//Did Jesus really walk on water? One of the four gospels, the one claiming eye-witness testimony, is ambiguous on the topic. Today’s verse can be read one of two ways: Either they took him into the boat, and immediately found themselves at land, or as they began to receive Jesus into the boat, they hit land.

Context helps, so let’s back up two verses to this one:

When they had rowed three or three and a half miles, they saw Jesus approaching the boat, walking on the water; and they were terrified. –John 6:19

Sounds clear, doesn’t it? The problem is, the Greek word used for “on the water” is precisely the same word used in verse 21:1, where it is more precisely translated “by the sea”:

Afterward Jesus appeared again to his disciples, by the Sea of Tiberias. –John 21:1

So was Jesus on the water or on the seashore? Translators of this story understandably chose to reinforce the oral legend described in other gospels, but this isn’t necessarily what John wrote. We may never know for sure what John meant to say.

//Just in case your Old English isn’t too good, here’s what’s happening in today’s verse: God needs a plan to kill King Ahab, and comes up with the idea of luring Ahab into a battle he can’t win. But how to convince Ahab? The “host of heaven” around God’s throne suggest one idea after another, until finally a “lying spirit” shows up and offers to be of service. So God sends the lying spirit forth to fool all of Ahab’s advisers—four hundred of them. It works, Ahab is convinced to fight, and he dies.

Great story! But I’d venture a guess that there’s more to the tale. Call me a skeptic, but I’m a little unconvinced about any “host of heaven” debating strategy, or any lying spirits, or why God wouldn’t be able to figure out his own battle plan in the first place. So, tomorrow, I’ll let you in on how I think the whole thing really went down.

//This is one of the ten commandments. It’s recorded also in Deuteronomy 5:17, and repeated twice in the New Testament: once by Jesus (Matthew 5:21) and again by Paul (Romans 13:9). Always in the very same, clear language. Thou shalt not kill. Serious stuff.

So strong has this polemic grown that many Christians refuse to bear arms in battle; refuse to approve the death penalty; refuse to celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden.

Now, I’m not arguing that war is good or that capital punishment is appropriate, nor can I think of anybody I’ve ever wanted killed. That’s hardly the Christian nature. But I do want to clarify what the Bible really says.

In each case, I’ve been quoting the King James Version. But the wording has been corrected in the New King James Version, and many other translations. A much more precise wording is Thou shalt not murder. It is hardly against the Law of God to justifiably kill another person; indeed, many of God’s laws require stoning the perpetrator to death. The Hebrew verb in this commandment is ratzach, which normally describes homicide. In particular, premeditated killing. In the few cases where it refers to accidental death, provision is recorded for a lesser sentence, making it clear that the Bible does not consider all forms or reasons for killing to be equally wrong.

//Remember the battle of Jericho? Israel marched around and around its walls until the walls simply fell down, and they plundered the city. Every living thing—men, women, cattle, sheep and donkeys—was put to the sword, and the city and everything in it was burned. Joshua then concludes the ordeal with this curse against anybody who tries to rebuild it. It will cost the builder his firstborn son.

Well, if you don’t believe in curses, maybe you should. Around 500 years later, a man named Hiel couldn’t resist rebuilding Jericho, and though we don’t know the details of what happened, the Bible hints at something sordid:

In Ahab’s time, Hiel of Bethel rebuilt Jericho. He laid its foundations at the cost of his firstborn son Abiram, and he set up its gates at the cost of his youngest son Segub. –1 Kings 16:34

//John’s Gospel reads a little different than the others here. In Mark 14:58 Jesus promises:

I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.

Jesus is thus condemned by the Jewish leaders for threatening to destroy the temple, a magnificent construction begun by Herod the Great. John, however, turns this around. In his version, Jesus no longer says “I will destroy the temple” but instead tempts the Jews with a command: “Destroy this temple.”

Why? Because John has a unique understanding to share. E. P. Sanders argued that Jesus actually prophesied the destruction of the temple (which did, indeed, happen, though it took another 40 years to occur) and expected God to send a new one. This new temple would be God-given, much like the God-given city promised in the book of Revelation. There, the city would float down from heaven and settle atop Mount Zion. No human hands would join in the construction, for God himself would do the constructing.

