A Feast Full of Questions About One Man

“Jewry” is the 1611 word for Judaea, used again in Luke 23:5. “Walked” is imperfect: he kept to Galilee for some months, since the feast of the next verse falls about half a year after the Passover of 6:4. A few manuscripts read that he “had no power” to walk in Judaea, rather than that he would not.

Tabernacles, Sukkot, fell in the autumn, when Israel lived seven days in booths of branches in memory of the wilderness (Leviticus 23:34–43). Josephus called it the holiest and greatest of the feasts. It was the most crowded and the most joyful of the pilgrim festivals.

Mark 6:3 names the brothers as James, Joses, Juda and Simon. Their phrase “thy disciples also” implies followers in Judaea who had not seen the Galilean signs. They borrow Jesus’ own word, “works”, which he has used of what the Father gives him to do (5:36).

“Openly” is parresia, frank and public speech, and the word keeps returning in this chapter (verses 13 and 26). Their maxim is a piece of worldly wisdom about ambition: nobody works in private who wants a public name.

In Mark 3:21 his family went out to take hold of him, saying “He is beside himself.” Their unbelief did not last: the brothers are with the disciples in the upper room (Acts 1:14), the risen Jesus appeared to James (1 Corinthians 15:7), and James came to lead the Jerusalem church.

“Time” is kairos, the right or opportune moment, a word the Book of John uses only in this passage; elsewhere it speaks of his “hour”. For the brothers any day will do for travelling up to the feast, because nothing hangs on when they go.

This is the first time the Book of John says the world hates Jesus. In the farewell discourse the same verb is turned towards the disciples: “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you” (15:18). Their safety now is a sign of how little they are set apart.

Some copies have “I go not up”, others “I go not up yet”. The pagan critic Porphyry, as Jerome reports, seized on the first reading to charge Jesus with inconsistency, since he went up after all. The verb “go up” is the one used for ascending in 6:62 and 20:17.

The pattern is the one seen at Cana, where he first declined his mother’s prompting and then acted (2:4–7), and will be seen again when he waits two days before going to Lazarus (11:6). Others’ urging never sets the moment.

“In secret” is the phrase from the brothers’ maxim in verse 4, that no one does anything in secret who wants to be known. Jesus goes up doing exactly what they said no one does. Travelling apart from the caravan of pilgrims let him arrive unnoticed.

The question does not use his name: “Where is that man?” The imperfect verb means they kept looking. At a feast where the whole nation was camped in booths around the city, a single Galilean could be hard to find.

“Murmuring” is the noun from the verb of 6:41. “Deceiveth” is planao, to lead astray, and Deuteronomy 13:5 ordered death for a prophet who led Israel astray. A later rabbinic tradition (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a) says Jesus was executed on precisely that charge.

“The fear of the Jews” recurs in 9:22, 19:38 and 20:19. The people who fear here are themselves Jews at a Jewish feast, which shows that the Book of John often uses “the Jews” for the Jerusalem authorities rather than the nation.

The feast lasted seven days, so the midst is about the fourth. By then the pilgrims were settled and the temple courts full every day. Having avoided a public arrival, he chooses the most public place in Jerusalem once the feast is under way.

“Letters” is grammata, learning, the formal scribal training a teacher received at the feet of a rabbi. Acts 4:13 makes the same observation about Peter and John, calling them “unlearned and ignorant men”. The marvel is that Jesus reads Scripture like a trained teacher without having been one’s pupil.

A rabbi’s authority rested on the teachers he had received his teaching from, a chain that the Mishnah traces back to Sinai (Avot 1:1). Jesus names only one source. “Doctrine” is didache, teaching, and the paradox of “not mine” answers the question of verse 15.

The Greek doubles the idea of will: “if any man wills to do his will”. The test Jesus offers is not a debate but a willingness. “Of myself” is literally “from myself”, the phrase of 5:30, “I can of mine own self do nothing.”

“Unrighteousness” is adikia, and this is the only time the word occurs in the Book of John. A messenger who seeks the glory of the one who sent him has nothing to gain by lying, which is why such a person can be called “true”.

The law Moses gave them includes “Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13), and they are planning a killing. The question “Why go ye about to kill me?” names the plot of 5:18 openly, in the temple, before the people.

“Thou hast a devil” means you are mad; in 10:20 the phrase is joined to “and is mad”. The crowd here is largely pilgrims from outside Jerusalem, who may genuinely not know of the plot. The same charge will come back harder in 8:48.

The “one work” is the healing at the pool in chapter 5, done at an earlier feast and still being talked about. In Greek the words “therefore” at the start of verse 22 may belong here instead: “ye all marvel because of this”, a question of punctuation the manuscripts cannot settle.

Circumcision was commanded to Abraham (Genesis 17:10–12) long before Moses, which is the point of the parenthesis. Leviticus 12:3 fixed it on the eighth day, and when the eighth day fell on a Sabbath the circumcision was done anyway, as the Mishnah (Shabbat 18:3) records.

Later rabbis used this same argument from the lesser to the greater: if circumcision, which concerns one member of the body, overrides the Sabbath, how much more the saving of the whole body (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b). “Every whit whole” is literally “a whole man whole”.

“Appearance” is opsis, the look of a thing, its face. Samuel was told that “man looketh on the outward appearance” (1 Samuel 16:7), and Isaiah 11:3 says the coming king “shall not judge after the sight of his eyes”. Deuteronomy 16:18 commands judges to “judge the people with just judgment”.

“Them of Jerusalem” translates a single word, Jerusalemites, which occurs only here and in Mark 1:5 in the New Testament. These are residents, not pilgrims, and unlike the crowd of verse 20 they know perfectly well who is being hunted.

