John Chapter 2

Chapter 2

A few days after Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist, Jesus, his mother Mary, and a few of his disciples are invited to a wedding at Cana in Galilee. During the wedding feast the wine runs out, and Mary worriedly tells her son, “They have no more wine.” Jesus replies, “Why do you involve me? My time has not yet come.” Yet Mary tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby are half a dozen large stone jars, and Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars with water. Then he tells them to draw some out, and take it to the master of the banquet. They do so, and the master of the banquet tastes the water which has turned into wine. The servants know that this drink was water five minutes ago, but the master has no idea, and compliments the bride and groom on the fine quality of wine they’ve chosen to serve. “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” This is Jesus’ first miracle, and his disciples put their full faith in him.

Later, he goes down to Capernaum with Mary, “[his] brothers”, and his disciples. On the holiday of Passover he goes to the Temple in Jerusalem, and finds lots of people selling sheep, cattle, doves, and acting as money lenders and exchangers on the temple grounds. Outraged at the desecration of the temple, Jesus makes a whip out of cords and drives all the merchants out of the temple. He scatters the money lenders’ coins and overturns their tables. He shouts, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” (Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19) His disciples suddenly recall a prophecy that says the Messiah will be overcome with “zeal for [God’s] house”.

The Jews demand of Jesus, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus replies, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (Matthew 26, Mark 14) The Jews are disbelieving and say that it took 46 years to build the place, there’s no way anyone could build it in three days. But Jesus really meant that his body was the temple, and that he would die and be raised to life again in three days. While Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Passover feast he does various “miraculous signs” which cause people to believe in him. However, Jesus “[does] not need man’s testimony about man, for he [knows] what [is] in a man.”

Commentary

Jesus seems to have been reluctant to do anything miraculous before the start of his official ministry, but when his mother asks him to, he performs a miraculous work anyway. The fifth commandment says that you should “honor thy father and thy mother”, which Jesus appears to be following here. He’s initially hesitant to do anything, but when his mother asks him, he decides to honor her wishes and change the water to wine, and saves the banquet in the process.

I’m curious who the wedding was actually for; it must have been some friend of Jesus’ family for them to have been invited, but the story never names names. It’s also interesting that the master of the banquet is sober enough to be able to tell the difference between good quality wine and crappy wine. He was a more discerning man than most people probably would have taken him for.

Re: going to Capernaum with his “brothers”. Matthew and Mark also mentioned Jesus’ supposed brothers, but if Mary were really a Virgin, then she couldn’t have had children. There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that Aramaic referred to both direct siblings as well as cousins and other close relatives as “brothers”, just like many languages do today. Therefore, the “brothers” mentioned here would be Jesus’ cousins rather than biological siblings in the English meaning. The second possibility is that since Joseph was much older than Mary, he could have had children by a previous wife; if the first wife died, the young Mary could have been his second wife. The “brothers” of Jesus would therefore have been his step-brothers, children from Joseph’s first marriage. The fact that Joseph disappears from the gospel record extremely early supports the theory that he died very early in the story and therefore must have been much older than Mary at the time, who lived well after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

It’s also interesting that Jesus already had disciples so early, despite not having started a public ministry yet. The presumption is that disciples so far consist only of Peter, Andrew, James, and John, whom Jesus recruited personally, but the text never says.