John, writing his gospel 25 years or so after the temple was destroyed, may have finally concluded that no new temple was on the horizon. Certainly it didn’t come within the three-day deadline. Yet, that concept of a “temple made without hands” was surely tantalizing. Another of Revelation’s promises, you may recall, is that there would be no temple in the new City of God; Jesus himself would be the temple.

So now we come to John’s fascinating insight, turning failure into success, for the new temple was constructed as promised after all! Jesus was never talking about Herod’s temple in the first place! That’s why he could dare the Jews to “destroy this temple.” The next verse reads:

John 2:21, But he spake of the temple of his body.

Jesus wasn’t talking about a new temple at all, when he said he would rebuild one in three days. He was talking about his own resurrection!

//John chapter five tells of a lame man lying by the pool of Bethesda, where a great multitude of “impotent folk” lay waiting for the “moving of the water.” Today’s verse is a late addition to the Gospel of John, which clarifies the purpose for their gathering there.  Apparently when the water “moved,” it was believed to be at the prompting of an angel, and the moving water had healing powers. The original writing doesn’t contain this verse, presuming its readership’s familiarity with the pool, with no need to explain its healing powers. Many current translations of the Bible choose not to include this verse.

Excavations confirm the existence of a pool of Bethesda before Jerusalem’s destruction. The pool divided into two parts, north and south, with steps descending to multiple landings deep within the southern pool, facilitating bathing, regardless of water level. Tunneled sluice gates at the bottom enabled emptying and replenishing the pool, the resulting bubbling and frothing probably explaining the phenomenon of an “angel disturbing the water.”

//Yesterday, I told how Naomi hatched a plan to get her widowed daughter-in-law re-hitched. Per Naomi’s instructions, Ruth visited Naomi’s “kinsman” while he slept off a drunk, and he invited her under the covers.

The next day, however, Boaz pulls a sneaky one of his own. Apparently, Naomi has a parcel of land for sale, and the custom is that she must sell it to her nearest relative. That would be an unnamed man known only as Naomi’s “kinsman-redeemer.” Boaz invites this kinsman-redeemer to sit with him and ten elders of the town, and tells him of the parcel. Quickly, the man agrees to purchase the land, as is his right.

Boaz then casually mentions Ruth. If you buy the land, he says, you must take on the responsibility for her, since she depends upon the land to sustain herself. I can’t find where any such law is mentioned in the Bible, but we can assume it was indeed the custom for the “kinsman-redeemer” to take on such a responsibility.

The man replies that he cannot, for taking Ruth would endanger his own inheritance. Thus Boaz is able to buy Naomi’s land in his stead.

So, to summarize: Naomi, concerned about Ruth’s future, located an obscure relative and instigated a plan to get the two together. She had Ruth seal the deal by bringing up their kinship. The next day, Boaz uses his new relationship with Ruth to obtain land that should have belonged to Naomi’s closer kinsman. Was Ruth more than a pawn in a chess game? Did Naomi play Boaz, or did Boaz play Naomi? Or did everyone live happily ever after?

I think all three.

//Here’s a puzzle for you. Who got played in the story of Ruth and Boaz?

As the story goes, the young widow Ruth accompanied her mother-in-law Naomi back from the land of Moab to Israel, where she had no social ties. Concerned about her daughter-in-law’s future, Naomi decides to help out. She instructs Ruth to wash and perfume herself, and then to follow Boaz, Naomi’s “kinsman.” While Boaz is sleeping off a drunk, Ruth should lie down with him and uncover his “feet” (a euphemism for genitals throughout the Bible).

So Ruth does what her mother says, and Boaz wakes up in the middle of the night to find Ruth there. Ruth introduces herself, and suggests that Boaz should “redeem her” (that is, take her for his wife, as was the custom for the in-law of a widow).

Thus Ruth obtains a husband and stability in a new land. Sneaky, huh? But wait … that’s only one side of the story. More tomorrow.

//When Moses came down the mountain with the ten commandments, he started listing them off to the people.

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make idols … for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God …

… and the people freaked out. They cried, “Moses, you talk to us. But don’t let God do the talking, or we’ll die!”

But isn’t this Moses talking in the first place, just repeating what God told him? Maybe not. The chapter starts with:

And God spoke all these words

Curiously, though, after these first two commandments, the tense switches from first-person to third-person:

3. You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

… and so on. No longer “me” and “I” but “the LORD.” It sounds like someone else is talking now. So, according to Jewish tradition, Moses must have stepped in for God and spoke the remaining eight commandments.

