Jesus
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13. Joseph Fitzmyer remarks wryly: “The stampede of pigs from Gerasa to the lake would have made them the most energetic herd in history!” (Gospel According to Luke, I–IX, 736).
14. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 354.
15. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 355.
Chapter Fifteen: Tabgha
1. Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 211.
2. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 132. Also, not even Jesus’s opponents deny his powers of healing and wonder-working. They challenge the source of his power, not the power itself.
3. The theme is common in the Acts of the Apostles: “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (2:44–45).
4. Meier, whose work on the historical Jesus strives to determine which events have the greatest claim to historicity, writes, “[T]he feeding of the multitudes is supported by an unusually strong attestation of multiple sources.” A Marginal Jew, vol. 2, 965.
5. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 134.
6. Harrington, Jesus, 38.
7. The Feeding of the Five Thousand appears in Mk 6:30–44; Mt 14:13–21; Lk 9:10–17 and Jn 6:1–15; the Feeding of the Four Thousand appears in Mk 8:1–10 and Mt 15:32–39. Donahue and Harrington write in The Gospel of Mark: “Innumerable theories have been offered to explain the relation of the different versions of the feeding to each other and to a postulated primitive narrative [i.e., from before the writing of the Gospels]” (208). Meier’s A Marginal Jew describes the possible interplays between the various accounts (2:950–67). N. T. Wright’s reminder of the possibility of several versions is also helpful: “My guess would be that we have two separate versions of the great supper parable [and other stories and parables that seem duplicated] not because one is adapted from the other or both from a common written source, but because these are two out of a dozen or more possible variations that, had one been in Galilee with a tape recorder, one might have ‘collected,’” that is, from the various witnesses (Jesus and the Victory of God, 170).
8. Again, the idea of several versions is helpful. Meier writes in A Marginal Jew: “Their amnesia about Jesus’s previous feeding miracle when faced with a very similar problem is difficult to comprehend. The most likely explanation is that Mark has incorporated two versions of the same story into his narrative” (2:957).
9. Mk 6:13.
10. Mk 6:31–32.
11. Ez 34. Elisha’s feeding of the multitude in 2 Kings 4:42–44 might have also been on their minds.
12. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 136.
13. Or a “bed for leeks.” Brown, Fitzmyer, and Murphy, eds., New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 610.
14. Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 207.
15. Bergant and Karris, eds., Collegeville Bible Commentary, 990.
16. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:963.
17. Thus the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” may have included not just five thousand men but, additionally, women and children. As Amy-Jill Levine suggested to me, the miracle might be more accurately called the “Feeding of the Twenty-Five Thousand.”
18. The barley harvest takes place around the time of Passover, so John’s inclusion of the barley loaves (6:9) is another link to the Jewish festival and thus perhaps a way of drawing a parallel to the Last Supper.
19. Mt 22:1–14: “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son.” See also Lk 14:8–24.
20. Ex 17:1–7; Ex 16:1–36; Nm 11:4–9.
21. Jn 6:35.
22. Pope Benedict XVI writes in Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration: “The fundamental context in which the entire chapter [John’s narrative of the miracle] belongs is centered upon the contrast between Moses and Jesus. Jesus is the definitive, greater Moses—the ‘prophet’ whom Moses foretold in his discourse at the border of the Holy Land and concerning whom God said, ‘I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him’ (Deut 18:18). It is no accident, then, that the following statement occurs between the multiplication of the loaves and the attempts to make Jesus king: ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world!’ [Jn 6:14]” (264).
23. Mt 8:11.
24. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 58.
25. Mk 10:17–31.
26. Mt 13:8; Mk 4:8; Lk 8:8.
27. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 109.
Chapter Sixteen: Bethesda
1. The story is told at length in St. Peter’s Bones by Thomas J. Craughwell.
2. For citations see The Gospel of John, by Francis J. Moloney, SDB, 171–72. Also, Barclay notes as well that several elements in the story had previously appeared to be simply allegorical: the thirty-eight years, for example, as standing for the time that the Jewish people wandered in the desert, and so on, which lent credence to the idea that the entire story was an allegory (Gospel of John, i:210).
3. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 29.
4. “Running water” and “living water” are the same expression in Hebrew, according to Amy-Jill Levine.
5. There is a dispute over how the Greek text should read—different ancient manuscripts use different names: “Bethesda,” “Beth-zatha,” and “Bethsaida.” “Bethesda” is found in many texts and is the most common way of referring to the place today (McKenzie, Dictionary of the Bible, 92). The New Revised Standard Version, however, uses “Beth-zatha.” For a longer discussion of the Greek variations, see Brown, Gospel According to John I–XII, 206.
6. Barclay, Gospel of John, 1:208.
7. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 345.
8. Gerald O’Collins calls him a “first betrayer,” an anticipation of Judas, in Jesus, 216. Thomas Stegman said that he (and scholars like Gail R. O’Day and Jeffrey L. Staley) see the man more positively. “The verb anangellō (‘announce’) is used elsewhere in John with the positive sense of announcing who Jesus is,” Stegman told me. “O’Day notes that while the healed man focuses on healing, the religious leaders focus on the Sabbath violation. To me, it seems more likely that he would want to announce the good news of his healing, rather than betray Jesus.”
9. Levine and Brettler, eds., Jewish Annotated New Testament, 168.
10. Barclay, Gospel of John, 1:209.
Chapter Seventeen: Jericho
1. Lk 10: 25–37.
2. Mt 2.
3. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 394.
4. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 93.
5. Mk 15:42–46.
6. Mk 9:30–32; 10:32–34.
7. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:687.
8. An insight from Philip Van Linden, CM, “The Gospel of Mark,” in Bergant and Karris, eds., Collegeville Bible Commentary, 925.
9. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:690.
10. That is, in Mark. In Matthew he is leaving “with a large crowd,” and in Luke he is entering with “a crowd.”
11. “Zacchaeus” is from the Hebrew word meaning righteous, upright, or clean.
12. Also known by Scripture scholars as “open commensality,” table fellowship is one of the actions that earned Jesus the enmity of many (Harrington, Historical Dictionary of Jesus, 154).
13. Bergant and Karris, eds., Collegeville Bible Commentary, 970.
14. Mays, ed., HarperCollins Bible Commentary, 949.
15. Lk 18:18–28. Also Mt 19:16–30 and Mk 10:17–31. He is identified as a “young man” in Matthew. Here I call him the “Rich Young Man,” the most common way of referring to him today.
16. Johnson, Gospel of Luke, 287.
17. Mt 25:31–46.
Chapter Eighteen: Bethany
1. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 152.
2. Lk 10:38–42.
3. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 334. Technically, Brown does not include the Prologue (1:1–18) or the Epilogue (21:1–25) in this two-part schema.
4. Interestingly, we are not
told yet in the Gospel of John that Mary had done this. (The anointing comes in the next chapter.) Apparently, John’s audience would have known this already.
5. A “sign” in John’s Gospel points beyond itself and to the coming of the reign of God. As elsewhere, Jesus’s signs underline his words. In A Marginal Jew (2:799) Meier notes that the Raising of Lazarus will be “the greatest, most striking symbol of the divine life that Jesus offers the believer.”
6. Lk 7:1–17; Mk 5:21–43; Mt 9:18–26; Lk 8:40–56.
7. Lk 10:38–42. This Gospel passage, in which Jesus tells the busy Martha that her sister has chosen the “better part” by choosing to sit with him rather than serving the meal, is sometimes used to denigrate Martha and, by extension, to elevate prayer over work. But without Martha neither Jesus nor Mary nor Lazarus would have eaten that night. As I see it, the story is more about Jesus’s reminder to a busy woman that sometimes it’s more important to rest and pray. It’s also a reminder that there is a time for work, but also a time for prayer.
