  317–18 and proposed common source 103, 324, 332–33 public perception of Jesus in  88 purification discourse  324–25 on reason for Jewish authorities plot to kill Jesus  18 redaction of Jesus’ observation  350 Redactor  255 rejection of Jesus by synagogue congregation  18 rejection of teaching by disciples  91 relocating pieces of a story inside another story  682 request for sign 78, 79–80 revelatory discourse source  8 rising up and ascendance of Jesus 86, 89, 90–91 Roman proceedings, first interrogation  514 Roman proceedings, second interrogation  518

Sabbath argument 129–33, 147 Sabbath stories 121, 134, 299 Sabbath violations 149, 150 Samaritan Sojourn story  327 sequential analysis  683 signs source  8 signs problem  262 son of Joseph description  277 Son of Man, lifting up of 373–74, 387 stormy sea, crossing/calming of 48, 63, 65 Temple cleansing in 90–91, 300, 301–2, 303, 304, 312–13, 681 Temple symbolized as Jesus’ body 28, 304, 305–7 theological biases  14 theological disagreements  2 Triumphal Entry 344, 348, 354–55, 382 unclean spirit story, rejection of  312 use of Mark’s healing of a leper in  498 walking on water miracle 59–60, 61–62, 64–65 water into wine transformation 262, 297, 324 witnesses in  472–73 Zebedee brothers’ names, omission of  286 and Zechariah’s prophecy  348–49

John (son of Zebedee) 281–82, 283, 286, 289 John, Mark, and Luke, compared burial of Jesus 578, 597 disciple’s betrayal prediction  419 Hometown Rejection story in 192–93, 202–4, 208 John and Luke, compared  687 anointing at Bethany in  493–94 crowd shouting in Triumphal Entry  352 empty tomb  605 fish catching miracle  290 Hometown Rejection story in  210 literary relationship between 680, 699 Roman proceedings first interrogation  516 second interrogation  519 sequential agreements  699

710 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

John and Mark, compared anointing at Bethany in 11, 20–21 common written source, argument over preclusion  9 crowd shouting in Triumphal Entry  352 difference in content and verbal agreement  1–3 Hometown Rejection story in 195, 208, 209 Jerusalem, Jesus’ last visit to  383 Jewish plot to kill Jesus  402 literary relationships 684, 699 parallels  680 paralytic walks 111–13, 116–17, 123, 124–27 plucking the grain  140 sequential agreements 98, 99, 135, 681 Sabbath violations 145, 149, 150, 151

John the Baptist 5, 11, 21, 22, 37–38, 85, 87, 88, 136, 191, 205–6, 233, 235, 238, 247, 252–54, 255, 256, 257, 258, 269, 273, 274, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281, 285, 295, 297, 298, 307, 317, 319–20, 321, 323, 324–25, 332, 333, 466–67, 517, 684, 689, 695, 697 and Andrew 295, 333 arrest of 21–22, 280, 332 baptism of Jesus. See baptism of Jesus coming of  262–68 as Elijah  254 and Herod 275, 280 and Malachi  252 and Philip  297 preaching of  323 proclamation about Jesus 269–73

Joseph of Arimathea 585, 595, 596, 597, 600, 624, 625 See also burial of Jesus

Joseph references 233–34, 277 Josephus  369 Judas 11, 12, 16, 20–21, 87, 92, 93, 94, 97, 192, 285, 296–97, 375,

395, 401, 402–3, 405–7, 408, 418, 419–20, 429, 430, 431, 432, 433, 435, 441, 442–43, 493, 494, 560, 602, 608, 617, 690 Judea 309, 310–11 judgment  189 authority to execute  116–17 by Father  15

K Keener, Craig  320 Kloppenborg, John S.  4

L Lake Gennesaret. See Sea of Galilee Lamb of God 272, 284, 296 Last Supper 73, 82, 85, 393–94, 407, 441, 682 chronology issues  443 dates for  588 and day of Preparation  588 in synoptic gospels  572