//Three years, right? Jesus’ ministry lasted for three years.

But do you know where we get this idea? It comes from the Gospel of John. Today’s verse tells how, at Passover time, Jesus drove the money changers out of the Temple. John then narrates two more Passover celebrations, with the third one culminating in Jesus’ death. Three years, then, right?

The problem is that all three of the other Gospels contradict this. They all narrate only about one year for Jesus’ ministry, after which Jesus travels up to Jerusalem and dies during Passover.

The question, then, is this: Did John mean for his Gospel to be read chronologically? In an earlier post, I described how John uses the Jewish feasts as a backdrop for his stories of Jesus, and suggested that a chronological reading misses the point. Like the book of Revelation, another document in the Johannine corpus, the order of events may be thematic rather than chronological. The Temple cleansing in today’s verse, for example, surely occurred in Jesus’ final Passover; not two years before! It is, in fact, the trigger for the arrest of Jesus.

Could there have been two attacks on the Temple by Jesus, one two years before the other? Or should we recognize John’s literary creativity in reordering the events, and side with the other three Gospels for about a one-year ministry?

I vote for the latter.

(More about this topic can be found in my latest book, John’s Gospel: The Way It Happened)

Cursed be he that lieth with his mother in law. And all the people shall say, Amen.

//Anyone who has read much of the Old Testament knows that the Hebrew Law had grown quite large and confusing. Scholars generally divide the law into five sections, developed at five different times in history. Here are these five sections:

Trust me: you don’t want to be cursed. It means that the violator is condemned within his community, no longer a respectable member in a society which very much depends upon one another. That is why all twelve laws end with the refrain, “And all the people shall say, ‘Amen!’”

Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.

//Yesterday, I pointed out the growing legend of angels at the tomb of Jesus. The three Synoptic Gospels portray first a man in white, then an angel in white, then two men/angels in white. In Mark and Matthew, the angel is sitting outside the tomb, on the stone door. In Luke, the two angels are inside the tomb, standing.

Will the final Gospel settle the argument?

The first thing to notice is that John sets one record straight: Luke is right. Two angels, and they’re inside the tomb, not outside. They sit (no longer stand) precisely where Jesus was laid.

In John’s Gospel, the two beings are called angels, but with a twist. Peter and John themselves, standing inside the tomb, see no angels. But they see something else, and it makes one think.

They see two white piles. A pile of linen, and a burial cloth. John takes pains to point out that they are in two separate piles. The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Could he be subtly giving us a clue, here?

Now, Mary, peering into the darkness of the tomb after Peter and John have gone home, sees two “angels in white,” precisely where the piles of white rested.

Is the mystery solved?

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

//This verse comes from the book of Mark, our earliest gospel. All translations agree, the being is a “young man dressed in white.” There is no indication whatsoever that this young man is an angel. But the legend grows a bit as we reach Matthew, the second Gospel written:

Matthew 28:2-3, There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow.

Our young man in white has become an angel. Interesting. The third Gospel, Luke, like Matthew was also written with Mark in hand, but it elaborates in a different direction:

Luke 24:4, While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them.

So we’re back to men, not angels, but one man has become two. Luke may be unaware that Matthew changed the man into an angel … yet the robes they wear in Luke’s telling gleam like lightning. Regardless of whether it’s they or their robes that gleam, something is up with these guys! But why two men instead of one?

Stay tuned for part II, when we unmask the men/angels in a controversial finish.

Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses?

Here’s the interesting question: what was Caiaphas wearing? Were they his ceremonial garments? The high priest wore a sleeveless, purple robe hemmed with blue, purple and scarlet tassels shaped like pomegranates alternating with small bells. Only the high priest could don this robe, and only for very special occasions … like Passover Week. At the time of Jesus, this special robe was stored in the Antonia fortress next to the Temple, under Roman lock and key, allowed out only for the ritual celebrations.

Adding to the debate is the word that Matthew uses to refer to the garment: himation, rather than the Gospel of Mark’s more common term chiton. This switch in wording may be meant to refer directly to the ceremonial robe, which would mean that Caiaphas deliberately broke the law forbidding the tearing of holy garments. Presumably, in Matthew’s telling, this act foreshadows the destruction of the Temple 40 years later and the end of the priesthood ceremonies.