8. Moloney, Gospel of John, 331.
9. Barclay, Gospel of John, 2:310; also Moloney, Gospel of John, 341.
10. Barclay suggests this in Gospel of John, 2:115.
11. The multipart TV series The Bible showed Jesus entering Lazarus’s tomb and weeping as he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Jesus says Lazarus’s name quietly and kisses him on the head. Lazarus’s eyes immediately open, in surprise. It was an unusual portrayal, but effective and moving.
12. The King James Version is unintentionally risible: “Lord, by this time he stinketh.”
13. Moloney, Gospel of John, 337.
14. Mt 9:18–26, Mk 5:21–43, Lk 8:40–56. Also, the raising of the son of the widow of Nain, in Lk 7:11–17.
15. Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 35.
Chapter Nineteen: Jerusalem
1. Ps 122.
2. Merton, Sign of Jonas, 116.
3. Mk 14:3; Mt 26:6.
4. “Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! / Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! / Lo, your king comes to you; / triumphant and victorious is he, / humble and riding on a donkey, / on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (Zec 9:9). Lohfink in Jesus of Nazareth says of this act: “Jesus was deliberately exhibiting an unmistakable sign” (247)
5. Harrington, Jesus, 75.
6. Mk 8:27–30.
7. The same list of possible identities—John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets—is offered in Mk 6:14–15 after the time of death of John the Baptist. N. T. Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God suggests that Jesus “consciously seems to imitate Elijah” (167).
8. Mal 4:5.
9. Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 261.
10. Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 261.
11. Mk 8:31–32.
12. Mk 8:33.
13. Mk 14:3–9; Mt 26:6–13; Jn 12:1–8. In Mark she anoints his head, a more “royal” sign.
14. O’Collins, Jesus, 152.
15. “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” April 3, 1968.
16. Acts 1:13; Acts 2:1 speaks of the disciples gathered in a “house.”
17. Lk 22:12.
18. Catholic theology holds that she was “assumed” into heaven. Today there is a Church of the Dormition of Mary in Jerusalem and, not far from it, the Church of the Death of Mary.
19. A large semicircular niche in one of the Cenacle’s walls, called a mihrab, still indicates the direction of Mecca, the direction faced by Muslims during prayer.
20. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 118.
21. Robert Barron, Eucharist, Catholic Spirituality for Adults series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008) and John Baldovin, SJ, Bread of Life, Cup of Salvation (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003) are two good resources for understanding this theology.
22. Sorry, George and I didn’t make it to Cana. Next time.
23. 1 Cor 12:12–14.
24. Lk 9:58.
25. Jn 17:1–5.
26. Levine and Brettler, eds., Jewish Annotated New Testament, 184.
27. Jodi Magness includes a lengthy discussion of ritual washing of the body and hands in a book whose title may also give a sense of the general state of feet in the day (Stone and Dung, Oil and Spit, 16–31, 73–74).
28. Brown, Introduction to the New Testament, 351.
29. Jn 10:11–18.
30. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 74–75.
31. Schneiders, Written So That You May Believe, 76–92.
32. Thomas Stegman offered a gentler interpretation of the fisherman’s hesitancy: “The Foot Washing,” he told me, “foreshadows Jesus’s giving his life on the cross. Both are acts of love. And as an act of love the Foot Washing is not forced on others, but must be received. Peter’s hesitation, like our own, reflects the difficulty and challenge of accepting God’s love as it is revealed through Jesus.”
33. Marrow, Gospel of John, 229.
Chapter Twenty: Gethsemane
1. The identity of the Beloved Disciple and his relationship to the Gospel of John is a complex question. But overall most scholars believe that the Beloved Disciple is the “source and inspiration for much of the unique material in the Gospel of John,” as Thomas Stegman told me.
2. Jn 13:30.
3. Lk 19:41.
4. “Joel declared for a valley called Jehoshaphat (3:2, 12), whereas Zechariah opted for the Mount of Olives (14:4),” writes Murphy-O’Connor (Holy Land, 133). The “obvious harmonizing solution” was the location here. The Kidron Valley, near the Mount of Olives, was also known as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat” (“Jehoshaphat” means “Yahweh judges”).
5. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 147. Murphy-O’Connor notes that the slopes of the Mount of Olives would have provided a great deal of timber for the Roman legions at the time.
6. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:153.
7. The translation of Mk 14:34 in the New Revised Standard Version, “I am deeply grieved, even to death,” does not adequately capture the connection to Jesus’s soul, or psychē.
8. Ps 42:6; Sir 37:2.
9. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:156.
10. Casey, Fully Human, Fully Divine, 252.
11. Luke also says that in Jesus’s agony, his sweat was “like great drops of blood.” This odd phrase deserves some attention. Raymond Brown notes that at the beginning of his Gospel Luke says that he will try to provide a “reliable” account, and so “we may assume that Luke would not have included what he considered unbelievable.” There are, Brown says, some modern medical explanations of capillaries bursting into the sweat gland, which causes a clotting of the blood, which is then “carried to the surface of the skin by the sweat.” Or, says Brown, it may be simply that Luke did not mean literally “sweating blood.” Luke writes hōsei thromboi haimatos, in which hōsei means “as if” or “like.” In other words, his sweat was so profuse it was as if it were a flow of blood (Death of the Messiah, 1:184–86).
12. Harrington, Jesus, 47.
13. Casey, Fully Human, Fully Divine, 255.
14. Donahue and Harrington, Gospel of Mark, 408. Also see Is 51:17; Jer 25:15–16; 51:57; Ez 23:33; Ps 75:8.
15. Brown, Death of the Messiah, 1:177–78.
16. Zerwick, Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament, 272.
17. Barclay, Gospel of Mark, 400.
18. Jn 8:59.
19. Lohfink, Jesus of Nazareth, 225–26.
20. Pope Francis made this point in one of his homilies, when he spoke of the importance of conscience “even for Jesus,” who listened “in his heart” to the Father’s voice. But an important insight: “Jesus, in his earthly life was not, so to speak, ‘remote-controlled.’” That is, he freely made decisions. “He was the Word made flesh, the Son of God made man, and at one point he made a firm decision to go up to Jerusalem for the last time—a decision taken in his conscience, but not on his own: with the Father, in full union with Him . . . in profound, intimate attunement to the Father’s will. For this reason,
then, the decision was steadfast: because it was taken together with the Father.” (Sunday Angelus, June 30, 2013).
21. Casey, Fully Human, Fully Divine, 259.
22. “And do not bring us into peirasmon” (Mt 6:13). The word can be translated as trial, test, or temptation.
Chapter Twenty-One: Golgotha
1. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 49.
2. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 50–51.
3. Murphy-O’Connor, Holy Land, 50.
4. Jn 17:21.
5. Harrington, Jesus, 69.
6. Mk 14:61–62.
7. It is also worth noting the Second Vatican Council’s document Nostra Aetate, which addressed “non-Christian religions” and opened up a new era in relations with the Jewish people. The document, which enjoys the highest level of authority in the Catholic Church, addresses those who would hold “the Jews” responsible for Jesus’s death: “True, the Jewish authorities and those who followed their lead pressed for the death of Christ; still, what happened in His passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today. Although the Church is the new people of God, the Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God, as if this followed from the Holy Scriptures. All should see to it, then, that in catechetical work or in the preaching of the word of God they do not teach anything that does not conform to the truth of the Gospel and the spirit of Christ.” Thomas Stegman reminded me that the Jewish leaders are usually identified as chief priests, scribes, and elders. Stegman noted, “The Pharisees, at least as a concerted group, are not mentioned [in the Passion], which is of interest given the way they had been sometimes portrayed as Jesus’s opponents during his ministry.” In other words, it is not simply that not all “the Jews” were involved; not even all the “Jewish leaders,” as they were often called, were involved.
8. Harrington, Jesus, 75.
9. Dt 25:3. Also, Brown writes in The Death of the Messiah: “Rods were used on freemen; sticks on military personnel; and scourges on others. These scourges were generally leather thongs fitted with pieces of bone or lead with spikes” (1:851).
10. I am indebted to Felix Just, SJ, for this summary of the overall sequence of the events of the Crucifixion.