Also: John never describes Jesus’ birth or childhood at all, which is somewhat unusual, given the emphasis that Matthew and Luke placed on Jesus’ birth. (Mark left out Jesus’ birth and started with his adult baptism.) However, John does state clearly that Jesus was born to Mary via God. This leads to the interesting idea that Jesus basically got to pick out his own mother. Why did he pick Mary? She was just a poor carpenter’s wife, but God/Jesus obviously haven’t cared about riches throughout any of the gospels; if anything, riches are to be avoided not sought. Mary must have been a woman of very high integrity and virtue to be chosen by God to bear Jesus. Not to mention, not only did she just carry him around for 9 months, she also raised him. In Luke, when Jesus was twelve years old, she is described as searching frantically for him when he runs off to the temple without her or Joseph’s consent. She (and Joseph) obviously raised him until he was age 30, when he left home and started his public ministry. This means that Mary’s burden was much greater than just incubating a fetus for nine months; she also raised, nurtured, and formed the child for thirty years, until he struck out on his own. However, Mary seems largely ignored by many denominations; growing up Baptist, the Virgin Mary was mentioned only at Christmas, and the rest of her role as Jesus’ mother was totally ignored. In retrospect that viewpoint seemed to stem from anti-Catholicism (we don’t like Catholics, Catholics honor Mary, thus we should ignore Mary), but it’s still sad that they would denigrate the Biblical story for politics.

Re: “saving the best till now.” It’s unclear whether this might be a veiled metaphor for Jesus himself. The other prophets (Elijah, John the Baptist, and the rest) have been the “choice wines” brought out to the people till now, whereas Jesus is the best wine brought out at the very last, when most guests are too drunk to appreciate it.

Re: God’s house turning into a market. I’ve been to churches where they had a gift shop running inside the church, and always wondered if they’d read this verse. Other practices, like charging a dollar to light a memorial candle, are a little more ambiguous, but having straight-up stores inside a church seems like a direct violation of what Jesus is trying to accomplish here.

John never says what “miraculous signs” Jesus does (besides the wedding at Cana) to attract these new followers. The statement that Jesus “knew what was in a man” makes it sound like Jesus was well aware of the worldly and cynical influences on people.

Luke Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Six months later, the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus issues a decree that a census will be taken of the entire Roman Empire. Everyone has to go to their own town to register, so Joseph heads to Bethlehem, since Bethlehem is the ancestral town of David and Joseph is of the line of David. Mary his betrothed is with him, and she is nine months pregnant. While they’re in Bethlehem, the baby comes due, and she gives birth to him. “She wrap[s] him in cloths and place[s] him in a manger, because there [is] no room for them in the inn.”

During the night, some shepherds are in a pasture nearby, and an angel visits them. He tells them not to be afraid, and that he brings good tidings. A Savior has been born; the shepherds will find him wrapped in cloths and laying in a manger. Suddenly, a host of other angels appear next to the first one, and they sing, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” The shepherds go and find Mary and Joseph and the baby. They excitedly run out and tell everyone about the baby and the angels they saw, then come back to worship God. Mary treasures their words and ponders the message of the angels.

A few weeks later, Mary and Joseph go to Jerusalem, only a few miles away, to give the proper sacrifices in accordance with Jewish law. A righteous priest named Simeon lives in Jerusalem, and the Holy Spirit once promised him that he would see the Messiah before he died. On an impulse from the Holy Spirit he goes to the temple, and Mary and Joseph, with the baby, approach him to see about the sacrifices. As soon as Simeon sees Jesus, he recognizes him as the Messiah, and praises God saying, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace.” He says a few more stanzas about the mercy of God’s salvation, and Mary and Joseph marvel at his words. Simeon prophesies to Mary that her child “is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel … And a sword will pierce your own soul, too.”

A prophetess named Anna (who is 84 years old and a widow, and worships night and day and never leaves the temple) comes up to them and gives thanks to God for the baby Jesus, and leaves to tell everyone she can about him. Joseph and Mary return to Nazareth, and Jesus grows up to be strong and healthy. The family makes an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, and on one such trip, when Jesus is twelve, Jesus stays behind in Jerusalem without his parents realizing it. They get partway to Nazareth and realize they can’t find him; they go back to Jerusalem and search for him for three days. He is in the temple, listening to the teachers there and asking them questions. Everyone is amazed at his understanding and his answers.

Mary finally tracks him down, and with a combination of relief and anger asks Jesus, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” Why? Jesus asks. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” Mary and Joseph don’t know what he’s talking about, and they all head back to Nazareth. Jesus is an obedient child from then on. Mary loves him intensely, and treasures every moment with him.

Commentary

I forewarn you that I am easily distracted today.

The logistics of such a large census must have been crazy. There’s only two ways to do it, really. Either have mobile census takers who go out to count the people, or have stationary census takers and make the people come to them. The first way would risk double-counting people (e.g. a person getting counted once at home and once at work, or if they are visiting family, getting counted once at the relative’s house, returning home, and getting counted again) unless there was a great deal of coordination among the mobile census workers. The second way, having the census workers set up shop in centralized offices and make the people come to them, seems to be the way that Augustus chose. The risk with this method is undercounting people, because it would be difficult to enforce attendance and there would be no real way to know if somebody failed to register.

A census would yield tons of demographic info, but the gambit of having everyone go back to their “ancestral homeplace” is actually a pretty smart move for a new ruler, because that would sort everyone by their tribal origin. Visitors to a region would be weeded out of the data, because they’d have to go to their homeland too, so all data returned would be tribe and ethnic specific. For the first Emperor, a new ruler on a new throne, rebellions would have been his number 1 priority, and being able to keep such precise (for the times) demographic tabs on untrustworthy conquered tribes and peoples would have been half the battle right there. However, it also would have been hugely inconvenient for everyone being counted, and Augustus wouldn’t have wanted to ding his popularity either. This leads me to suspect that Augustus probably added a big old caveat to his census declaration, something along the lines of, “Everyone must return to their ancestral homeplace to be counted, UNLESS it is more than x number of miles distant, in which case they must report to the nearest city containing a census office instead.” The Romans were nothing if not pragmatic. But enough of that.

The manger story is weird, for a couple of reasons. First, Luke basically introduces Mary all over again, even though half the last chapter was all about her. It’s almost like he’s not writing his own story so much as editing other writings together, and didn’t quite smooth out the edges where they joined. I did a lot of smoothing in the summary; check out the original and tell me Mary’s totally unnecessary re-introduction isn’t at least a little weird: Luke 2:4-7.

Secondly, I grew up my whole life with the story of Christmas, about Joseph and Mary saddling up their camels or donkeys or whatever and journeying to Bethlehem, only to discover that the whole town is packed to the rafters with other census-goers, so they beg and plead for a room at an inn to stay in but the innkeeper basically tells them “sorry” and flashes a palm-woven No Vacancy sign at them, but they manage to at least score a space in a stable, Jesus is born in the stable, they wrap him in swaddling and place him in a manger, and then shepherds come and sing and stuff. I had a lot of expectations, is what I’m saying. Then we arrive at The Story, the magical moment, the adventure we’ve all been waiting for, and! … it takes exactly two sentences. Two miserable, paltry sentences. Luke doesn’t even mention a stable, just implies there’s one since there’s a manger; no mention of the census crowds, or their being the reason for the inn being full; even the inn itself barely gets a mention. Two sentences! What’s the deal? Even Matthew gave more description than this, and Matthew was like Ernest Hemingway with ADD! Bah.

Re the angel’s song. I gave in and quoted the King James translation, because the NIV version is dumb. Um, ok, well… by “dumb” I mean “it sounds different than what I’m used to.” I know, I know. I’ve heard this verse quoted from the King James ever since ever, and reading the NIV version just sounds strange; it’s like watching the movie Bladerunner after you’ve already read the book. The movie just can’t capture the magic of the classic. For the curious, the NIV writes the song like this: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests.” Bladerunner is a great book, by the way. A Philip K. Dick classic; the original title was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The movie was good too, but it just didn’t quite have the same spirit as the book.

Also! While I was looking up the KJV verses, I also noticed that in the KJV, it doesn’t mention a census at all – it refers to a tax. It says that Augustus sent out a decree declaring that everyone must be taxed, and that everyone had to return to their ancestral city “to be taxed.” If that’s the case, it certainly renders my lengthy ramble about census logistics useless, not that it wasn’t anyway. Looking up the verse in various translations on biblegateway, it looks like most bibles translate that part as either “census” or as synonyms for census, e.g. “enrolled”, “registered” etc, and from what I can see the KJV is the only one that uses “tax”. So, in the very same post where I’m extolling the beauty of the King James version, it also seems that the KJV might not be super accurate in some parts. Why’d you do me wrong like this, King James?

Luke seems to have a real thing for songs. First Mary’s and Zachariah’s songs back in chapter one, now the angels’ song and the priest Simeon’s poem. Luke also seems to pay a lot more attention to Mary. The other gospels mostly ignore her after Jesus is born, but here we see her personal thoughts, her actions as a parent, and her love for Jesus. Joseph is still mostly a silent figure, though.

So far there’s almost no similarity between Luke and Matthew/Mark whatsoever; definitely not the copycatting and identical words and identical stories that we saw between Mark and Matthew. So far it’s looking like Luke definitely wrote his independently.

Luke Chapter 1

The book of Luke was written, of course, by Luke, who was a Greek-educated doctor and probably a gentile. Most likely he was born either in the city of Philippi in Macedonia, or in Syrian Antioch, in modern-day Turkey. Both had a strong Greek cultural influence, dating back to the time of Alexander the Great. Luke most likely completed his writing after the books of Matthew and Mark were written, sometime between 59 and 80AD. He probably wrote in Rome, though it’s possible that he wrote the book in Greece or Israel. The beginning of the work is styled as a letter, but it was a common Greek literary technique to present essays or historical works in the form of dialogues or letters; most likely the Hellenized Luke was copying the Greek style rather than intending it as an actual letter.

Chapter 1

Luke states that others before him have undertaken to write down a record of the events which have taken place, “just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses … Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”

There is a priest named Zechariah, who is married to a woman named Elizabeth, who is barren. Both are descendants of the ancient priest Aaron, the brother of Moses. They live in Judea, which is under the rule of king Herod. One day, Zechariah is chosen to go into the temple to burn incense, and while he’s inside the angel Gabriel appears to him. The angel tells Zechariah that his prayer has been heard, and that Elizabeth is going to have a child, a son, whom they are to name John. John is never to drink any wine or other alcohol; he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from birth, and will bring many people back to the Lord. He will have “the spirit and power of Elijah” to make the people ready for the Lord.

Zechariah doubtfully asks the angel how it’s possible for his wife to have a baby, since they are both so old. The angel gets angry at Zechariah for doubting him, and says that because Zechariah disbelieved the word of God, he will not be able to speak any words until the day that John is born. Zechariah staggers out of the temple mute, and the people outside know that something has happened. He gestures and tries to explain silently what went on, but nobody understands what he’s trying to say, so he gives up and goes home. Soon Elizabeth becomes pregnant, which she is very happy about because her barrenness was a source of shame for her. For the first five months of the pregnancy she stays in seclusion in their home.

At the sixth month, while Elizabeth is still in seclusion, God sends the angel Gabriel to Nazareth in Galilee. A relative of Elizabeth’s, a virgin named Mary, is pledged to be wed to a man named Joseph, who is a descendant of the ancient king, David. The angel tells her, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” He tells her not to be afraid. The Lord has picked her out to give birth to a son, whom she is to name Jesus (which means “the Lord saves”). This son will be the Son of God. Mary asks how it will happen, since she’s a virgin. The angel tells her that it will happen through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that the child will be the son of God, without an earthly father. Nothing is impossible for God, and even her relative Elizabeth is going to have a child despite being old and barren. “I am the Lord’s servant,” answers Mary. “May it be to me as you have said.”

Mary then packs her bags and heads to Elizabeth’s house; the moment Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, the baby jumps in her womb. Elizabeth exclaims, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!” She says that Mary’s child will be the lord of all of them. Mary starts to sing, “My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…” She sings several verses about the kindness with which God has treated her, his mercy over the ages, the way he’s scattered the proud and “lifted up the humble”, and his faithfulness in keeping his word to Israel. Mary stays with Elizabeth for three months, until John is born.

