Our last three examples of ‘elencho’ can, I believe, shed particularly helpful light on John 16.8 – though the first one is doubly dubious. It occurs in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8. 1-11, an incident not included in many of the best MSS of the gospel. But although many believe that this passage was not written by John, most are persuaded by its content that it is an authentic account, by another hand, of an event in the life of Christ: it has the ring of truth. The priests and Pharisees bring the guilty woman before Jesus; the equally guilty man is conspicuous by his absence. “The law demands that such women should be stoned”, they say; “What do you say ?” Jesus says nothing, but stoops and starts writing in the sand. They ask him again, and Jesus speaks the memorable words: “The one of you who is sinless – let him be first to throw a stone at her” – and he continues writing in the sand. Generations of readers have longed to know, and have idly speculated, what it was that Jesus wrote. My idle speculation is that he wrote out the other 9 commandments; or perhaps he put in writing what he had spoken in Matthew 5. 28: “I say to you, every man who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. We don’t know; but we do know that Jesus’ words, both spoken and written in the sand, caused the priests and Pharisees to “go out one by one, beginning with the eldest” – they, perhaps, had the most to feel guilty about – until Jesus was left alone with the woman. Several MSS add an explanatory phrase before ‘they went out’: “convicted by their conscience”. This is probably a later addition ( the Greek word for ‘conscience’ 'suneidesis') is never used by John, or in any of the gospels), but it does make explicit what is already implicit in the rest of the account. Jesus, by his transparent righteousness and his direct challenge to the consciences of his questioners, and perhaps by his appeal to God’s holy law, is ‘convicting the world of sin’, just as his ‘parakletos’ continues to do today.
Tuesday, 27 December 2011
[Parakletos] 'elencho' e: John 8
Our last three examples of ‘elencho’ can, I believe, shed particularly helpful light on John 16.8 – though the first one is doubly dubious. It occurs in the story of the woman caught in the act of adultery in John 8. 1-11, an incident not included in many of the best MSS of the gospel. But although many believe that this passage was not written by John, most are persuaded by its content that it is an authentic account, by another hand, of an event in the life of Christ: it has the ring of truth. The priests and Pharisees bring the guilty woman before Jesus; the equally guilty man is conspicuous by his absence. “The law demands that such women should be stoned”, they say; “What do you say ?” Jesus says nothing, but stoops and starts writing in the sand. They ask him again, and Jesus speaks the memorable words: “The one of you who is sinless – let him be first to throw a stone at her” – and he continues writing in the sand. Generations of readers have longed to know, and have idly speculated, what it was that Jesus wrote. My idle speculation is that he wrote out the other 9 commandments; or perhaps he put in writing what he had spoken in Matthew 5. 28: “I say to you, every man who looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery with her in his heart”. We don’t know; but we do know that Jesus’ words, both spoken and written in the sand, caused the priests and Pharisees to “go out one by one, beginning with the eldest” – they, perhaps, had the most to feel guilty about – until Jesus was left alone with the woman. Several MSS add an explanatory phrase before ‘they went out’: “convicted by their conscience”. This is probably a later addition ( the Greek word for ‘conscience’ 'suneidesis') is never used by John, or in any of the gospels), but it does make explicit what is already implicit in the rest of the account. Jesus, by his transparent righteousness and his direct challenge to the consciences of his questioners, and perhaps by his appeal to God’s holy law, is ‘convicting the world of sin’, just as his ‘parakletos’ continues to do today.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment