John 18 - The New International Commentary
1 “Having said these things”* (v. 1) marks a transition from prayer to narrative, just as “These things Jesus spoke” (17:1) marked a transition from discourse to prayer. His disciples, about whom he has said much in the prayer, but who have not been heard from since 16:30, are back in the picture. They are, apparently, still in the room where they had dined and where he had washed their feet. Jesus now “went out” as Judas had done much earlier (13:30), not alone like Judas but “with his disciples,” putting into action at last his almost-forgotten words three chapters earlier, “Rise, let’s get out of here!” (14:31). Their destination is out of the city, “across the valley of the Kidron,”* to a “garden, into which he entered, he and his disciples.” The singular verbs, “went out” and “entered,” place Jesus at the center of the action, but the phrases “with his disciples” and “he and his disciples” make it clear from the outset that the story is about them as well. The “garden”* is consistent with the synoptic accounts, in which Jesus and the disciples go out to the Mount of Olives (Lk 22:39–40), or to a “field by the name of Gethsemane” (Mk 14:32; also Mt 26:36). Here the location is just as specific, even without being named, for like the “courtyard” in Jesus’ parable (10:1) it seems enclosed, with a definite entrance and exit.* While it cannot be identified with the “garden” where Jesus’ body was later buried (19:41) and where he appeared to Mary Magdalene (20:11–18), the two “gardens” effectively frame the story of Jesus’ passion.
A. The Arrest and Hearing (18:1–27)
Having said these things, Jesus went out with his disciples across the valley of the Kidron, where there was a garden, into which he entered, he and his disciples. Now Judas too, who was handing him over, knew the place, because Jesus had often gathered there with his disciples. So Judas, taking along the band of soldiers and officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees, comes there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing everything that was happening to him, came out, and says to them, “Whom are you seeking?” They answered him, “Jesus the Nazorean.” He says to them, “I am he.” And Judas, who was handing him over, was standing there with them. Then, as he said to them “I am he,” they drew back and fell to the ground. So again he asked them, “Whom are you seeking?” They said, “Jesus the Nazorean.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So if you are seeking me, let these go,” so that the word that he said, that “I have lost none of those whom you have given me,” might be fulfilled. Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the servant of the Chief Priest and cut off his right ear. And the servant’s name was Malchus. So Jesus said to Peter, “Put the sword in the sheath. The cup the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?”
So the band of soldiers and the captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him, and led him first to Annas. For he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was Chief Priest of that year. And Caiaphas it was who counseled the Jews that it was advantageous for one man to die for the people. Now Simon Peter was following Jesus, with another disciple, and that disciple was known to the Chief Priest and went in with Jesus into the courtyard of the Chief Priest. So Peter was standing at the door outside. Then the other disciple who was known to the Chief Priest came out, and spoke to the doorkeeper, and led Peter in. So the servant girl who was the doorkeeper says to Peter, “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” He says, “I am not.” Now the servants and the officers were standing there, having made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and warming themselves. And Peter too was with them, standing there and warming himself.
So the Chief Priest asked Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching. Jesus answered him, “I have spoken publicly to the world. I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret. Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I spoke to them. Look, they know what I said.” When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by said, “Is that how you answer the Chief Priest?” and gave Jesus a slap in the face. Jesus answered him, “If I have spoken badly, testify to what is bad, but if well, why do you strike me?” So Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the Chief Priest.
And Simon Peter was standing there and warming himself. So they said to him “Are you also one of his disciples?” He denied, and said, “I am not.” One of the servants of the Chief Priest, being a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, says, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” So again Peter denied, and immediately a rooster crowed.
Now that the long prayer (17:1–26) is over, we are reminded that despite the privacy of his conversation with the Father, Jesus is still, after all, “with his disciples” (v. 1), as he now “went out” with them “across the valley of the Kidron.” Their destination is a “garden,” evidently a walled garden into which Jesus “entered” (v. 1) and from which he shortly “came out” (v. 4).* “Jesus often gathered there with his disciples,” we are told (v. 2), making this enclosed space an equivalent in real life to the “courtyard” in his discourse about sheep and the Shepherd (10:1, 16), where the sheep, he had said, would “go in and go out and find pasture” (10:9). This is the first we have heard of this customary gathering place, nor do we know at what hour Jesus and the disciples arrived there or how long it was before Judas and his contingent of soldiers, priests, and Pharisees came to arrest him. It was already “night” when Judas had made his departure (13:30), and the reference to “lanterns and torches” (v. 3) makes it fair to assume that it is now either very late at night or very early morning, well before dawn. Once again (as in 13:1, 3) we are reminded that Jesus was not taken by surprise, but already knew “everything that was happening to him” (v. 4). Fully in control of the situation, he asks, “Whom are you seeking?” and identifies himself as the object of their search: “I am he” (v. 5). At those majestic and now familiar words of self-revelation (see 6:20; 8:58), “they drew back and fell to the ground” (v. 6), and that might have been the end of it. It is not. Again he asks them, and again he identifies himself, this time simply to make sure that they arrest only him, and let his disciples go (v. 8). In this way the good Shepherd “lays down his life for the sheep” (see 10:11), so as to fulfill the text, “I have lost none of those whom you have given me” (v. 9; see 17:12).
Woven into the narrative from here on is an account of how one disciple in particular, Simon Peter, is spared and kept safe. In a manner reminiscent of Mark (14:53–72) and Matthew (26:57–75), the narrative moves back and forth between Peter’s story (vv. 10–11, 15–18, and 25–27) and the story of Jesus’ arrest and interrogation (vv. 12–14 and 19–24). Peter, admitted to the Chief Priest’s courtyard by the intercession of an anonymous second disciple (v. 16), tries to protect himself by lying three times (vv. 17, 25, 27), just as Jesus said he would (13:38), but in the end it is not his lies but Jesus himself who (once again) protects him and all the disciples, refusing to divulge their identity, or the nature of their allegiance to him (vv. 19–21). As for Peter’s story, it is left unfinished, but only for a time (see 21:15–23).
V. Verification of Jesus’ Self-Revelation in His Passion and Resurrection (18:1–21:25)
Jesus is abruptly with his disciples once more, as discourse ends and narrative begins again with Jesus’ arrest in a garden across the Kidron valley. Conspicuous in the Gospel’s passion narrative (chapters 18–21) are a series of verifications or confirmations of promises made earlier in the course of Jesus’ self-revelation: that his scattered disciples would not be lost (18:8–9), that he himself would be “glorified” (19:13) and “lifted up” (19:17–18), and that he would return again to the disciples, bringing with him the Holy Spirit, and the joy and peace he had promised (20:19–29). The Gospel ends with a new beginning reminiscent of other Gospels, as Jesus, having revealed himself, now reveals some of the implications of being his disciples (chapter 21).
2 Judas Iscariot has not been heard from since his abrupt departure after the footwashing (13:30), except for the notice (without naming him) that as “son of destruction” he is “lost” (17:12). Although “lost” spiritually, he is very much alive, and fully committed to “handing over” Jesus to the religious authorities. He was identified first as the one who “was going to hand him over” (6:71; also 12:4), and then, after the devil “put it into his heart” (13:2), as the one who “was handing him over” (13:11). Here the “handing over” goes into effect, as Judas is identified in the same way: “Now Judas too, who was handing him over, knew the place, because Jesus had often gathered* there with his disciples” (v. 2). “The place,”* like certain other “places” in the Gospel narrative (for example, 4:20; 10:40–42; 11:6, 48; 19:13, 17, 41) is evidently of significance to the Gospel writer.
Nothing has been said in John’s Gospel of these frequent gatherings of Jesus with his disciples in Jerusalem. The analogy in the Gospel itself is not with times spent together outside Jerusalem, whether in Capernaum (2:12), Bethany “across the Jordan” (1:39; 10:40–11:6), or Ephraim “near the desert” (11:54), for those were extended retreats, not temporary meetings for teaching or prayer. The closer parallel is with Luke’s notice that during his last week in Jerusalem, Jesus spent his nights on the Mount of Olives (Lk 21:37), presumably with his disciples.* The major difference is that in Luke this goes on for only a week, while in John’s Gospel, given Jesus’ far more extensive Jerusalem ministry (see chapters 2, 5, 7–10, 12–17), it emerges (belatedly, to be sure) as a major aspect of his ministry as a whole. Judas “knew” the place because he would have been present at those gatherings just as he was at the last meal, and in fact the best analogy within the Gospel of John itself is with that last meal and those farewell discourses just concluded. In fact, what we have just witnessed is simply a transition from one private place and private gathering to another. The implication is that Jesus spent more time in private with his disciples than what is recorded in chapters 13–17, and perhaps told them more than what is found written in the Gospel (see 20:30; 21:25). As we will see, all this stands somewhat in tension with his later disclaimer to the Chief Priest that “I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret” (v. 20). We have just been treated to five chapters of private (though not exactly “secret”) instruction and prayer, and we learn here that there had been even more.
3 Judas’s prior knowledge sets the stage for an account of his action: “So Judas, taking along the band of soldiers, and officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees, comes there with lanterns and torches and weapons” (v. 3). “The band of soldiers”* is literally “the cohort,” that is, one-tenth of a Roman legion—about six hundred men,* obviously an enormous number for such an undertaking. The extraordinary size of the contingent—particularly in light of what would follow, when they all “drew back and fell to the ground” (v. 6)—recalls other instances in which things that Jesus does, or things that happen to him, are seen as far larger than life: turning more than a hundred gallons of water into wine (chapter 2), or feeding five thousand men with twelve baskets left over (chapter 6), or having a whole pint of perfume poured on his feet (chapter 12), or being embalmed with seventy-five pounds of spices (chapter 19), or bringing in 153 large fish (chapter 21). The definite article suggests that “the cohort” is already known to the readers, perhaps from some previous account, written or oral.
Initially, Judas is the main figure in the arrest. He, single-handedly, is “taking along” this small army, and with them “officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees.” These Jewish “officers”* have been in the picture before, at the Tent festival when “the chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to arrest him” (7:32), and these “officers” returned to “the chief priests and Pharisees” empty-handed (7:45). On the face of it, the two groups—one priestly and linked to the temple, the other made up of laity and linked to the synagogue—do not appear to be natural allies, but the Gospel has quite consistently shown them acting in unison (see 1:19, 24; 7:32, 45; 11:47), and that is the case here. Together, they seem to be synonymous with “the Jews,” and the “officers” (both here and in chapter 7) represent their common interest in bringing Jesus to justice. From here on, however, “the Pharisees” disappear from the story, as the trial and execution is left to “the chief priests” and their “officers” (see 19:6, 15, 21), in addition, of course, to the Roman soldiers. The centrality of Judas is underscored as well by the singular verb: he it is who “comes there with lanterns and torches and weapons,” possibly echoing Jesus’ earlier warning that “the ruler of the world is coming, and in me he has nothing” (14:30).* Obviously the “lanterns and torches”—implying that it is still “night” (see 13:30)—and the “weapons”—as if expecting armed resistance—are the baggage of the whole party, not Judas alone, and probably not Judas at all. Others will do the heavy lifting. Later we will learn that the “band of soldiers” at least has a “captain” (v. 12), as a cohort should. Judas is only a guide, showing them where Jesus can be found, yet for the moment his role in the arrest is placed front and center.