“Boldly” is parresia again, the openness the brothers urged in verse 4, now given without their help. The question about the rulers is framed to expect the answer no, but it has been asked aloud, and it hangs over the rest of the chapter.

A belief that the Messiah would be hidden until his appearing is attested later: in Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho (chapter 8) the Jewish speaker says the Christ, even if born, is unknown until Elijah anoints him. On that view, a man from a known village disqualifies himself.

“Cried” is krazo, a loud public proclamation, the verb used of John the Baptist in 1:15. “Ye both know me” may be read as irony or as a question. “True” here is alethinos, genuine: the sender is real, whether or not they know him.

The claim runs from knowing to origin to sending. “From him” is para, from beside him. In 8:55 he will put it more sharply: “ye have not known him; but I know him”.

“Hour” is the word of Cana, “mine hour is not yet come” (2:4). It is not until 12:23 that he says “The hour is come.” The attempt to take him is real, and the Book of John gives the only reason it fails.

Their question counts signs, and belief that rests on counting is the kind the Book of John has treated with reserve since 2:23–24, where Jesus “did not commit himself” to those who believed at the sight of his miracles. Still, the book calls it believing.

The chief priests were mostly Sadducees and the Pharisees their rivals, but together they led the council, and in the Book of John they act together against Jesus. The “officers” were the temple police, Levites under the captain of the temple.

“Yet a little while” becomes a refrain of the farewell discourse: 13:33, and seven times in 16:16–19, where the disciples complain, “We cannot tell what he saith.” About six months remain until the Passover of his death.

Wisdom speaks almost these words in Proverbs 1:28, “they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me.” In 13:33 Jesus repeats the saying to his disciples, “as I said unto the Jews”, so the same words are spoken to both groups.

“The dispersed” is diaspora, the scattering, a word the Greek of Deuteronomy 28:25 uses for Israel spread among the kingdoms. “Gentiles” in the second half is literally “Greeks”. The same word gives James 1:1 and 1 Peter 1:1 their greetings to the scattered.

They quote him word for word without being able to parse him. The verb in “where I am” is present, not future: he does not say where he will be, but where he is, a claim about his home with the Father that cannot be reached by travelling.

At each morning of the feast a priest drew water from the pool of Siloam in a golden pitcher and poured it out at the altar (Mishnah Sukkah 4:9), and the rabbis said that whoever had not seen that rejoicing had never seen joy. Teachers usually sat; Jesus stands and cries out.

No single verse matches the quotation. Zechariah 14:8 promises living waters flowing out of Jerusalem, and its chapter goes on to name the feast of tabernacles (14:16); Ezekiel 47 sees a river flowing from the temple. “Belly” is koilia, the inner depths of a person.

The Greek says simply “the Spirit was not yet”; “given” is supplied by the King James from some manuscripts. “Glorified” in this book means the cross and what follows it (12:23, 13:31). The giving comes in 20:22, when the risen Jesus breathes on the disciples.

Water from the rock was Moses’ great wilderness sign (Exodus 17:6), so it is natural that talk of rivers of water sends the crowd’s thoughts to the prophet like Moses. The identification is the same as after the loaves in 6:14.

The question expects the answer no: surely not from Galilee. Nathanael made the same objection on a smaller scale in 1:46: “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” Galilee had a mixed population and was looked down on by Judaeans.

The objection is scripturally sound: the Messiah is of David’s line (2 Samuel 7:12) and from Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), David’s town (1 Samuel 16). The Book of John never mentions where Jesus was born, and leaves readers who know Matthew and Luke to feel the irony.

“Division” is schisma, a tear, the root of the English schism. The Book of John uses it three times, here, 9:16 and 10:19, and each time the tear runs through a crowd over the same question: who Jesus is.

Verse 30 gave a reason why no one laid hands on him: his hour had not come. This time no reason is given at all. Some wanted to seize him, and nothing in the account explains why none of them did.

The officers were sent in verse 32, about the middle of the feast, and report back only now, on its last day. If the timing is pressed, they had spent days in the crowd listening, though the Book of John does not say so outright.

The oldest manuscripts read more briefly: “Never man spake thus.” The longer King James wording, “like this man”, came in later. The officers were temple police, not theologians, and their verdict is on the speaking itself.

“Deceived” is planao, the verb of the crowd’s charge in verse 12 that Jesus “deceiveth the people”. The Pharisees now suspect it has worked on their own officers.

The question expects the answer no, and two verses later a ruler who is also a Pharisee opens his mouth. Nicodemus was introduced in 3:1 as “a ruler of the Jews”, and 12:42 will admit that “among the chief rulers also many believed on him”.

“Cursed” is eparatos, a word found only here in the New Testament. Later rabbinic writing used am ha’aretz, “people of the land”, for the unlearned majority, and Hillel said that no such person can be truly pious (Mishnah Avot 2:5).

The reminder takes the reader back to 3:2. Nicodemus will appear once more, in 19:39, carrying about a hundred pound weight of myrrh and aloes to Jesus’ burial. Here he is still described as “one of them”.

Deuteronomy 1:16–17 charged Israel’s judges to “hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously”, and 17:4 required that an accusation be “inquired diligently”. “Hear him” is literally “hear from him”: the accused must be allowed to speak.

The claim is untrue: Jonah son of Amittai came from Gath-hepher (2 Kings 14:25), a few miles from Nazareth, and Nahum’s Elkosh may also have been in Galilee. The earliest papyrus of John, P66, reads “the prophet”, which would limit the claim to the prophet like Moses.

This line begins the passage running to 8:11 that the earliest manuscripts lack. One family of later manuscripts places the passage after Luke 21:38 instead, where the setting of Jesus teaching by day and spending the night on the Mount of Olives also fits.