Lazarus 9, 314, 372 and anointing at Bethany  492 and Mark’s healing of leper  487

Lazarus, raising of 314, 345–46, 349, 350, 477–90 and Mark’s account of the raising of Jairus’s daughter  488 sequential placement  491

Lazarus parable 496, 497, 498, 684, 693, 694 leprosy cured 319–20, 321 by Elisha  226 Jesus leaving town because of  321

Levi  136 life restored 313–14, 479–83, 488–89

Index | 711 of a child  9 Jairus’s daughter, raising of 313, 314, 488, 496 Lazarus, raising of. See Lazarus, raising of

loaves, multiplication of 10, 16, 37–41, 55–56, 59, 62, 68, 70–72, 95 multiplication of, first 38–39, 59 multiplication of, second 38, 39, 52–53, 59, 68, 70, 71–72, 95, 102 numerical details 57, 58–59 obtaining the bread  58 and Passover notice  51 Prelude  48–54 scenes breakdown in John 6 and Mark  41, 42 transition to Jesus walking on water  59 witnesses to 72, 74–76, 79, 83, 89

love teaching (most important commandments) 366, 387, 441, 443–44, 682 love God 387, 682 love your neighbor 368, 387, 443–44, 682

Luke, Gospel of and 1 Corinthians  411 anointing at Bethany 403, 442, 698 baptism of Jesus  275 Beelzebul accusation  161 blind man miracle, omission of  40 bread miracle in  56, 59 and Bread of Life Discourse  231 coming of John the Baptist in  265 crowd shouting in Triumphal Entry 351, 352, 353 depiction of the apostles  687 disciple’s betrayal predictions  418 disciples recruitment in 261, 282, 288, 309, 319 dropsy healed  144 empty tomb  601 Eucharist ceremony  410 exorcisms 159, 167, 262 exorcisms, separation from True Kindred story  175 extra scenes  323

familiarity with Gospel of John  692–93 fish catching story in  333 on forgiveness  160 healing of a centurion’s slave in Capernaum  311 Hometown Rejection story 196–201 homiletic structure in. See homiletic structure, in John and Luke identification of Jesus with the Davidic messiah  266 and Isaiah quote 263, 266 Jesus’ appearance to apostles  615 Jesus’ failure to heal, omission of 217, 218 Jesus’ meeting with Peter  285 Jesus rejected by a synagogue congregation  17 Jewish plot to kill Jesus 403, 410–11 John the Baptist in 253, 254, 255, 256, 280 John the Baptist’s proclamation about Jesus  269 and John versus Mark  689 Lazarus, raising of 483–85, 490 Lazarus parable 693, 694 legalistic Sabbath defense  144 Mary/Martha story, and anointing at Bethany 493–94, 495 paralytic walks  125 Peter’s denial prediction  421 Peter’s denials  421 placement of commandments  368 and proposed common source 323, 332– 33 and proto-gospel  6–7 purification discourse  325 Q version  161 rejection story 189, 196 rejection story, omission of the mother from  233 Roman proceedings 514, 517, 524 Sabbath argument  147 Satan accusation against one of the disciples, omission of  95 sequential analysis  683

712 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Simon’s mother-in-law, fever removed  309 son of Joseph description  277 spit scenes, elimination of  170 stormy sea story, omission of 50, 71– 72, 95 synoptic problem  3 Temple cleansing story in  304 temptation of wilderness  323 Triumphal Entry 347, 351, 352, 353 True Kindred story  161–62 unclean spirit, Jesus’ encounter with  299

Luke and John. See John and Luke, compared Luke and Mark. See Mark and Luke, compared Luke and Matthew, compared Jesus’ family thought him mad, omission of  161–62 literary relationship  4 against Mark, verbal similarities between  139 plucking the grain  138 True Kindred story  161