When John is born, she is joyful, as are all her friends and relatives, who still can’t quite believe that she’s not barren anymore. Following the traditional custom, they wait till eight days after his birth, then get ready to circumcise him. When the priests come to do the circumcision, they say that she should name him Zechariah, after his father – the usual custom is to name children either after their parents, or after other relatives. But Elizabeth says no, his name has to be John. The priests frown and say that no one in the family has that name, and go to consult with Zechariah.

Zechariah is still mute, and when the priests ask him what he wants to name the child he has to write it down on a writing tablet. He writes, “His name is John”, and immediately he can speak again. He gives thanks to the Lord, and begins to sing, “Praise be to the Lord … because he has come and has redeemed his people … ” He sings several verses about God’s faithfulness in keeping his word to Israel, and God’s mercy in sending the people a savior, Mary’s child, and a prophet of the savior, Zechariah’s own child. The child, John, grows up, and lives in the desert until he appears publicly to Israel.

Commentary

Luke begins much more formally than the previous two gospels, with an official introduction and everything. It was the classical Greek custom to style written works in the form of dialogues, such as Plato’s The Republic, which is styled in the form of a dialogue between Socrates and Plato’s brothers. This format was also copied by the Romans; for example, Cicero wrote most of his essays in the form of dialogues between himself and his friend Atticus, or other friends. “Theophilus” means “lover of God”. I doubt that there was any real person named Theophilus whom Luke was addressing; “Theophilus” is more of a generic name, much like a modern writer addressing a letter to “John Q. Citizen”. All that said, it shows right away that Luke is a deeply Hellenized character, almost certainly not Jewish, and almost certainly very well educated.

This is the first time Mary is specifically described as being a virgin. Matthew and Mark implied it, but never said so outright, which is actually something I never noticed while I was reading them. I’ve heard a theory that the Greek word here actually meant “young woman” rather than virgin, which the theorist said proved that Mary wasn’t a virgin. The Latin translation (from 405AD) translates Luke’s Greek as “virgin” (virginem), as do the literal English version and the King James. I actually took a class in Greek once, so I thought I’d try my hand at reading it.

The line in the NIV reads: “to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.” (Luke 1:27) The line in Greek reads thusly: προς παρθενον μεμνηστευμενην ανδρι ω ονομα ιωσηφ εξ οικου δαβιδ και το ονομα της παρθενου μαριαμ. From my rusty translation skills, that comes out as “pros parthenon memnesteumenen andri o onoma ioseph ez oikou dabid kai to onoma tes parthenou mariam.” Parthenon means virgin (cf the temple of the Parthenon, which was named after the virgin goddess Athena). Not sure what memnesteumenen means, but it probably has something to do with marriage or betrothal. Andri o onoma ioseph means “a man named Joseph”. Ez oikou dabid probably refers to the line of David – dabid certainly means David, anyway – and onoma tes parthenou mariam means “the name of the virgin was Mary (Mariam).” Anyway, now that I’ve inflicted my terrible Greek on you all, the upshot is that evidently the original Greek really did use the word “virgin”.

In other translations, the angel’s greeting to Mary is rendered as “Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” The Hail Mary prayer is based off this line (“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee” etc etc). “Hail Mary” is written as “Ave Maria” in Latin.

Both Zechariah and Mary question the angel when they hear the news, but Zechariah asks in a dubious way and gets punished, whereas Mary asks in an innocently curious way and receives an answer.

According to the notes, the short song Mary sings is a hymn of praise preserved here by Luke. It’s unclear whether this is a song that Mary actually wrote herself and sang; or if it’s a song written by the early Christians *about* Mary, which Luke included in his writing here to preserve it, inserting it at an appropriate place in the storyline. The presence of the second hymn, by Zechariah, suggests the latter. The first line of Mary’s song in Latin is “Magnificat anima mea Dominum” (“My soul magnifies the Lord”), so the song is often called the Magnificat.

Let’s get this party started! – Matthew Chapter 1

First up: the book of Matthew. According to the introductory notes in my bible, it was written sometime between 50 and 70AD; Matthew’s main goal was to convince the Jewish community that Jesus was their long-awaited Savior or Messiah.

Chapter 1
A genealogy is traced from Jesus all the way back to Abraham, spanning 42 generations. It includes such well-known Israelite figures as Solomon and David; David is the most respected and notable figure in the line.

Jesus’ parents are Mary and Joseph (Joseph being the one descended from the genealogical line just mentioned; Mary’s ancestry is not given). Mary and Joseph are betrothed, but before the actual marriage can take place, Mary discovers she is pregnant despite being a virgin. Joseph doesn’t want to publicly humiliate her over it (which would lead to her execution under the law), so he decides on a quiet divorce instead. Then, he has a dream: an angel appears to him, and tells him not to be angry at Mary. The angel tells him that Mary is pregnant through the Holy Spirit, that the baby will be a boy, and that it is God’s will that Joseph name the child “Jesus” (which means “the Lord saves”) because he will save the people from their sins. All of this would fulfill the ancient prophecy that “the virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel (which means “God with us”).”

Upon awakening, Joseph decides to obey the angel. He quietly axes the idea of divorce, and they get married.

Commentary
Matthew’s writing is so skimpy on details that it’s actually pretty hard to summarize; my summary was just barely shorter than the original. From a writing perspective, I’m sort of puzzled as to how a person could be so stingy with details. If it were me writing, I’d include every detail from the morning sickness Mary suffered down to the exact color of the halo the angel had in the dream. Especially if I were trying to convince somebody that the savior of the world had been born, I think I’d be a little more wordy about it than just a bare-bones account of “Yeah, the mom (and thus also her unborn child, the savior of the world) almost got killed, but then they didn’t so it’s all cool. Next.” Of course, quite possibly I’m simply spoiled by detail-rich modern literature, and that such austere writing styles were just how they rolled back then.

I’ve often heard it said that Mary was just an adulterer, got pregnant while cheating, and used “God did it” as an excuse to escape punishment. From Joseph’s initial reaction, apparently infidelity was exactly what he thought, too. The first thing that came to my mind was: who would she have cheated with? Because afaik, men and women were kept almost entirely separated in that culture, and an unmarried person lived cloistered with their family until marriage, severely limiting any opportunities for a young girl or boy with overactive hormones to sow any wild oats.

Of course, in any culture, if someone is determined enough to do it, they’ll find a way, but we don’t know enough about Mary’s personality to know if she was a party girl or someone more restrained. In fact, we know basically nothing about her at all at this point, except for the fact that she evidently chose to keep the baby rather than opting for a DIY abortion. (which IMO would have been the easier route for her to take, especially if she discovered the pregnancy before it became outwardly noticeable.) That she didn’t take the easier way out argues against her being a party girl type, and makes her seem more like the responsible type. To me, anyway.

Not to mention, why would she even bother with such a flimsy excuse? If your betrothed came up to you and said, “Bad news babe, I’m pregnant. But I didn’t have sex! A spirit made me pregnant!” Would you believe them? Uh, no. You’d tell them to shut up while dragging them with you down to divorce court; or in Joseph’s day, you’d tell them to shut up while gathering up some good hefty stones and organizing an execution posse. I find it hard to believe that if Mary was lying, she couldn’t think of a better excuse than that.

I also found it interesting that it never says how Joseph found out about the pregnancy. Did Mary tell him? Did he notice it himself? Did her family notice, since presumably before the formal marriage she would have still been living with them, and they told him? It never says. It’s also interesting the he finds out about the reason for the pregnancy – the Holy Spirit – from the angel. Not from Mary, which is what I had always assumed.

Also, props for Joseph on choosing divorce over public humiliation and execution. It’s the humanly decent thing to do, but human decency can be in short supply. If modern guys had life-or-death power over cheating fiancés, do you think they would take advantage of it for revenge purposes? You bet your ass they would. So, props for Joseph.