4 Judas’s knowledge was limited by his past experiences with Jesus and the disciples, but Jesus’ knowledge, we are now reminded, was unlimited: “Then Jesus, knowing* everything that was happening to him, came out, and says to them, ‘Whom are you seeking?’ ” (v. 4). The notice comes as no surprise, because what Jesus “knew” has been spelled out already, even before his last meal with the disciples: “knowing that his hour had come” (13:1) and “that the Father had given him all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God” (13:3). And long before that, he “knew from the beginning who they are who do not believe, and who it is who will hand him over” (6:64). Now comes the “handing over,” the first step in the process by which he is “going to God.” That he knew “everything that was happening to him”* means more than that he understands each step in the process as it unfolds. It means that he knows (ahead of time) everything that will happen to him from this point on (see 16:13, “things to come”). Nothing will take him by surprise. Fully in control of the situation, he then “came out” of the walled garden into which he and his disciples had “entered” a short time before (v. 1).
Speaking to the whole contingent, not Judas in particular, Jesus asks, “Whom are you seeking?”* The question recalls his very first words to his own disciples, “What are you seeking?” (1:38), but the situation, and consequently the implication of the question, is totally different. In the intervening chapters we have heard repeatedly of those who were “seeking” Jesus out of questionable motives (6:24, 26), or even “seeking” to arrest or kill him (see 5:18; 7:1, 11, 19, 20, 25, 30, 34, 35; 8:21, 37, 40; 10:39; 11:8, 56), and it is these latter efforts which are now coming to a head. The question is one to which he already knows the answer: they are “seeking” him, and more specifically to arrest him and take his life, for that has been the intention of the “chief priests and Pharisees” all along (see 7:32–36, 45–46; 11:47–50). He might have said, as he does in Luke, “Have you come out as if for a bandit, with swords and clubs? When I was with you every day in the temple, you did not lay your hands on me” (Lk 22:52–53). But he does not, because he knows they have tried again and again, and failed. His “hour” had not yet come (see 7:30; 8:20, 59; 10:39), but now it is at hand (compare Lk 22:53, “this is your hour, and the power of darkness”).
5 The dramatic scene unfolds step by step: “They answered him, ‘Jesus the Nazorean.’ He says to them, ‘I am he’ ” (v. 5a). After all the encounters and skirmishes of the Gospel’s first twelve chapters, the reader would not expect Jesus to have to identify himself, especially given the presence of his nemeses, “the chief priests and the Pharisees.” The identification is evidently for the benefit of “the band of soldiers,” Romans who may not have recognized him. This is the only Gospel that even mentions the presence of Roman soldiers at the arrest, but it is noteworthy that in the three other Gospels as well Jesus has to be identified (by the kiss of Judas; see Mk 14:45; Mt 26:49; Lk 22:47).* As Raymond Brown puts it, “The Synoptics have Judas do it with a kiss; John has Jesus identify himself.”* In typical Johannine fashion, Jesus takes the initiative.
The need for identification suggests that even though the synoptic Gospels do not mention the Roman cohort (contenting themselves with references to a “crowd,” or a “great crowd”), the presence of Roman troops is being tacitly acknowledged (giving John’s narrative some historical credibility). In the other Gospels and the book of Acts, “Jesus the Nazorean” is used mostly by Jews, or in a Jewish setting (Mt 2:23; Lk 18:37), and often either by Jesus’ enemies (Mt 26:71) or in speeches directed to his enemies (Acts 2:22; 3:6; 4:10; 6:14; 22:8; 26:9). But that Romans as well as Jews might have used it is evident from its only other occurrence in the Gospel of John, the inscription Pilate placed over the cross at the crucifixion: “Jesus the Nazorean, king of the Jews” (19:19).* Whether the Roman soldiers, or Pilate, connected the term with Jesus’ origins in the town of Nazareth, or whether they merely picked it up from the Jewish authorities, possibly as a term of reproach, is unclear. In any event, Jesus embraces the designation with the affirmation, “I am he,” or “It is I.”* On the face of it, his words are no more profound than the words of the man formerly blind who, when people wondered out loud if he was the beggar they had seen every day, said simply, “It is I” (9:9). Like that pronouncement, and like two earlier sayings of Jesus himself (4:26; 6:20), it is merely a self-identification here, not a mysterious or profound self-revelation, whether future (8:24, 28; 13:19)* or present (8:58). Or so it would seem. Yet as we will see, the response to it (v. 6) says otherwise, reminding us that the distinction between mere self-identification (“Jesus the Nazorean”) and decisive self-revelation (“the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” see 8:58) is by no means a hard-and-fast one.
Sandwiched between the terse “I am” and the arresting party’s response to it (v. 6) is a brief vignette of Judas Iscariot: “And Judas, who was handing him over, was standing with them” (v. 5b). Nothing further is said of Judas’s role in the arrest of Jesus. Having led the party to Jesus, he is simply there “with them.” The notice appears to be another of this Gospel’s undeveloped “vestigial scenes,” in which a stage is set but nothing happens (see above, on 2:12; 11:54; 12:9, 20–21). Here, of course, something does happen, but Judas has no explicit role in it, and it remains unclear why he is mentioned at just this point. All that the notice does is to show him “standing there with them,”* that is, with Jesus’ enemies, just as Peter will shortly be seen in the Chief Priest’s courtyard, “standing there with them* and warming himself” (v. 18). The crucial difference is that this is our last, and definitive, glimpse of Judas, while for Peter there will be more to come, an opportunity for redemption (see 20:6–7; 21:7, 15–19). Judas is last seen standing on one side of the confrontation and all the rest of the disciples on the other.
6 Even though an earlier “I am” pronouncement on Jesus’ lips drew a strong, instant response once before, when his hearers “took up stones that they might throw on him” (8:59), nothing quite prepares the reader for what happens here at the garden: “Then, as he said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground” (v. 6). The subject of the plural expressions “drew back” and “fell to the ground”* can only be the whole arresting party, six hundred strong and more, “the band of soldiers and officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees” (v. 3). It is tempting to emend the text by making the plurals singular, so that only the guilty Judas (v. 5b) “draws back and falls to the ground,” but there is not a shred of evidence for such an expedient. Clearly, the Gospel writer intends us to visualize an extraordinary scene in which more than six hundred men are literally “bowled over” by two simple words (
In itself the notice that they “drew back” is manageable enough. The same expression was used of Jesus’ own disciples who “turned back and would no longer walk with him” (6:66). It does not have to mean any more than that they lost their nerve and failed (momentarily at least) to carry out their mission.* The reader of the Gospel is aware that this has happened more than once before (see 7:30, 32, 45–46; 8:20, 59; 10:39). What is more shocking is that the whole company “fell to the ground” as if vanquished by a greater army. Nothing in the Gospel of John—not the quantity of wine at Cana, not the five thousand fed with twelve baskets left over, not the pint of perfume at Bethany, not the load of spices at Jesus’ burial, not the net heavy with fish—quite matches the present scene. For that we have to go to Mark’s Gospel, where Jesus sent a “legion” of demons into a herd of “about two thousand” pigs (Mk 5:13), roughly one-third of a Roman legion—even more than the cohort or “band of soldiers” here in John’s Gospel (see v. 3). While there is no discernible link between the two passages, the enormity of the scene is comparable. The effect within John’s Gospel is to put a very large exclamation point after Jesus’ words spoken eight chapters earlier, “I lay down my life, that I might receive it back again. No one took it away from me, but I lay it down on my own” (10:17–18a). “No one!!”*—not even six hundred Roman soldiers, plus “officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees”—can take Jesus’ life from him. The “authority to lay it down,” like the “authority to receive it back” (10:18b), is his and his alone. This he will do, freely and voluntarily, “for the sheep” (10:15), as he will quickly demonstrate (v. 8).
7–9 There is more than a touch of comedy here. As if nothing has happened, Jesus asks the Roman soldiers and Jewish officers lying on the ground the same question he asked before: “So again he asked them, ‘Whom are you seeking?’ ” Evidently picking themselves up and regaining their composure, they give the same answer, “Jesus the Nazorean” (v. 7).* Like a patient instructor explaining things to slow-witted pupils, he says again, “I told you that I am he. So if you are seeking me, let these go” (v. 8). This third occurrence of the characteristic “I am” formula within four verses (see vv. 5, 6) is as much for the reader’s benefit as for theirs. The reader has heard the formula again and again (6:20; 8:24, 28, 58; 13:19), and finds here a confirmation that Jesus is who he said he was all along.* As for the arresting party, Jesus takes advantage of the fact that they have twice said that they were seeking him, and presumably him alone. For them, the formula (whatever its mysterious power may have been in v. 6) now simply distinguishes Jesus from the disciples gathered around him, as the sole object of the search. Therefore he commands them, “let these go.” Nothing is said of how the Roman soldiers and the Jewish officers reacted. They evidently do not fall to the ground a second time, yet they seem to have obeyed Jesus’ command to let the disciples go, to the point of ignoring even Simon Peter’s provocative attack on “the servant of the Chief Priest” (v. 10). In short, the Shepherd willingly gives up his life to the “wolves” (see 10:11–12, 15), and the sheep go free.
Instead of recording immediately what the arresting party said or did, the Gospel writer pauses to tell the reader that Jesus said this “so that the word that he said, that ‘I have lost none of those whom you have given me,’ might be fulfilled” (v. 9). The temporary safety of the disciples stands as a sign of what has come to be called their “eternal security,” that is, their assurance of eternal life. This is in sharp contrast to Mark and Matthew, where the disciples flee and are scattered at the time of Jesus’ arrest (Mk 14:50//Mt 26:56), just as Jesus had predicted (see Mk 14:27//Mt 26:31). In John’s Gospel as well Jesus has predicted that they will be “scattered” (16:32), but the Shepherd’s prayer for the sheep (chapter 17) has intervened, so that their unity and security in the Father’s hand is now restored. That they are not taken into custody along with Jesus is a sign not of their unfaithfulness, as in Matthew and Mark, but of Jesus’ sovereign choice and initiative. The formula, “so that [something] might be fulfilled,”* has been used repeatedly in Matthew, and four times so far in John’s Gospel, for the fulfillment of “Scripture” (13:18, 17:12),* or of what is “written in their law” (15:25), or of “the word” of a biblical prophet (12:38). Here, by contrast (and again in v. 32), it is used of “the word” of Jesus, something he has said in this very Gospel: “I have lost none of those whom you have given me.” The citation does not agree verbatim with any one saying of Jesus recorded in the Gospel, but 6:39 (“that … I might not lose anything”), 10:28 (“they will never ever be lost”), and 17:12 (“none of them is lost”) are reasonably close. The third of these is quite clearly the one in mind here, for it alone speaks of the disciples’ security as an accomplished fact, not simply a hope or intention. The only difference is that the notice here substitutes “I have lost none” (drawing on the language of 6:39), for “none of them is lost” (17:12). The “word” of Jesus that is now fulfilled was a word uttered in prayer. There, conspicuously, Jesus mentioned one exception, “the son of destruction,” Judas, who is very much in evidence here as well. Interestingly, Jesus invoked there “the Scripture” and its fulfillment to account for Judas’s defection (17:12b), but now that Judas stands irrevocably on the other side (v. 5), his defection a fait accompli, there is no further need to mention it.
The appearance of a formula normally used of the fulfillment of Scripture in connection with a saying of Jesus is striking. The text is not so much equating “the Scripture” with the spoken “word” of Jesus, as it is equating Jesus’ spoken “word” with “the word” of Isaiah (see 12:3) or any other biblical prophet. J. A. Bengel’s concise comment was that this showed that Jesus “was a Prophet,”* and this is true as far as it goes. Even Matthew, who repeatedly cites fulfillments of Scripture, cites them not as written “Scripture” but as “what was spoken”* either “by the Lord through the prophet” (Mt 1:22; 2:15), or simply “through the prophets” (2:23), or “through” a particular prophet (2:17; 4:14; 8:17; 13:35; 21:4; 27:9). Only once does Matthew explicitly identify them all as in fact fulfillments of “the Scriptures of the prophets” (Mt 26:56). But the text here implies more than that Jesus was a prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah. In John’s Gospel, as early as chapter 2, “the scripture” and “the word Jesus spoke” stood together as common objects of the disciples’ faith (see 2:22). “The word” encompasses both the message given to Israel long ago and embodied in the Scripture that “cannot be abolished” (see 10:35), and the message the Father has now given to the Son, the word that is “the truth” (17:17; see also 14:24; 17:6, 8).* Behind all of it stands the mystery that this message—identified at the outset as “the Word”—is Jesus (see 1:1, 14).
10–11 The reaction of the arresting party to Jesus’ bold words (v. 8) is still not given. Instead, one of the disciples who has just been set free by Jesus’ words steps in to aggravate the situation: “Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the servant of the Chief Priest and cut off his right ear. And the servant’s name was Malchus. So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put the sword in the sheath. The cup the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?’ ” (vv. 10–11). There is agreement among the four Gospels that such an incident happened, but considerable variation in the details. Only here, for example, is the assailant identified as Simon Peter. In Mark (14:47) it is “one of the bystanders,” who may or may not have been one of Jesus’ disciples; in Matthew (26:51) it is “one of those with Jesus,” evidently a disciple; in Luke (22:49–50) it is one of “those around him,” similarly a disciple, but unidentified. In much the same way that it identified Judas by name as the disciple who asked about the poor at the dinner in Bethany (12:4–5),* John’s Gospel identifies Peter as the disciple who cut off the ear of the Chief Priest’s servant. Thus the incident becomes part of Peter’s personal history. His impetuous act appears to be the acting out of his rash resolve (found only in this Gospel) that “I will lay down my life for you!” (13:37)—as if he were the Shepherd, and Jesus one of his sheep! For this Jesus rebuked him (“You will lay down your life for me?”), and prophesied his triple denial (13:38), a prophecy that will shortly come to pass (see vv. 17, 25–27). No explanation is given as to why Peter (or any of the disciples) was carrying a sword in the first place. Only Luke (22:35–38) addresses that question. In John’s Gospel it is perhaps simply part of Peter’s misguided resolve to “lay down his life,” if need be, as Jesus’ protector and defender.
In contrast to the other Gospels, “the servant of the Chief Priest” is also named. In each of the Gospels, he is “the servant,”* implying either that there was only one, or that he was in some way a known figure, but this Gospel goes a step further is assigning him a name, “Malchus.” It is hardly the case that there was only one “servant,” for we read later of “one of the servants of the Chief Priest” (my italics), who was in fact “a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off” (v. 26). Possibly the definite article, “the servant of the Chief Priest,” simply reflects the fact that the story—and perhaps other stories about this servant—had been told often enough that he would have been a familiar figure to Christian readers.* That John’s Gospel is able to supply a name could be attributable to the fact that one of Jesus’ disciples who was present on the scene was “known to the Chief Priest” (vv. 15–16), and therefore might have known the names and relationships of some of the Chief Priest’s servants. Both Luke (22:50) and John specify that the servant lost his “right ear,” which would not have been expected if the assailant was righthanded and facing him, but this may be nothing more than a signal that real harm was done (like a person’s “right eye” or “right hand,” Mt 5:29–30). Luke adds (22:51) that Jesus “touched the ear and healed him,” but John’s Gospel (like Mark and Matthew) knows nothing of this. The provocation remains, yet Peter is not arrested.
In all this, there is (again) a comic touch. Jesus has floored the whole company with a word (v. 6), and poor Peter thinks his sword is necessary to save the day! But Jesus’ answer is serious. His words found in Matthew would have been appropriate: “Or do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will even now furnish me with over twelve legions of angels?” (Mt 26:53). Or he could have told Peter what he later tells Pilate: “If my kingdom were from this world, my officers would fight, so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingdom is not from there” (see v. 36b). Instead, he tells Peter, “Put the sword in the sheath.* The cup the Father has given me, shall I not drink it?” (v. 11). This is the first we have heard of the metaphor of “the cup,”* so conspicuous in the synoptic accounts of Jesus in Gethsemane. The closest we have come to it was a pronouncement about food rather than drink, “My food is that I might do the will of the One who sent me and complete his work” (4:34). In this Gospel we do not hear Jesus praying that the cup might “pass from him” (as in Mk 14:36//Mt 26:39//Lk 22:42), for here he acknowledges “the cup” without question as one of the many things he says “the Father has given me”—the last thing, in fact, after “authority over all flesh” (17:3), the disciples themselves (17:6) and the “words” to teach them (17:8), God’s own name (17:11–12), and God’s own glory (17:22, 24). It is implicit in all of these, the epitome of them all, for it is his mission.
In place of the Gethsemane prayer, the Gospel of John has given us two other prayers, one in which Jesus rejects the petition, “Father, save me from this hour,” in favor of “Father, glorify your name” (12:27–28), and the other in which he brings all that “the Father has given” to bear on his mission of “consecrating” himself as Shepherd and High Priest on behalf of his disciples (chapter 17). In John’s Gospel, no less than in the other three, “the cup” is the equivalent of “the hour,” the looming prospect of suffering and death.* In Jesus’ own words, it is nothing other than the “command I received from my Father,” to “lay down my life, that I might receive it back again” (10:17–18). From this moment on, he will begin to “drink the cup.”
12–14 Ignoring the attack on “the servant of the Chief Priest” (v. 10), the arresting party carries out its mission of seizing Jesus, and him alone. The power of Jesus’ word is still in evidence, for the only apparent reason Peter is not arrested is that Jesus has commanded, “let these go” (v. 8). Accordingly, “the band of soldiers and the captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Jesus and bound him, and led him first to Annas,” identifying “Annas” as “the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was Chief Priest of that year” (vv. 12–13). “The captain”* is here simply the officer in charge of the Roman cohort.* He was not mentioned before (v. 3), only because Judas was pictured as the one who led the party to the garden because he “knew the place” (v. 2), but the mere mention of a “band of soldiers” (or cohort) clearly presupposed such a “captain” or “chiliarch.” With Judas’s work now done, the “captain” appears as leader of the Roman troops, while the “officers both from the chief priests and from the Pharisees” (v. 3) are now simply “the officers of the Jews.”
Jesus is bound and taken “first* to Annas,” identified not as Chief Priest but as “the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was Chief Priest of that year” (v. 13). Caiaphas is known to the readers of the Gospel precisely as “Chief Priest of that year” (11:49, 51), and just to make sure they do not miss it, the Gospel writer now reminds them that “Caiaphas it was who counseled the Jews that it was advantageous for one man to die for the people” (v. 14; see 11:51b). According to Luke, Annas and Caiaphas seem to have shared the high priesthood (Lk 3:2), and Annas bears the title by himself in the book of Acts (4:6).* Yet in John’s Gospel only Caiaphas is identified (now for the third time!) as “Chief Priest of that year.” For this reason it appears likely that the “Chief Priest” who will shortly interrogate Jesus (vv. 19–23) will be Caiaphas and not Annas. The notice that Jesus was led “first” to Annas (v. 13) implies that this may not have been his actual destination, but for the moment nothing is said of where he was taken after that. Only after the interrogation by “the Chief Priest” will we learn that “Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the Chief Priest” (v. 24). Consequently, the identity of “the Chief Priest” who questioned Jesus “about his disciples and about his teaching” (vv. 19–23) remains an open question. If it is Annas, why go to such lengths to identify Caiaphas as “Chief Priest of that year,” but if it is Caiaphas, why introduce Annas, the father-in-law, at all? Either way, we have another of this Gospel’s characteristic “vestigial scenes,” in which a stage is set but nothing happens (see, for example, v. 5).* The question is whether it comes here, where Jesus is taken to Annas and nothing happens, or at verse 24, where he is sent to Caiaphas and nothing happens. Each time we expect something to happen we are told instead what is going on with Peter (see vv. 15–18, 25–27). For the moment, the word “first” (v. 13) simply leaves us to wonder where Jesus will be taken “second” or “next,” and where he will finally end up. We will cross that bridge when we come to it (that is, at vv. 19 and 24).
15 In agreement with Matthew and Mark, but not Luke,* the narrative in John’s Gospel alternates back and forth between the arrest and interrogation of Jesus (vv. 12–14, 19–23) and the three denials of Simon Peter (vv. 15–18, 25–27). Having brought Jesus “first to Annas” (v. 13), the writer abruptly turns his attention to Peter, who was last seen holding a sword (v. 11): “Now Simon Peter was following Jesus, with another disciple, and that disciple was known to the Chief Priest, and went in with Jesus into the courtyard of the Chief Priest” (v. 15). The glimpse of Peter still “following,” even though he and the other disciples have been freed by Jesus’ word (v. 8), is surprising, but perhaps less so than in the other Gospels, where they have all fled (Mk 14:50//Mt 26:56) and he alone follows “from afar” (Mk 14:54//Mt 26:58//Lk 22:54). Only here does Peter have as his companion “another disciple,”* who makes possible his entry into the Chief Priest’s courtyard (see v. 16). It is common in some quarters to identify this anonymous “other disciple” with the “one whom Jesus loved” and who reclined at his side at the last meal (13:23),* but there is no evidence here to support such a claim. At most, the case could be argued from a subsequent passage where Mary Magdalene ran “to Simon Peter and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved” to tell them of the empty tomb (20:2; see also vv. 3, 4, 8, where he is called simply “the other disciple”). But this would be a very belated and very indirect identification of this anonymous disciple who was “known to the Chief Priest” with the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (13:23). This identification, however, has at times been made the basis for certain conclusions about the disciple “whom Jesus loved”—either that he was not a Galilean but a Judean, familiar with Jerusalem and the temple, or, if he was a Galilean (John the son of Zebedee, for example), that he had in the past sold fish to the priestly aristocracy in Jerusalem.*
There is no real basis for any of this. Even if the narrative in chapter 20 were intended to identify the “other disciple” here, it is not something the reader can possibly know at this point, or is meant to know. Peter’s companion here is anonymous, probably intentionally so.* His presence in the story accomplishes two things: first, it explains how Peter gained entrance to the Chief Priest’s courtyard (something left unexplained in the other three Gospels); second, it provides an eyewitness (other than Peter himself) to the events in the courtyard, specifically Peter’s three denials (vv. 15–18, 25–27), and possibly—though by no means certainly—to Jesus’ interrogation by the Chief Priest (vv. 19–24). That function at least—of being able to testify to what he has seen—he does have in common with “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (see 21:24). Why then is he not named (given that even a character as minor as Malchus is named)? That remains a mystery, but no more so than why the beloved disciple is not named—or, for that matter, the anonymous witness to the spear thrust and the blood and water from Jesus’ side a chapter later (19:35). The truth of John’s Gospel rests on the testimony not of just one, but of two or more (see 8:17), and in fact of many witnesses, some named and some unnamed, from John (1:7, 15, 19, 34) and Jesus (repeatedly), to the disciples as a group and the Advocate who will instruct them (15:26–27). All we need to know about this particular disciple is that he was “known to the Chief Priest,”* and therefore “went in with Jesus into the courtyard of the Chief Priest.” We have last seen Jesus’ disciples gathered in a “garden” (v. 1), an enclosed space into which they “entered” with Jesus, and from which Jesus “came out” (v. 4). Now we see one of them entering with Jesus into another enclosed space, the Chief Priest’s “courtyard,”* coincidentally (or perhaps not!) the same term Jesus used for an enclosure in which a shepherd keeps his sheep (10:1, 16). That it is in fact coincidental is likely, for the Chief Priest’s “courtyard” is conspicuous in the other Gospels as well (see Mk 14:54; Mt 26:3, 58; Lk 22:55; also of Pilate’s praetorium, Mk 15:16). But if so, it is a happy coincidence for the Gospel writer, for there are hints of a deliberate contrast between the Shepherd’s “courtyard” (chapter 10) and that of the Chief Priest. The former is specifically for Jesus’ disciples, while the latter is closed to them unless, like Peter’s companion here, they are “known to the Chief Priest.” In the former, Jesus the Shepherd is in charge. In the latter, the Chief Priest is in charge, or so it would seem, yet the events that will happen here (vv. 15–18, 25–27) are exactly what Jesus said would happen (see 13:38).
At this point, Jesus and the “other disciple” have entered the courtyard, but whether or not this will also be the scene of Jesus’ interrogation by the Chief Priest (vv. 19–23) is not altogether clear. In Matthew the “courtyard” is “outside” (Mt 26:69), and in Mark “below” (Mk 14:66) the room where Jesus is being questioned.* In Luke, by contrast, Jesus seems to be with Peter in the courtyard, for he has only to “turn and look at him” (Lk 22:61), but Jesus is not interrogated until the next morning, when Peter is not present. In John’s Gospel there are no clear signals as to where the interrogation takes place, only changes of scene as the writer turns his attention from the “other disciple” and Peter (vv. 15–18), to Jesus and the Chief Priest (vv. 19–24), and then back again to Peter and his denials (vv. 25–27). The reader has no way of knowing whether these contrasting scenes are both within the courtyard, within earshot of one another, or whether Jesus has been taken to a different venue for questioning. For the time being, at least, the notice that the unnamed disciple “went in with Jesus” seems to place Jesus in the courtyard as well.
16 There are further reminders that the courtyard was an enclosed space, as “Peter was standing at the door outside.* Then the other disciple who was known to the Chief Priest came out, and spoke to the doorkeeper, and led Peter in” (v. 16). This courtyard, like the Shepherd’s, has a definite “outside” and “inside,”* with a “doorkeeper” to check on the legitimacy of anyone seeking entrance. In this case the doorkeeper is not a man as in chapter 10 (see 10:3) but a woman.* Peter, who would have “laid down his life” like a shepherd (13:37), now has to yield the shepherd role to “another disciple,” to whom “the doorkeeper opens” (see 10:3).* This disciple, “known to the Chief Priest,” is apparently known to the doorkeeper as well. Having been admitted without question, but realizing that Peter has not been allowed to enter with him, he comes out again, and has only to speak a word to her to have Peter admitted. She does not have to check with the Chief Priest, or anyone else. This is consistent with the notion that the disciple was familiar enough with the circle of the Chief Priest’s servants to have known such things as Malchus’s name (v. 10) and the identity of one of his relatives (v. 26). As for Peter, aside from the fact that he had been “following Jesus” (v. 15), it is unclear why he even wants to enter the courtyard, given that he will repeatedly deny any allegiance to his Lord.*
17 The doorkeeper, now fully identified as “the servant girl who was the doorkeeper,” questions Peter, apparently not as a test for allowing him to enter (for he is already in), but simply for information. “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” she asks, and Peter answers, “I am not” (v. 17). The “also” does not necessarily imply that she knows that Peter’s companion is a disciple, for a similar construction is used in Matthew (26:69), in Mark (14:67), and in Luke (22:56), where no other disciple is in the picture. The question merely reflects a general awareness that Jesus had disciples, and that Peter, being unknown to her, just might be one of them.* The form of her question* should probably not be overtranslated (as most English versions have done) with a construction such as “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?”* All the writer wants to do is make clear that this is not an accusation, as if to say, “Are you not also one of his disciples?”* but a simple question. In the other Gospels, by contrast, it is not even a question but an outright accusation (see Mt 26:69//Mk 14:66//Lk 22:56). Here in John’s Gospel the word of Jesus has already set the disciples free (v. 8), so that if Peter had answered “Yes,” he still would have been safe. But Peter does not trust the word of Jesus, any more than he did when he drew his sword and cut off the ear of the Chief Priest’s servant, so he answers, “I am not,”* the first of three such denials (see vv. 25, 27), in stark contrast to Jesus’ thrice-repeated “I am” (vv. 5, 6, 8).* His self-serving denials are not only unfaithful but redundant, for his safety and salvation are already assured (see v. 9).
18 The narrative is about to take leave of Peter as it shifts to the interrogation of Jesus by the Chief Priest (vv. 19–24), but before doing so it sketches a memorable scene: “Now the servants and the officers were standing there, having made a charcoal fire because it was cold, and warming themselves. And Peter too was with them, standing there and warming himself” (v. 18). Again a scene is set, but nothing happens immediately. The reader is expected to remember it, for the narrative will resume seven verses later, with Peter still “standing there and warming himself” (v. 25).* That it might have been “cold” (
The point of the scene is that Peter, having just denied his relationship with Jesus (v. 17), now stands “with them,”* that is, on the other side, with Jesus’ enemies, just as surely as Judas Iscariot stood “with them” at Jesus’ arrest (v. 5). The unanswered (and unasked) question is, Where is the “other disciple” standing, the one who brought Peter into the courtyard? If he was “known to the Chief Priest,” and to the doorkeeper, is he too standing with Peter and all “the servants and the officers”? If he is a witness to Peter’s unfaithfulness, is he at the same time a witness to his own? Could the incriminating phrase “with them” be replaced with an even more incriminating “with us,” as if he too belonged to that number? Or, having gone “in with Jesus into the courtyard of the Chief Priest” (v. 15), is the unnamed disciple now with Jesus at the interrogation? We will never know, for the story is not about him but about Peter. Peter’s unfaithfulness is comparable to that of Judas, but with two decisive differences: first, Peter has been set free by Jesus’ word (“let these go,” v. 8, and “I have lost none of those whom you have given me,” v. 9), and Judas has not; second, Judas’s story is over, and Peter’s is not. In the end, Peter will be warmed (and fed) at another “charcoal fire”* (21:9).
19 Abruptly the scene changes: “So the Chief Priest asked Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching” (v. 19). Two issues present themselves. First, who is “the Chief Priest” who is questioning Jesus? Is it Annas, “the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was Chief Priest of that year,” to whom Jesus was taken “first” (v. 13)? This is supported by the fact that nothing has been said of Jesus being taken anywhere else, and especially by the notice a few verses later, “So Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the Chief Priest” (v. 24). Consequently, this is the view of virtually all modern commentators.*
On the other hand, it can be argued that the “Chief Priest” is Caiaphas, on the grounds that only he is ever referred to as “Chief Priest” anywhere else in John’s Gospel, three times conspicuously as “Chief Priest of that year” (v. 13 and 11:49, 51)?* As we have seen, the identification of Annas as Chief Priest depends on Luke (3:2; Acts 4:6) and on Josephus, not on anything in the Gospel of John itself. The difficulty with this view, and the reason few have adopted it, is that it requires either reading verse 24 retrospectively, “Now Annas had sent him bound,” as in the KJV (italics added),* or rearranging the text (as was done in certain ancient manuscripts and versions).* A decision is difficult, but on balance it is probably better to maintain the consistency of the designation, “the Chief Priest,” instead of allowing it to refer to Caiaphas in verse 13 (where the two are clearly distinguished) and probably in verse 15 as well,* and then abruptly shifting it to Annas, the father-in-law, in verses 19–23. The reader, after all, does not yet have the “benefit” of verse 24 to give the impression that Jesus is still with Annas. The text claims that “the Chief Priest” was questioning Jesus, and there is no reason to assume a different “Chief Priest” from the one named as “Chief Priest of that year” (v. 13), the one who had “the courtyard,” and to whom the “other disciple” was “known” (v. 15)—surely Caiaphas and not Annas. By default as it were, Caiaphas must (for now at least) be understood as the interrogator. If so, then it must be assumed that Jesus, having been taken to Annas “first” (v. 12b), has moved on from there.
The second issue, still unresolved, has to do with the location of the scene. Are Jesus and the Chief Priest in the “courtyard,” within sight and hearing of Peter and those gathered around the fire (as in Luke), or are they somewhere else in the building (as in Matthew and Mark)? John’s Gospel gives no clear answer. The last we heard of Jesus, the disciple “known to the Chief Priest,” was entering the courtyard with him (v. 15), and we can only assume—again by default—that the Chief Priest’s courtyard is where they both still are. As it happens, however, the location makes little difference, for the contrasting scenes—Peter at the charcoal fire and Jesus being questioned by the Chief Priest—are kept separate. Neither seems aware of the other, even though the possibility exists that the “other disciple,” Peter’s mysterious companion, may have been witness to both.
What the two contrasting scenes have in common is an interest in the question, “What about Jesus’ disciples?” Jesus must die (see v. 14), but what about them? Peter has been asked explicitly, “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” (v. 16), and now the Chief Priest asks Jesus just as explicitly “about his disciples”* and “about his teaching”* (v. 19). Those are not two questions, but one.* As for his “teaching,” Jesus could have said what he said once before, “If anyone chooses to do his will, he will know about the teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak on my own” (7:17), but he does not, for the Chief Priest neither knows the teaching nor does the Father’s will. What he wants to know is whether or not Jesus’ disciples will keep his teaching alive after he is executed. Are they a unified group, and consequently a danger, or not? In response to the fear expressed earlier that “If we let [Jesus] go on like this, they will all believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (11:48), he had counseled that getting rid of “one man” would take care of matters (11:50). But Lazarus also had been a wanted man (see 12:10–11), and now Caiaphas wonders about all the disciples. What are their names? Should they not at the very least be rounded up and questioned? Or even hunted down and executed, even as the council had resolved to kill Lazarus? Jesus already addressed that issue in the presence of the company that came to arrest him (v. 8, “So if you are seeking me, let these go”), and his words had the power to carry out his intention. But the Chief Priest was not present then, and now Jesus must protect his disciples once again. Simon Peter thinks he is protecting himself in the Chief Priest’s courtyard, but in reality it is Jesus who protects him, now for the second time.
20–21 Jesus answers the question “about his disciples and about his teaching” with a rather unexpected redefinition of discipleship. Instead of something like, “My disciples are those whom the Father has given me” (see 6:37, 39; 17:6–8, etc.), he seems to change the subject: “I have spoken publicly* to the world. I always taught in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together, and I spoke nothing in secret.* Why do you ask me? Ask those who heard what I spoke to them. Look, they know what I said” (vv. 20–21). But he is not avoiding the question. Rather, he is blurring, if not eradicating, any distinction between potential and actual discipleship, by implying that all who heard his message, whether “in synagogue” or “in the temple,” are at least potential disciples, and therefore qualified to testify to what he said. In other words, there is no need to question an inner circle of his adherents, for his “teaching” (v. 19) is a matter of public record.
The references to teaching “in synagogue” and “in the temple” recall the summary statements in 6:59 (“These things he said teaching in synagogue in Capernaum”) and in 8:20 (“These words he spoke in the treasury, teaching in the temple”), respectively (italics added), taking us back to the major discourses of his public ministry, where his real “trial” had already taken place.* In particular, the first of those settings (6:59) was when “many of his disciples” complained, “This word is hard. Who can hear it?” (6:60), and finally “turned back and would no longer walk with him” (6:66). Their unfaithfulness proved that while all of Jesus’ hearers were potential disciples, only a few (twelve in particular, 6:70) turned out to be actual disciples who continued to “walk with him” in Galilee and Judea. Here Jesus seems to have in mind that same distinction, teasing the Chief Priest by invoking the broader definition of “disciple” to encompass the general public, all who had heard Jesus’ message “in synagogue and in the temple, where all the Jews come together.” They are the ones to interrogate, he urges, not the pitiful band of followers who used to gather from time to time in the “garden” across the Kidron valley (see v. 2).
There are even stronger echoes here of the Tent festival, when Jesus’ brothers urged him to “go to Judea, so that your disciples may see your works that you do” (7:3), and in this way “reveal yourself to the world” (7:4). There too, as we have seen, a broader definition of “disciple” may have been in evidence. Now, in the presence of the Chief Priest, he claims to have done just what his brothers asked—“I have spoken publicly to the world”—with “the world” defined as the Jewish world, “where all the Jews come together” (v. 20).* While the Chief Priest does not need to be reminded that the Jerusalem temple is “where all the Jews come together” (a notice intended as much for the reader as for him), it does underscore even for him the truly “public” character of Jesus’ teaching. This Jesus reinforces with the claim that “I spoke nothing in secret,” and in fact, as we have seen, Jesus’ ministry at the Tent festival followed a trajectory from initial “secrecy” (7:4, 10) to a very “public” self-disclosure midway through the festival (see 7:26), and back finally into “secrecy” when his life was threatened (8:59). Technically, perhaps, the claim that he “always”* taught in the public square and said “nothing” privately or “in secret” could be viewed as an overstatement,* given his lengthy discourses to his disciples after the footwashing (13:36–16:33) and his intimate prayer to the Father (17:1–26), yet the point is clear enough.* He made no claims to his disciples in private that he did not also make publicly.* While he did not say exactly the same things to the crowds and “the Jews” in the first half of the Gospel that he said to the inner circle in the latter half (the circumstances being different), his teaching has been consistent and coherent throughout. For this reason, there is no need to question his so-called “disciples,” for his message was the same everywhere. All “those who heard”* (v. 21) are in effect his “disciples,” for they are just as qualified to testify to his claims as the “twelve,” or however many they may have been, who traveled with him and gave him their allegiance. In this way, Jesus answers the Chief Priest’s question in such a way as to protect his actual disciples (including Peter) from interrogation—even while Peter is being asked, “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” (v. 17; also vv. 25, 26).
22–23 The reaction is swift, though not from the Chief Priest himself, who says nothing. In contrast to the synoptic Gospels, Jesus has not been asked such questions as “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” (Mk 14:61; see also Mt 26:63; Lk 22:67), only about his disciples and his teaching. Consequently he has said nothing so provocative as “I am” (see 8:58; Mk 14:62), or “I and the Father are one” (10:30), and there is nothing so drastic as an attempted stoning (8:59; 10:31), or even a rending of garments and cry of blasphemy from the Chief Priest (as in Mk 14:63–64; Mt 26:65).
Instead, “When he had said these things, one of the officers standing by said, ‘Is that how you answer the Chief Priest?’ and gave Jesus a slap in the face. Jesus answered him, ‘If I have spoken badly, testify to what is bad, but if well, why do you strike me?’ ” (vv. 22–23). If this interrogation is in any way the Gospel of John’s equivalent to the so-called “trial” in the Synoptics before the Chief Priest (Mt 26:57–68//Mk 14:53–65; see also Lk 22:66–71), the slap in the face stands as the equivalent to the conclusion of that scene, when “they spat in his face and beat him, and some slapped him, saying, ‘Prophesy to us, Christ! Who is it that struck you?’ ” (Mt 26:67–68).* Yet the two scenes have little in common, for the similarities serve only to highlight the differences. The far closer parallel is Paul’s appearance before a later Chief Priest, Ananias, who without provocation “ordered those standing by to strike him in the mouth,” to which Paul replied, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there judging me according to the law, and yet in violation of the law you command that I be struck?” (Acts 23:2–3). The same “bystanders” then said to Paul, “How dare you insult God’s Chief Priest?” and Paul backed down: “I did not know, brothers, that he was Chief Priest, for it is written that ‘You shall not speak badly* of a leader of your people’ ” (Acts 23:4–5). There is no way to assess the literary relationship between the two passages. Does John’s Gospel know the book of Acts, or the other way around? Is Paul being pictured as more compliant than Jesus, or Jesus as more defiant than Paul? Or is it sheer coincidence?* Instead of attempting a judgment on literary dependence, it is best to start with what the two texts have in common: an awareness of the command in Exodus 22:28, “You shall not revile God, or curse a leader of your people” (NRSV). To “curse” is literally to “speak badly,”* as in the book of Acts. Paul quotes the text almost verbatim, and it seems to be the text the officer of the Chief Priest has in mind when he slaps Jesus in the face. Jesus’ answer reflects this: “If I have spoken badly,* testify to what is bad, but if well, why do you strike me?” (v. 23).
In the other Gospels, Jesus is convicted on the grounds of “blasphemy” (Mt 26:65; Mk 14:64; implicitly in Lk 22:71), and the text in Exodus equates blasphemy against God with speaking ill of “a leader of your people.” Jesus in the Gospel of John (even more than in the Synoptics) has made extraordinary claims for himself (5:17; 8:58; 10:30), and, as we have seen, has had to defend himself already against charges of “blasphemy” (see 10:33, 36). Here he does so again, this time by redefining what it means to speak ill or “badly” of someone, whether of God or a human leader. He contrasts speaking “badly” with speaking “well,”* a term used consistently in this Gospel for speaking the truth (see 4:17; 8:48; 13:13). The issue is not whether something he has said is insulting or blasphemous, but whether or not it is true. If it is true, it is not blasphemy, and if it is false, it should be labeled as such, and testimony brought to the contrary. The reader cannot help but notice that Jesus has said nothing even remotely insulting to the Chief Priest, nor does the Chief Priest act as if he had. The slap in the face is an egregious overreaction. Moreover, what he has said to the Chief Priest (vv. 20–21) is the truth, in that it points back to and reinforces the truth that he has repeatedly spoken “in synagogue and in the temple” throughout his public ministry in Jerusalem and Galilee.
The words of Jesus here, “If I have spoken badly, testify to what is bad, but if well, why do you strike me?” are his last words to the Jewish community or the Jewish hierarchy in the Gospel of John. At the end of the day, they refer not simply to verses 20 and 21, but to all that he has said publicly, from “Destroy this sanctuary, and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19) right up to the present. As such they stand as a lasting challenge to that religious establishment, echoing and reinforcing his words near the end of the Tent festival, “Who among you convicts me of sin? If I speak truth, why do you not believe me?” (8:46). In contrast to the synoptic accounts (Mt 26:68//Mk 14:65; Lk 22:71), Jesus has the last word. Neither the officer who slapped him nor the Chief Priest has anything to say.
24 Curiously, as we have seen, the hearing in the presence of someone called “the Chief Priest” (vv. 19, 22) ends with the notice, “So Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas the Chief Priest” (v. 24). If, as we have been assuming, the reader understands “the Chief Priest” to be Caiaphas (in keeping with vv. 13–15 and 11:49–51), the notice brings him up short, leaving him with two alternatives. It is either (1) a correction, to the effect that the so-called “Chief Priest” in verse 19–23 was Annas all along, not Caiaphas; or (2) a belated clarification, to the effect that of course Annas, to whom Jesus had “first” been taken (v. 12b), had by this time sent the prisoner along to the real Chief Priest, his son-in-law Caiaphas. Of the two, the first is the more awkward, for it necessitates going back and rereading verse 19–23 with Annas now in mind as the interrogator.
Despite the near consensus against it among commentators, the second option (as in the KJV and the Knox translation) is the more attractive one. Moreover, the reading of the aorist (“So Annas sent* him”) as if it were a pluperfect (“So Annas had sent him”) is quite legitimate. The difficulty is that the connective “so”* normally carries the narrative forward (in the sense of “therefore,” or “then”), rather than looking back at something that has already happened.* Yet if the notice is taken as parenthetical, that is, as one of this Gospel’s characteristic “narrative asides,”* a retrospective reference is not out of the question. As we have seen, the writer has a way of introducing some of his narrative asides belatedly. Among his belated clarifying notices are 1:24 (“And they were sent from the Pharisees”), 1:28 (“These things came about in Bethany, across the Jordan”), 3:24 (“For John was not yet put in prison”); 4:2 (“although Jesus himself was not baptizing, his disciples were”), 4:8 (“For his disciples had gone into the town to buy provisions”),* 4:39 (“Now many of the Samaritans from that town had believed in him because of the woman’s word”), 5:9 (“But it was the Sabbath that day”); 9:14 (“Now it was Sabbath on the day Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes”), 11:30 (“Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha met him”), and especially 12:10 (“And the chief priests resolved that they would also kill Lazarus”), where the aorist verb quite clearly has the force of a pluperfect. If verse 24 is read as a belated notice that Jesus, having been sent “first” to Annas (v. 12b), has by now been sent on to Caiaphas, it may simply be an example of that same tendency.*
Alternatively, if the “Chief Priest” here is Annas (as most commentators believe), then when Jesus is finally sent on to Caiaphas (v. 24), it must be acknowledged that nothing happens there. The scene is left undeveloped, the mother of all “vestigial” scenes.* If Caiaphas had any questions of his own, we are not privy to them. Instead, we are privy to Peter’s second and third denials (vv. 25–27), and Jesus is sent on “from Caiaphas” (v. 28) to the praetorium and Pontius Pilate. Why would a hearing before Caiaphas be hinted at, only to be suppressed? One possible reason is that John’s Gospel knows of an extended narrative about a hearing before Caiaphas (possibly with the whole Sanhedrin present), and has deliberately chosen to leave it out. Just such a hearing, the so-called “trial” of Jesus before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin, is found in both Mark (14:53–65) and Matthew (26:57–68).* John’s Gospel has no need for such a trial because, as we have seen, the whole public ministry of Jesus has been his “trial,” and the verdict is already in (see 11:47–53). If the “Chief Priest” now questioning Jesus is Annas, then the silence about what went on with Caiaphas (vv. 24 and 28) could be a tacit acknowledgment of another narrative that the Gospel writer knows about but deliberately omits. On the other hand, if the “Chief Priest” now questioning Jesus is the one identified as such everywhere else in the Gospel—that is, Caiaphas, “a certain one among them” (11:49)—then the Gospel writer is boldly substituting his account for that of Matthew and Mark, on the ground that whatever else may have happened that night, Jesus’ fate was settled long before, throughout his public ministry and finally by Caiaphas himself at a private meeting with “the chief priests and the Pharisees” (“So from that day,” 11:53). But either way, there is no formal trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin in John’s Gospel, and he is not legally convicted of anything.
25 Without so much as a “Meanwhile,” the narrative shifts back to Simon Peter, right where we left him (see v. 18), “standing there and warming himself”* (v. 25). He is asked the same question as before, “Are you also one of his disciples?” (compare v. 17), except that it is asked by an indefinite “they” rather than the doorkeeper, implying perhaps some general skepticism about his previous answer. But the answer is the same, this time explicitly labeled a denial: “He denied,* and said, ‘I am not.’ ”*
26–27 The third and last question follows immediately: “One of the servants of the Chief Priest, being a relative of him whose ear Peter cut off, says, ‘Did I not see you in the garden with him?’ ” (v. 26). On the surface, the question seems to raise only the issue of Peter’s presence in the garden. But the phrase “with him” gives it away—not “with them” around the fire (v. 18), not “with them” who arrested Jesus in the garden (v. 5), but “with him,” implying allegiance to Jesus.* Moreover, the form of the question* is confrontational. In contrast to the first two questions, this one expects a positive answer, and the juxtaposition of “I” and “you”* gives to both personal pronouns extra emphasis, as if to say, “I—did not I see you—yes, you—in the garden with him?”* Even more to the point is the identification of the third questioner as “a relative* of him whose ear Peter cut off.” Evidently the same source that knows Malchus’s name (quite possibly Peter’s companion who was “known to the Chief Priest”) knows the kinsman as well, and therefore knows how incriminating the question is. Clearly the kinsman knows more about Peter than what he is asking about. In fact, he knows what Peter has done, and his question is nothing less than an accusation. Peter, for his part, seems to have no idea of the relationship between Malchus and the questioner, and consequently no awareness that the question is loaded: “So again Peter denied, and immediately a rooster crowed” (v. 27). This time he does not say “I am not,” because the question was not cast in the form, “Are you also one of his disciples?” (vv. 17 and 25). Consequently he denies not only his allegiance to Jesus, but his very presence at the scene of the arrest. The notice that “immediately a rooster crowed” has no particular significance if the story told in this chapter is the whole story. It acquires significance only in the light of Jesus’ solemn pronouncement five chapters earlier, “Amen, amen, I say to you, never will a rooster crow until you have denied me three times” (13:38). Here again the Gospel writer could have added (as in v. 9), “so that the word that he said, that ‘never will a rooster crow until you have denied me three times’ might be fulfilled,” but there is no need to labor the point. The fulfillment of Jesus’ word is crystal clear. Even readers with a shorter attention span than five chapters are expected to grasp it, simply because they are likely to have heard the story told again and again, as in all the Gospels.
In contrast to all the other Gospels, Peter’s reaction is not given. We are not even told that he heard the crowing of the rooster. He is not said to have “remembered” Jesus’ prediction,* nor to have “wept” at what he had done. The notice that “a rooster crowed” is in fact more for the reader’s benefit than Peter’s, reminding us again that Jesus’ prophecies always come true. No attempt is made to get inside Peter’s head or record his feelings, and we will not meet him again until Mary Magdalene summons him, with “the other disciple whom Jesus loved,” to Jesus’ empty tomb (20:2). From this we know that he was not arrested. His denials were at some level “successful,” not by virtue of his own repeated lies (vv. 17, 25, 27), but by virtue of the Shepherd’s willingness to “lay down his life” for him, not once but twice—first at the arrest (vv. 8–9), and then in the presence of the Chief Priest (vv. 20–21). As for Peter’s feelings, and his love (or lack of love) for Jesus, that issue is deferred to the very end of the Gospel (see 21:15–17, 18–23).
28 The narrative shifts back again from Peter (vv. 25–27) to Jesus the following morning: “So they are leading Jesus from Caiaphas into the praetorium—it was early morning—and they themselves did not go into the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled but might eat the Passover” (v. 28). Jesus is “led” from the Chief Priest’s courtyard, just as he was “led” to it in the first place (v. 13), but this time it is not specified who “they” are who are doing the leading. Before, it was “the band of soldiers and the captain and the officers of the Jews” (v. 12),* but here the comment that “they themselves”* stayed outside the praetorium to avoid ritual defilement makes it clear that “they” no longer include “the band of soldiers” (that is, the Roman cohort) with its “captain.” They will in fact be identified in due course as “the Jews” (vv. 31, 38; 19:7, 12), or, more specifically, “the chief priests and the officers” (19:6). Once Jesus had been handed over to the Jewish Chief Priest, the Roman cohort and its captain seem to have made their exit. Now the process is reversed, as the Jewish priests and officers hand him back again to the Roman authority.
The “praetorium” was the headquarters and residence in Jerusalem of the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate (see Mt 27:27//Mk 15:16). There was another praetorium at Caesarea on the coast (known as “Herod’s praetorium,” Acts 23:35), where a later governor, Felix, had his headquarters, and which Pilate may have used as well. Roman governors seem to have commandeered preexisting Herodian structures, and it is debated whether Pilate’s praetorium was the Antonia fortress north of the temple area which went back to Maccabean times (see Josephus, War 1.75; Antiquities 15.403), and which Herod had converted into a palace, or Herod’s more elaborate palace on the western height of the city near the present Jaffa gate (see Josephus, War 5.176–83).* What matters in the narrative is not the precise location of the praetorium, but the simple fact that it is now a Roman, and thus a Gentile, residence. As we have seen, participation in the Passover festival required ritual purification (11:55),* and to enter the residence—even the temporary residence—of a Gentile, even the governor, would have compromised ritual purity, particularly since it was now “early morning”* of the day before they were to “eat the Passover.”* The notice makes it clear that the Passover meal has not yet taken place, confirming what the reader already knows, that Jesus’ last meal with his disciples was not the Passover meal (see 13:1, “Now before the festival of the Passover”).
The scene is heavy with irony. Those bringing Jesus to Pilate are so scrupulous about the laws of purity that they will not even enter the praetorium, yet their scruples do not extend to murder. Their intent all along has been to kill Jesus (see 5:18; 7:1, 19; 8:37, 40), and now the opportunity has come. The irony was recognized already by Origen, who (in commenting on 11:55) wrote that those who “purified themselves” for the Passover did so for an act of worship that was “not a work of God’s feast, but a polluted work that they performed when they killed Jesus” at the Passover. They thought their Passover worship “offered service to God” (see Jn 16:2, which Origen also cited explicitly), but in fact it only made them “more polluted than they were before they purified themselves.”*
B. Jesus, Pilate, and the Jews (18:28–19:15)
So they are leading Jesus from Caiaphas into the praetorium—it was early morning—and they themselves did not go into the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled but might eat the Passover.
Therefore Pilate came outside to them, and said, “What charge do you bring against this man?” They answered and said to him, “If he were not doing what is bad, we would not have handed him over to you.” Then Pilate said to them, “You take him, and judge him according to your law.” The Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone,” so that the word of Jesus that he said signifying by what death he was going to die might be fulfilled.
Then Pilate went in again into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, “You are the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Are you saying this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Pilate answered, “Am I a Jew? Your nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus answered, “My kingship is not from this world. If my kingship were from this world, my officers would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingship is not from here.” So Pilate said to him, “So you are a king!” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king; I was born for this, and for this I have come into the world, that I might testify to the truth. Everyone who is from the truth hears my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”
And having said this, he went outside again to the Jews, and he says to them, “I find in him no probable cause, and there is a custom you have that I release to you one at the Passover. So shall I release to you the King of the Jews?” Then they cried out again, saying, “Not this one but Barabbas.” And Barabbas was a terrorist.
So then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged. And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and put it on his head and wrapped a purple robe around him, and they kept coming at him and saying, “Hail, King of the Jews,” and giving him slaps in the face.
And Pilate again went outside, and says to them, “Look, I am leading him outside to you, so that you might know that I find in him no probable cause.” Then Jesus came outside, wearing the thorny crown and the purple robe. And he said to them, “Look, the man!” So when the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, saying, “Crucify, crucify!” Pilate said to them, “You take him, and crucify, for I find in him no probable cause.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God.”
Then, when Pilate heard this word, he was all the more afraid, and he went into the praetorium again, and he says to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate says to him, “Are you not speaking to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you, and I have authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority against me at all if it were not given to you from above. For this reason the one who handed me over to you has greater sin.” From this time, Pilate kept seeking to release him, but the Jews cried out, saying, “If you release this one, you are not a friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself king opposes Caesar. Then Pilate, when he heard these words, led Jesus outside and sat down on the judge’s bench at a place called Stone Pavement, and in Hebrew
When Jesus is transferred from the Chief Priest’s courtyard to the praetorium, the headquarters of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor (18:28), a series of scenes follow, alternating back and forth between the “outside” (18:29, 38; 19:4, 5, 13) and inside of the praetorium. The alternation is necessary because the Jewish leaders who led Jesus to Pilate “did not go into the praetorium, so that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover” (18:28). Again the narrative features an enclosed space, not the Chief Priest’s courtyard this time but the residence of a Gentile, a place of uncleanness for the devout Jew. The notice that they stayed outside the praetorium (v. 28) governs the seven scenes that follow, as Pilate accommodates himself to their religious scruples:
1. Pilate “went outside” and addressed the Jews (18:29–32).
2. Pilate “went in again into the praetorium” and questioned Jesus (18:33–38a).
3. Pilate “went outside again” and told the Jews they had no case against Jesus (18:38b–40).
4. Pilate had Jesus flogged and mocked, evidently within the praetorium (19:1–3).
5. Pilate “again went outside,” brought Jesus out, and said, “Look, the man!” (19:4–7).
6. Pilate “went into the praetorium again,” and again questioned Jesus (19:8–11)
7. Pilate “led Jesus out,” and said, “Look, your king!” (19:12–15).
In the end, Pilate will accommodate himself as well to the desires of the chief priests to have Jesus executed (see 19:16), but not before exploring thoroughly the issue of whether or not Jesus is claiming to be a king. His questioning of Jesus convinces him that whatever kind of a king Jesus might be, he is no threat to the Roman emperor. Three times he tells the Jews, “I find in him no probable cause” (18:38; 19:4, 7). And yet, fascinated with the phrase, “the King of the Jews” (see 18:33; 19:3), he repeatedly uses it to mock them: “Shall I release to you the King of the Jews?” (18:39); “Look, your king!” (19:13); “Shall I crucify your king?” (19:15). Ironically, those who at the beginning of the narrative refused even to enter the Roman praetorium for fear of ritual defilement, in the end cry out, “We have no king except Caesar!” (v. 15b).
29–30 Because they would not enter the praetorium, the Roman governor came out to meet them: “Therefore Pilate came outside* to them, and said, ‘What charge* do you bring against this man?’ ” (v. 29). While the phrase “this man” could imply that Jesus is with him, this is unlikely, for Jesus plays no role in the interchange, and later, when Pilate does bring him out (19:4–5), it is made explicit. Just as in Mark (15:1), Pilate himself is introduced abruptly, without being identified as governor (as in Mt 27:2 and Lk 3:1), perhaps because it was already widely known that, as the earliest creeds declared, Jesus was crucified “under Pontius Pilate” (see, for example, 1 Tim 6:13; Ignatius, To the Trallians 9.1; To the Smyrnaeans 1.2). Pilate’s first words to them, “What charge do you bring against this man?” echo Jesus’ parting words, “If I have spoken badly, testify to what is bad, but if well, why do you strike me?” (v. 23). They had no answer for Jesus, and they have no real answer for Pilate: “They answered and said to him, ‘If he were not doing what is bad, we would not have handed him over to you’ ” (v. 30). Still unwilling to “testify to what is bad” (v. 23), they nevertheless expect Pilate to take their word for it that Jesus is “doing what is bad,”* that is, that he is an “evildoer” or criminal, in the sight of the Romans and the empire no less than in theirs.* In sharp contrast to Luke (23:2), where they list three specific charges (“We found this man leading our nation astray, and hindering the paying of taxes to Caesar, and saying that he himself is Christ the king”), they refuse to say what Jesus has done wrong.*
31 With no charges filed, Pilate refuses to consider the matter: “Then Pilate said to them, ‘You take him,* and judge him according to your law’ ” (v. 31a). There is every evidence within the Gospel that they could have done so. A few verses later they will tell Pilate, “We have a law, and according to the law he ought to die, because he made himself Son of God” (19:7), and on that ground (5:18; 10:33) they have repeatedly tried to kill Jesus, culminating in two attempts at a stoning (8:59; 10:31).* But if they are free to “take him and judge him according to your law,” and if stoning is still their intention, why have they brought Jesus to Pilate at all? Their answer is puzzling. Instead of confirming (as in 19:7) that their law condemns Jesus to death, they seem to imply the opposite: “The Jews said to him, ‘It is not lawful for us to kill anyone’ ” (v. 31b).
The words, “It is not lawful,”* are commonly interpreted to mean that Roman law did not permit the Jews to impose the death penalty, so that consequently Jesus would die not by stoning but by crucifixion, a Roman and not Jewish method of execution (hence v. 32, citing Jesus’ pronouncements about being “lifted up,” as on a cross). Yet it is odd that the Jews would have to remind Pilate of what Roman law did or did not permit. It is just as odd that Pilate seems to have just given them permission to do what they are now saying was forbidden (“You take him,” v. 31a), and odder still that he will give them permission again, in the same three words, later on: “You take him, and crucify him” (19:6). Moreover, such expressions as “It is lawful”* or “It is not lawful” are more often used of what is allowed or forbidden by the law of Moses than by Roman law.* Viewed in this way, “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone” sounds more like a simple allusion to the Decalogue: “You shall not murder” (Exod 20:13; Deut 5:17, NIV, NRSV). To be sure, the vocabulary does not exactly match in Greek any more than in English.* Yet “kill”* is also not quite what we would expect in speaking of a formal execution, for which the more judicial verb “put to death”* would have been more appropriate.* What the vocabulary does match perfectly is what this Gospel has been saying of the Jewish authorities all along, that they were seeking “to kill” Jesus (5:18; 7:1, 19, 20, 25; 8:37, 40). This terminology extends even to the judicial decision of the council chaired by Caiaphas the Chief Priest “that they would kill”* Jesus (11:53), and Lazarus as well (12:10).
The consistency of language was not lost on Origen, who once again savored the irony, citing first verse 31b (“It is not lawful for us to kill anyone”), and then in quick succession verses 35 and 40 and 19:7, 12, and 15 to demonstrate that in effect they did exactly what it was “not lawful” for them to do. Then he cites 16:2 (“The hour is coming when everyone who kills you will think he offers service to God”) with the comment that this prophecy of Jesus was “fulfilled, beginning with himself.” Finally he repeats verbatim Jesus’ last charge against them, “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you, which I have heard from God” (8:40).* The point is that now, in saying “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone,” the Jewish chief priests have condemned themselves, validating at last Jesus’ judgments on them long before at the Tent festival: “Has Moses not given you the law? And none of you does the law? Why are you seeking to kill me?” (7:19), and “If you are Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works of Abraham. But now you are seeking to kill me” (8:39–40a). It is indeed “not lawful … to kill anyone,” but they have plotted from the beginning to kill not just “anyone,” but even worse, “a man who has spoken to you the truth which I heard from God. This Abraham did not do” (8:40b). Their lawlessness is now condemned again, this time from their own lips.*
This is all very well within the framework of the Gospel, and the Gospel writer’s intention, but what is going on in the minds of the Jews themselves? What are they thinking? They are saying it to Pilate after all, not just to the reader.* What is he to conclude from their disclaimer, “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone”? As we have seen, it is not plausible to assume that they would be lecturing Pilate on the fine points of Roman law. Possibly they are tacitly acknowledging that they have not held a formal trial and consequently do not have a conviction. While the other Gospels seem to imply a trial of some sort before the Jewish Sanhedrin or ruling council (see Mt 26:55–66//Mk 14:55–64; Lk 22:66–71), it is true that in John’s Gospel itself there has been no formal trial and no conviction. Therefore if they were to execute Jesus without a formal conviction, it would be murder, or a lynching, in violation of the ancient command, “You shall not murder.” These points I argued some years ago.* Yet it must be acknowledged that such rules did not stop the Jews from attempting to stone Jesus without a trial on two previous occasions (8:59 and 10:31).*
Evidently something else is going on here. For some reason, it is important to the Jewish authorities that the Romans carry out the execution of Jesus. Quite possibly they may have feared that they did not have broad enough popular support, and that if they were to stone Jesus to death there would be repercussions among “the crowds,” who have all along been ambivalent about Jesus (see 7:49, “this crowd that does not know the law”; also 12:19, “Look, the world has gone after him!”; also Mt 26:5, “Not during the festival, so as not to cause an uproar among ‘the people’ ”). The stated fear of the chief priests was that if Jesus were allowed to continue to perform signs, “they will all believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation” (11:48), and Caiaphas had proposed that the wrath of Rome be visited on one man so that the whole nation might be spared (11:50). To this end, it was not enough that Jesus be arrested, tried, and put to death by the Jewish authorities. That would gain them no particular favor with the Romans, and might cause them to lose favor with the people. It would be far better if the Roman governor himself came to perceive Jesus as a threat, and if possible be persuaded to carry out the execution on his authority, in the process giving them due credit for their loyalty to Rome. Jesus has implied that they are liars (see 8:44, 55), and their claim that “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone” is, if not an outright lie, at least an attempt to deceive Pilate by leading him to believe that their law prevents them from putting Jesus to death. Pilate, with only a cursory knowledge of Jewish teaching, might well have known that there was something in their law about not committing murder, and been willing to take them at their word.*
32 In any event, the Gospel writer’s comment that this exchange took place “so that the word of Jesus that he said signifying by what death he was going to die might be fulfilled” (v. 32) sounds a bit premature. Its point is that since the Jews will not execute Jesus, he will die not by stoning (as he would have in 8:59 and 10:31) but by crucifixion, the Roman method of execution. That is, he will be “lifted up” on a cross just as he said he would (3:14; 12:32, 34; see also 8:28). This is by no means a foregone conclusion. Pilate has not yet agreed to crucify Jesus. Three times he will tell them, “I find in him no probable cause” (v. 38; 19:4, 6), before he finally yields to their demands (19:16). Yet the writer’s comment signals already what is coming: Pilate will capitulate. Jesus will be crucified. His word “signifying by what death he was going to die” will be fulfilled. Here for a second time (as in v. 9) the formula “that it might be fulfilled”* occurs with a saying of Jesus rather than a citation of Scripture. In contrast to verse 9 the actual saying of Jesus (this time about being “lifted up,” 3:14; 12:32) is not quoted or paraphrased. Instead the writer simply identifies it as the pronouncement by which Jesus “signified” the manner of his death (see 12:33). Yet the earlier citation, “I have lost none of those whom you have given me” (v. 9) did have the same premature-sounding quality seen here, for at the moment of Jesus’ arrest it was by no means a foregone conclusion that the lives of his disciples would be spared.* The “fulfillment” of what he had said before was at the same time a prophecy of what was to come, and the same is true here. Jesus’ fate is sealed, his destiny assured, for “just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of man must be lifted up” (3:14, italics added).
33 The scene changes, as “Pilate went in again* into the praetorium and summoned Jesus and said to him, ‘You are the King of the Jews?’ ” (v. 33). That he “summoned” Jesus after reentering the praetorium confirms that Jesus was still inside, presumably under guard. Pilate’s question, “You are the King of the Jews?”* is exactly the same question, word for word, that he asks in all four Gospels (compare Mt 27:11//Mk 15:2//Lk 23:3), leaving us to wonder where the title came from, and where Pilate got the idea that this was what Jesus might be claiming. The answer (to the second question at least) is found only in Luke, where the Jewish authorities who bring Jesus to Pilate level certain explicit charges, the last of which is that of claiming to be “Christ, a king,” or, perhaps, “an anointed king”* (as in Lk 23:2b). In Matthew and Mark, Pilate’s question is not fully explained, for we are told merely that they “handed him over” to Pilate (Mt 27:2//Mk 15:1). No charges are mentioned. Here in John’s Gospel it is even more puzzling in that Pilate has asked them, “What charge do you bring against this man?” (v. 29), and they have refused (v. 30). How then does Pilate know that the charge is that of claiming to be “King of the Jews”? It is as if Luke 23:2 is needed in order to make sense of the Gospel of John (not to mention Matthew and Mark!).*
While the phrase “the King of the Jews” makes an abrupt first appearance here, the reader of John’s Gospel has known almost from the beginning that Jesus is indeed both “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel” (1:49). And even though he himself thwarted those who tried “to seize him to make him king” (6:15), the crowds welcomed him publicly into Jerusalem as “the One coming in the name of the Lord, even the King of Israel” (12:13), in the face of which the Pharisees lamented, “Look, the world has gone after him!” (12:19). This may have been enough to prompt Pilate’s question, “You are the King of the Jews?” Pilate’s terminology as a Gentile, and as governor of Judea only, would have been “the Jews” and not “Israel,” but he might well have known of the public clamor (even without an enumeration of the charges mentioned in Luke), and framed the question for himself.
34 The whole of verses 34–37 appears to be an expansion of the cryptic “You say so,”* which is what we find in the other three Gospels (Mt 27:11//Mk 15:2//Lk 23:3), followed by resolute silence (see Mt 27:12//Mk 15:4–5; compare Lk 23:9). Here in John’s Gospel, by contrast, he speaks freely, turning the words, “You say so,” into a question, “Are you saying this* on your own, or did others tell you about me?”—the same question, in fact, that is in the mind of the reader.* That is, where does the phrase “King of the Jews” come from? Have “the Jews” themselves made some charge to that effect (as they do explicitly in Lk 23:2), or is Pilate’s question strictly his own?
35 Pilate’s reply is unambiguous: “Am I a Jew? Your nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” (v. 35). The question “Am I a Jew?” is rhetorical, emphatically dissociating Pilate from “the Jews,” just as emphatically as when he told the chief priests a moment before, “You take him, and judge him according to your law” (v. 31). In the same breath he dissociates himself from Jesus, identifying Jesus’ accusers as “Your nation.” There is ironic truth in this, for as Caiaphas prophesied, the “nation” is Jesus’ own nation, destined to be redeemed by his death (see 11:51*). Pilate views Jesus and “the Jews” in much the same way. He wants nothing to do with either, and he asks Jesus the same question he asked them. Of them he had asked, “What charge do you bring against this man?” (v. 29), and of Jesus, “What have you done?” that is, “What are they charging you with?” But as he has already revealed (v. 33), kingship is on his mind.
36 Jesus knows this, and responds accordingly: “My kingship* is not from this world. If my kingship were from this world, my officers would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews. But now my kingship is not from here”* (v. 36). He tacitly acknowledges that he is a king, just as Nathanael and the crowds in Jerusalem confessed him to be, but he is careful to explain what kind of king he is not, leaving the reader to infer the kind of king he is. In contrast to 3:3 and 5, it is not a question of a “kingdom,” a realm that human beings can “see” (3:3) and “enter” (3:5), but rather “kingship,” something belonging to Jesus alone, his royal authority as Son of God (see 1:49, “Son of God” and “King of Israel”).
It is important here to avoid a common misunderstanding. That Jesus’ kingship is not “from this world”* does not mean that it is merely “spiritual” in the sense of being inward or subjective. It is not simply Christ reigning in the hearts of individuals. The phrase does not so much define the nature of Jesus’ kingship as locate its origin. It is not “from” this present world, just as Jesus himself is not “from this world” (8:23b). Rather, he is “from above” (8:23a), or “from heaven” (3:13; 6:33, 41, 50, 51, 58), and he now wants the reader to know that the same is true of his “kingship.” He says it twice: “My kingship is not from this world,” and “But now my kingship is not from here.” In the same way that “not from this world” implies “from heaven,” or “from above,” the notice that Jesus’ kingship is not “from here” implies that it is “from above”* (3:31). In short, it comes not from Jerusalem or Rome, but from heaven, from the very presence of God, and therefore belongs to God. Divine origin implies divine ownership. “Not from this world” implies no allegiance to this world, but allegiance only to God. Jesus’ kingship is not merely “spiritual” but eschatological, rather like the Holy City in Revelation, always coming down “out of heaven from God” (Rev 3:12; 21:2, 10). It is nothing less than Jesus’ all-encompassing “authority over all flesh” (17:2; also Mt 28:18), and in the end it will supersede all human authority.* Pilate in the end will pronounce it politically harmless (see v. 38b), but it is more dangerous than he imagines.
The two assertions that Jesus’ kingship, or royal authority, is not “from this world” (or “from here”) frame a contrary-to-fact condition. The second one, “But now my kingdom is not from here,” brings matters back to reality, but the conditional clause itself addresses the question, “What if Jesus’ kingship were from this world? What difference would it make?” The difference, he says, is that “my officers would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews.” To begin with, he would have “officers”* under him, like the “officers” of the chief priests who came to arrest him (18:3, 12, 18, 22; also 7:32, 45), not just “disciples.” These “officers” would fight back, and he would not have been taken. Admittedly, the logic is not airtight. First, one of Jesus’ disciples, evidently fancying himself an “officer,” had in fact drawn a sword and cut off Malchus’s ear (v. 10). Second, even a king whose kingship was “not from this world” might (according to a different tradition) have called on “twelve legions of angels” for reinforcements (see Mt 26:53). But the first was irrelevant because Jesus renounced Peter’s misguided attempt to help (v. 11), and was in fact arrested despite the token resistance. The second scenario—even if known to the writer of John’s Gospel—would have made no sense at all to a Roman governor. The contrary-to-fact condition is ambiguous as far as tense is concerned. It could be translated either “my officers would fight so that I would not be handed over to the Jews” (as we have done), or “my officers would have fought so that I would not be handed over to the Jews” (italics added).* We might have expected “so that I would not be handed over to you,” for Pilate has just said, “Your nation and the chief priests handed you over to me” (v. 35). The present tense, “my officers would fight,” is marginally more appropriate because the reference to being “handed over to the Jews” anticipates not the present moment but rather the end of the whole sequence of events when, as we will learn, Pilate finally “handed him over to them [that is, to “the Jews”] to be crucified” (19:16, italics added). Already here, Jesus drops a hint that he will die at the hands of “the Jews” after all.
37 The subtlety of the contrary-to-fact condition is wasted on Pilate, who seems to have heard only the phrase, “My kingship,” implying that Jesus is a king of some sort. Pilate, therefore, “said to him, ‘So, you are a king!’ ” (v. 37a).* Jesus replies, “You say* that I am a king. I was born for this, and for this I came into the world, that I might testify to the truth.* Everyone who is from the truth hears my voice” (v. 37b).
With this, the “Johannine” expansion of the simple “You say so” in all three synoptic Gospels (Mt 27:11//Mk 15:2//Lk 23:3) is complete. Jesus does not deny his kingship, for it is evident in this Gospel no less than in the others (1:49, 12:13), but he prefers to speak of something else—his calling to “testify to the truth,” just as John had done before him (5:33). “For this,” he tells Pilate, “I was born, and for this I have come into the world.”* The solemn repetition of “for this”* makes this the simplest and most emphatic statement of Jesus’ mission to be found anywhere in the Gospel.* Throughout his public ministry, he has spoken “the truth which I heard from God” (see 8:40, 45). Even those who mistakenly wanted to “come and seize him to make him king” (6:15) did so because they believed he was “truly the Prophet who is coming into the world” (6:14). His role as king cannot be separated from his role as the revealer of God, for his authority to “testify to the truth” rests on his kingship, the royal authority the Father has given him over “all flesh” (17:2) to make known “the truth”—that is, “the only true God,” and himself as God’s messenger (17:3).
His final words to Pilate here add a cautionary note, “Everyone who is from the truth* hears my voice.” The implication is that those who are not “from the truth,” that is, do not belong to the truth or stand on the side of truth, do not hear Jesus’ voice. In effect he is asking Pilate, “Do you belong to the truth? Are you hearing my voice?” Earlier, after telling “the Jews who had believed him” at the Tent festival, “If you dwell on my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (8:31–32), he found that this did not happen, and he had to say to them in the end, “Whoever is from God hears the words of God. This is why you do not hear, because you are not from God” (8:47). Again at the Rededication he told them: “But as for you, you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep [literally, “you are not from my sheep”]. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (10:26–27). That was his verdict on the Jewish authorities: they were not “from God” in that they did not belong to God; they were not “from” his sheep in that they were not numbered among his sheep; by implication, they were not “from the truth,” for they refused to believe the One who told them the truth (8:45–46) and repeatedly tried to kill him.
38a Pilate is no better. Jesus does not state the negative, but Pilate states it for him: “What is truth?”* (v. 38). The question poses no challenge to the reader. We are not intended to ponder these “profound” words, or say to ourselves, “Good question. What is truth, anyway?” On the contrary, it tells us that Pilate has no clue what truth is, consequently that he is not “from the truth” (v. 37) any more than the Jewish leaders were, and has by no means “heard Jesus’ voice.” Readers of the Gospel, by contrast, know what “the truth” is, for Jesus has acknowledged to the Father, “Your word is the truth” (17:17), and has even told the disciples, “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (14:6). Pilate’s question, moreover, is dismissive. He does not want an answer, only an end to the conversation, and as far as the reader is concerned, the answer has already been given.*
With this, Jesus’ brief encounter with the Gentile world in the person of one Roman governor is over, and the result is the same as that of his far longer series of encounters with the Jewish people and their leaders. If it is true that “He came to what was his own, and his own [that is, the Jews] did not receive him” (1:11), it is just as true that “He was in the world, … and the world [that is, the whole world—Jew and Gentile alike] did not know him” (1:10). But who was privy to this brief encounter? In contrast to Peter’s denials—and possibly Jesus’ interrogation by the Chief Priest—this appears to have been a very private conversation between Jesus and Pilate, with no anonymous disciple “known to the Chief Priest” (v. 15) to pass along what might have been said. On what basis was the Gospel writer able to expand the cryptic, “You say so,” of earlier traditions (Mk 15:1 and par.), not to mention the conspicuous silence that followed (Mk 15:5 and parallel), into the significant dialogue that we find in this Gospel? It is an intriguing question for which there is no sure answer. The account looks like the Gospel writer’s own composition. Possibly the writer claimed as his source another who, like Jesus, would “testify to the truth”—that is, the Advocate or “Spirit of truth,” who, Jesus promised, would “testify about me” (15:26; see also 14:26). Who better to play the role—or give the Gospel writer the right to play the role—of omniscient narrator?
38b–39 Nothing Jesus has said about his kingship has convinced Pilate to regard him as a criminal or in any way a threat to the empire. Once more the scene changes: “And having said this, he went out again to the Jews, and he says to them, ‘I find in him no probable cause’ ” (v. 38b).* The verse division is such that the change of scene comes in the middle of a verse, confirming the impression that Pilate expected no answer to the question, “What is truth?” (v. 38a). As quickly as he “said this,”* he went back outside the praetorium to speak to the Jewish priests, resuming the conversation that had broken off when they said, “It is not lawful for us to kill anyone” (v. 31b). His declaration, “I find in him no probable cause,” is emphatic, as if to say, “I find none, but perhaps you might.” This would amount simply to a reiteration of his earlier words, “You take him, and judge him according to your law” (v. 31a). Pilate and “the Jews” were at a stalemate, and he now looks for a way out by appealing to a “custom you have* that I release to you one at the Passover,” and asking, “So shall I release to you the King of the Jews?” (v. 39). The repetition of “you” is conspicuous, suggesting that in “releasing” Jesus he would not be granting him unconditional freedom (certainly not guaranteeing him any sort of protection), but simply returning him to the jurisdiction of the Jewish leaders. As far as Pilate is concerned, they could still “take him, and judge him” according to Jewish law (v. 31a), or even, if they wished, “take him, and crucify him” (19:6).
This is rather different from what appears to be the case in the other three Gospels, where Pilate had made no previous attempt to return Jesus to the jurisdiction of the Jewish authorities. There Pilate proposed to “release” Jesus (see Mk 15:9//Mt 27:17; Lk 23:16), not to them for judgment but to the crowds—and presumably to freedom. The crowds, under pressure from the chief priests (so Mt 27:20//Mk 15:11), cried out for Barabbas to be released instead. Here, by contrast, “the Jews” have a second opportunity (as in v. 31) to do with Jesus what they will, as Pilate asks them, “So shall I release to you the King of the Jews?” For the first time, he throws in their face the title “the King of the Jews,” and it does not make them happy.
40 While Pilate’s proposal to “release” may have a slightly different meaning in John’s Gospel than in the other three, the response is just the same: “Then they cried out again, saying, ‘Not this one but Barabbas’ [compare Mt 27:21; Mk 15:11; Lk 23:18]. And Barabbas was a terrorist” (v. 40). “Again”* sounds odd because they have not “cried out”* before, but the probable meaning is that they shouted “back,” in response to what he had just said.* They are in no mood to negotiate. “Barabbas” is introduced very abruptly, more so than in the other three Gospels (all of which mention and name him), and he is identified in just one word, as a “terrorist,”* a term quite compatible with the more detailed information given in Mark (15:7), Matthew (27:16), and Luke (23:19).* John’s Gospel shows less interest in Barabbas than the other Gospels, and unlike the others (see Mt 27:26; Mk 15:15; Lk 23:25), never states explicitly that he was in fact ever released. The characteristically Johannine narrative aside, “And Barabbas was a terrorist,” calls attention to the same irony that is so evident in the other Gospels (not to mention Acts 3:14), but here it is merely one small irony among many. More important, perhaps, Pilate’s offer to turn Jesus back to the Jewish authorities is once again refused. “The Jews” are relentless in their determination that Rome and not Jerusalem will put Jesus to death.
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