Luke-John parallels  5

M Maccoby, Hyam  129 Malachi and John the Baptist  252 prophecy of 29, 258, 300

manna 77, 81, 88, 226 Marcus, Joel  320 Mark, Gospel of 138, 634 anointing at Bethany 401, 405, 482, 493 baptism of Jesus 274, 362 Beelzebul accusation  4 blind man, sight restored/given 169–71, 175–77, 181 bread miracles in 38, 39, 41, 42, 49, 52–53, 59, 68, 70, 71–72, 74–75, 95, 102, 323

and Bread of Life Discourse 39–40, 73 chasing of money-changers in 20, 23, 28, 360, 681–82 coming of John the Baptist in  263 continuity problems in  69 crowd following Jesus in Galilee 49– 51, 53 crowd shouting in Triumphal Entry 351, 352–53 David’s descendant  364 David story in  137 disciple’s betrayal prediction  418 disciples recruitment 16, 40, 72, 261, 283 disciples rejection of Jesus teaching  91 doublets 38, 40, 45–46, 54, 238 earthly human king, Jesus as  88–89 empty tomb  4, 601 on eternal life  83 Eucharist ceremony  409 exorcisms 23–24, 25, 26–27, 160, 166, 167, 262, 301–2 extra scenes  323 first mission (Galilean ministry) 279, 280 fish catching miracle, absence of  293 healing reputation of Jesus  50, 53 Hometown Rejection story 189, 190–91, 192, 193, 194–96, 238 Hometown Rejection story, sequential location 237, 238 and Isaiah prophecy 263, 303–4, 332 Jerusalem, Jesus’ last visit to 343, 358, 359 Jesus accuses one of the disciples of being a devil  92 Jesus rejected by synagogue congregation  17 Jesus’ family  158 Jesus’ family belief that he was mad and possessed 159–60, 166 Jesus going up on a mountain with his disciples 50, 51, 53–54 Jesus’ hometown  234–35 Jesus’ immediate bloodline family in  165 Jesus’ meeting the disciples, sequence problem  261

Index | 713 Jesus’ prediction about Temple’s destruction  368 Jesus’ use of saliva to heal  170 Jesus’ visit to Capernaum 23, 24, 26–27, 262, 302 Jewish plot to kill Jesus 401, 409 John the Baptist in 252–53, 255 John the Baptist’s proclamation about Jesus  269 Lazarus, raising of  486–90 leper cured and Lazarus  487 leprosy cured 321, 497–98 life restored  313–14 loaves, multiplication of  41, 42 negative depiction of apostles 16, 40, 72, 94, 687 paralytic walks  113 Passion story in  304 Passover notice, omission of  51–52 Peter in  87 Peter’s denial prediction  420 Peter’s denials  420 Peter’s mother-in-law, fever removed 262, 308–9, 312, 314, 315 plucking the grain  136 proclamation of the Gospel 317, 318 and proposed common source 103, 332–33 and proto-gospel  7 and Psalm 110.1  364 public perception of Jesus  88 purification discourse  325 question about paying taxes  369 question about resurrection  369 raising of Jairus’s daughter and raising of Lazarus  488 request for sign 49–51, 53, 78, 80 rising up and ascendance of Jesus 86, 90, 91 Roman proceedings  523 Sabbath argument 137–38, 142 Sabbath healing  4, 142 Sabbath violation stories 135, 139–40, 141 satanic alliance charge, and defense 165, 167, 172–73, 179, 180

second multiplication of loaves 38, 39, 52–53, 59, 68, 70, 71–72, 95, 102 sequential analysis  683 signs problem in  262 Son of Man, lifting up of 137–38, 374–77, 387 stormy sea, crossing/calming of 53, 63–64, 65–66, 69 synagogue leader’s ill daughter story 313, 314, 488, 496 synoptic problem  3 Temple cleansing 303–4, 306 temptation in the wilderness  323 theological arguments  148 Triumphal Entry 347, 354–55, 357 “True Family”  158 “True Family”, Johannine objections  162 True Kindred story 174, 298 two sources  102 unclean spirit, Jesus’ encounter with 24, 26–27, 262, 298–99 water, walking on 59–61, 62, 64–65 wicked tenants parable  363 widow’s offering  370 withered hand healed  141 witnesses’ erroneous testimony  472–73 witnesses to loaves miracle 72, 74, 75–76 yeast of the Pharisees, warning about  95–96

Mark, Luke, and Paul, compared Eucharist ceremony 412, 413 Jewish plot to kill Jesus 412, 413

Mark and John. See John and Mark, compared Mark and Luke, compared  95, 98 anointing at Bethany  4 disciples recruitment  4 Jewish trial of Jesus  452 Rejection at Nazareth  4 request for a sign  96 request for sign  96 Satan accusation  97 sea voyage  95

Mark and Matthew, compared withered hand, healed  4

714 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

Mark-A  45–46 bread miracles  52 bread miracles, witnesses to  74, 75 discussion between Herod and his court  87 healing reputation of Jesus  53 Jesus going up on a mountain with his disciples  53–54 miracle for Jews in  59 request for a sign 50–51, 53 stormy sea, crossing/calming of 53, 63, 65 water, walking on 59–61, 62, 64–65

Mark-B  45–46 bread miracles  49 bread miracles, witnesses to  74, 75 healing reputation of Jesus  50 miracle for gentiles in  59 request for a sign  49–50 rising up and ascendance of Jesus  86 stormy sea, crossing/calming of 63–64, 66

Markan Sandwich 158, 174, 373, 488, 489 Mark’s Temple encounters Johannine parallels to 360, 366, 370 with no Johannine parallels  369–70

Mary and Martha dinner with 684, 692 anointing at Bethany 493–94, 495

Mary Magdalene 626, 693 witness of burial  624 witness of empty tomb  625

Mary references 230–32, 233 mass healings  51 See also exorcisms

Matthew, Gospel of  77–78 baptism of Jesus  273 Beelzebul accusation  4 coming of John the Baptist  267 empty tomb  4 exorcisms 159, 167 exorcisms, separation from True Kindred story  175 on forgiveness  160 Hometown Rejection story  201

Jesus’ hometown  235 loaves, multiplication of  56 and Luke, literary relationship  4 omission of Sabbath violation story  299 Sabbath argument 139–40, 147 Sabbath defense  143 Sabbath healing  4, 142 Sabbath violation stories  139–40 Simon’s mother-in-law, fever removed  309 spit scenes, elimination of  170 synoptic problem  3

Matthew and Luke. See Luke and Matthew Matthew and Mark. See Mark and Matthew, compared Mays, J. L.  290 Meier, John P. 38, 112, 168, 170, 239 Mekhilta Sabbetta 127–28, 132, 135, 137, 140, 142–43 Messiah 86, 88–89, 90, 255–56, 365, 457, 481, 563–64 Davidic 255, 266, 268, 351, 352–53, 354, 355–56, 365, 366, 370, 453

Metzger, B. M.  325 miracles. See blind man, sight restored/ given; Centurian’s slave, healing of; deaf man healed; deformed man healed; dropsy healed; exorcisms; fish catching miracle; fever removed; Jairus’s daughter raised from the dead; Lazarus, raising of; leprosy cured; life restored; loaves, multiplication of; paralytic man, healing of; Royal official’s son, healing; Sabbath healing; stormy sea, crossing/calming of; unclean spirit, man with; water, walking on; water into wine transformation; also listings in individual gospels Miller, Robert J.  53 miraculous fish catch with Peter. See fish catching miracle

Index | 715 Mishnah 120, 128, 129 money-changers, chasing of. See Temple cleansing Moses 79, 88, 133 and circumcision  134 as law-giver  134 as witness  117

Moses, Law of  132 Mount of Olives  423

N Nathanael 281–82, 286–87, 296–97, 353, 366 and Bartholomew  287

Nazareth  234–35 rejection story 4, 12, 81, 130, 187–88, 189–90, 234, 282–83, 297–98, 323

Nelson, Thomas 38, 634 Nicodemus 91, 321–22, 328, 334, 375–76, 387, 461–63, 469, 597, 600, 603–4, 625 discourse with Jesus 92, 318, 319–20, 327, 334, 375–76, 387, 625 and lifting up of Son of Man  374

common elements among gospels  117 and death threats  124 disagreements  118 and forgiving of sins  122 reconciling differences  119 on the Sabbath  49

Passion 8, 21, 37, 247–48, 254, 276, 300, 303, 304, 308, 415, 434, 477, 538 See also crucifixion

Passover 19 announcement 49, 101–2 chronology  581 holiday  580 meal preparation story  441 and Triumphal Entry 358 (See also Unleavened Bread, Festival of )

patriarchs  133 Paul 267, 286, 394, 408–10, 411, 412–14, 415–16, 419, 442, 443, 608, 627, 688 1 Corinthians 11:23–26 408, 411–12, 608, 627 Eucharist ceremony 442, 688

pericopes 30, 31, 635, 679–80 Peter. See Simon Peter Pharisees 325, 351 upset about Jesus’ popularity  349 yeast of 95–96

O

Philip 281–82, 285–87, 295, 296–97

objection proper  223 objection to thesis  222 oral traditions  1

post-crucifixion narrative 96, 290, 291, 333, 567, 594, 595, 607, 622– 23, 624

identification of Jesus  287 and John the Baptist  297

See also resurrection

P paralytic man, healing of 11, 111–17, 123, 124–27, 136, 148, 697 carrying, climbing, digging, and lowering problem 121, 150

post-resurrection appearances 290, 291, 292–93, 294, 595, 603, 610, 611, 614, 623, 682, 693 post-resurrection narrative 96, 252, 261, 282, 291, 292–93, 319, 328, 333, 616, 621

716 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

proposed common source   anointing at Bethany 55, 56, 59, 62, 74, 75, 80, 86, 90, 96–97, 98, 102, 103, 248–52, 263, 278, 323, 324, 328–32, 350, 401, 404, 442, 569, 624 angel scene  428 crucifixion P61537, 550, 552, 553, 556, 557, 558, 559, 561–62, 564, 565, 566, 567, 568, 569, 571–72 day of Preparation 577, 586–87, 588, 589, 590 disciples  261 Eucharist ceremony 414, 442 Jesus’ arrest  431 Jesus’ prayer of submission at Gethsemane 424, 425 Jewish plot to kill Jesus 394–98, 400 Jewish proceedings 456, 457, 458, 459, 466–67, 468–69, 470, 471–72, 473 and John, Gospel of 324, 332–33 Judas’ betrayal 406–7, 419 Lazarus parable 477, 483, 486, 489–90, 491, 494–95, 496–97, 498 and Luke 323, 332–33 and Mark 323, 332–33 mockeries  438–39 Passover preparation  443 Peter’s denials  435 resurrection and post-resurrection appearances 593–94, 595, 598–99, 600, 604–5, 606, 608, 609, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620–21, 623–24, 625, 626, 627, 629 Roman proceedings 504, 505, 508–9, 511, 512, 523, 524, 525, 526–27, 528, 529, 530, 531, 535–36, 537, 539, 540 Triumphal Entry 350, 356, 383, 386, 388 See also Alpha Gospel

proto-gospel 1–2, 31, 633, 679, 699– 700 proposed reconstruction of 634 sequential agreements  681 statistical overview  679

See Alpha Gospel; proposed common source

purification discourse  324–25

Q Q source 4, 97, 159, 160, 163, 207, 252–53, 256, 267, 269–70, 273, 279, 323, 696 centurion’s slave in Capernaum, healing of  311 cities that rejected Jesus  236

R Raising the dead. See life restored Redactor 7–8, 257, 261, 272 resurrection 593–95, 624 apostles, appearance to 615–21, 627–28, 684 first appearance 617, 627–28, 684 second appearance  618 third appearance  619 Beloved Disciple, appearance to  621 and bread meal 618, 619–20, 626–27, 628–29 Emmaus story 606–14, 626 empty tomb 600, 601–5, 625 and fishing miracle  610 and fish meal  628–29 Galilee paradox  622 Mary Magdalene, appearance to 612, 626 non-apostles, appearance to 609, 613–14, 626–27, 693 Peter, appearance to  627 question about  369 witnesses  626

revelatory discourse source  8 rich man story 372, 483–85, 490–91, 492, 494, 497, 498

Index | 717 Roman proceedings 503–10, 511, 512, 514, 517, 523, 524, 525, 526–27, 528, 529, 530, 531, 535–36, 537, 539, 540, 635 accusations against Jesus  520 Barabbas incident  528 crucifixion, argument over  533 first interrogation  514–16 Herod problem  524 interrogation 510, 523–24 mockery 531 narrative recreation  527 in proposed common source 537, 539, 540 questions  511 second interrogation  517–19 verdict 538 (See also crucifixion)

royal official’s son, healing of 48–49, 262, 302, 309–11, 313, 333–34 and Q account of healing of the gentile centurion’s slave  313

134, 148, 149, 150, 151, 163–64, 172, 173, 177, 180, 299 and blasphemy accusation. See blasphemy accusation of Jesus defenses 120, 131, 132–33, 134–35, 209 gospels compared  151 by healing  148 Jewish argument. See Sabbath argument light and heavy argument used by Rabbis  142

Sadducee argument  369–70 Samaritan Sojourn story 327, 334 satanic alliance charge, and defense 159, 165, 167, 172–73, 179, 180 scribes 113–14, 122, 163, 325, 374–75, 416, 434, 563–64 accusations against Jesus 157, 158–59, 160, 165, 167 attempt to attack Jesus  163 denounced by Jesus 346, 370, 371

Sea of Galilee 117, 129

S Sabbath 112–13, 120, 129, 135, 138, 142–43, 147 arguments in Mekhilta  140 being for humankind  137 conflict  134 day of Preparation. See day of Preparation death threat 47, 124, 385 (See also Jewish plot to kill Jesus) fasting 136, 326 Mark’s David story  137 Son of Man  137–38 source issue, in Gospel of John  133

Sabbath healing 119, 121, 146–47 rule  129 story variations  134 template healing debate  147

Sabbath violations 111, 112, 114, 115– 16, 119–20, 121, 122–23, 124, 131,

crossing of. See stormy sea, crossing/ calming of Galilean witnesses  303

Sea of Tiberias. See Sea of Galilee sequential agreements  101–2 between John and Luke  699 between John and Mark 98, 99, 681

sight restored/given. See blind man, sight restored/given signs. See blind man, sight restored/ given; Centurian’s slave, healing of; deaf man healed; deformed man healed; dropsy healed; exorcisms; fish catching miracle; fever removed; Jairus’s daughter raised from the dead; Lazarus, raising of; leprosy cured; life restored; loaves, multiplication of; paralytic man, healing of; Royal officials son, heling

718 | The

Case for a Proto-Gospel

of; Sabbath healing; stormy sea, crossing/calming of; unclean spirit, man with; water, walking on; water into wine transformation; also listings in individual gospels sign, request for 78, 79–80, 96, 219–20 signs source  8 Siloam (“sent”)  171 Simeon, Rabbi 129, 137 Simon Peter 5, 6, 12, 16, 25, 26, 27, 37, 40, 85–86, 87–89, 90, 91–92, 93, 94, 97–98, 100, 101, 169, 176, 181, 238, 254, 255, 261, 262, 278, 281, 282, 283, 284–87, 288–92, 293, 294–95, 296, 297, 298, 300, 302, 309, 314, 316, 319, 332–34, 367, 374–76, 377, 380–81, 387, 394, 398–99, 418, 419, 423, 424–25, 428–29, 432, 434–36, 437, 438, 440, 442, 452, 454, 480, 487, 513, 594, 601, 602, 603, 604–5, 606, 607, 608–9, 610, 611, 612–13, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619–20, 621–23, 626, 627, 682, 684, 690, 691, 692, 693, 694, 697, 698 appearance at the empty tomb  627 in blind man story  177 denials of Jesus 420–21, 434, 441, 442, 635 healings by Jesus at the house of 299, 309, 313, 317–18 identification of Jesus 86, 88–89, 90, 170, 289, 292 miraculous catch of fish. See fish catching miracle mother-in-law of, fever removed 262, 299, 308–9, 312, 313, 314, 315, 333–34 rebuke of Jesus  319

Solomon  353–54 son of David 60–61, 161, 171, 177–78, 364–65

son of Joseph 81, 204, 208, 231, 233, 277, 287, 333, 600, 689, 696, 697 Son of Man, lifting up of  372 first declaration  374 first prediction 374 second declaration  373 second prediction 377 third declaration 373, 374 third prediction 376

Son of Man, Mark’s usage in Sabbath argument  137–38 source theory  8–9 stormy sea, crossing/calming of 38, 62, 63, 65, 68–69, 84, 94 Bethsaida, voyage to 71, 75, 95 continuity problem in Mark  69 Dalmanutha, voyage to  71 disciples’ reaction  63 Jesus walking on water. See water, walking on in Mark-A 53, 63, 65 in Mark-B 63–64, 66 voyage(s) 70–71, 75, 95

supernatural events, during crucifixion 562, 572 synagogue leader’s daughter, raising of 313, 314, 488, 496 synoptic gospels 3–4, 135 healing missions in  15–16 on Jewish authorities opposition to Jesus  18 Last Supper  572 See also Luke; Mark; Matthew synoptic problem  3

T taxes paying , question about  369 Temple cleansing 12, 19, 20, 23, 25, 90–91, 300, 301–2, 303–4, 305, 306, 333, 344, 383, 387, 681 and Jesus rising up  90–91

Index | 719 and “unclean spirit” in synagogue, parallels between 300, 307–8

Temple’s destruction and rebuilding 305, 473 Jesus’ prediction of  368

Temple as symbol of Jesus’ body 28, 304, 305–7 Thomas 30, 31, 286, 290, 296–97, 606, 610, 616, 617, 618–19, 620, 628, 634, 694 tomb of Jesus

V von Wahlde, Urban 7–8, 112, 211, 212, 217, 220, 221, 222, 224–25, 226

W water, walking on 10, 59–60, 63, 64–65, 68–69, 93–94 absence in Mark-B  62, 67 in Mark-A 59–61, 62, 64–65 prelude  60–62

empty tomb. See empty tomb men dressed in white inside  625–26

Triple Tradition  3, 4 See also Luke, Mark, Matthew

Triumphal Entry 343–44, 346–48, 354–55, 383, 680–81, 682–83 chronological issues  354 crowd’s shouting  351–53 donkey, procession on 347, 348, 349, 353, 354, 357, 376, 386 and Jesus’ last visit to Jerusalem, separation of  344 placement of  382 reconstruction of the original sequence  357–58 Zechariah citation 353, 386

“true” bread 226, 227 true family 162–66, 167, 179–80 True Kindred story 161–62, 174–75

water into wine transformation 25–26, 262, 300, 302, 324 Wellhausen, Julius  260 wicked tenants parable 19, 363, 383–85, 386 widow’s offering  370 withered hand healed 4, 135, 141–42 man with dropsy in Luke  144 See also Sabbath violations

word of God 266, 288 belief in 13, 50, 123, 163, 182, 310, 311– 12 Jesus as 261, 264, 272

Y yeast 78, 83, 95–96, 97 of Herod 70, 75, 77, 82, 83 of Pharisees 70, 75, 77, 78, 82, 83, 85, 93–94, 95–96, 415

U unclean spirit, man with 24, 26–27, 262, 298–99, 300, 307–8, 312 See also exorcisms

Unleavened Bread, Festival of 577, 579, 580, 581, 582, 583, 587, 589, 608 See also Passover

Z Zebedee brothers. See James (son of Zebedee); John (son of Zebedee) Zechariah’s prophecy 348–49, 353, 386

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