John 3:1-17, Midrash, and Talmud
Two editorial notes: First, today the lectionary offers two gospel readings, one from Matthew 17 and a second from John. I’ve already written about the Matthew reading, so today I’ll focus on John. Second, this post is a long read, but I hope this discussion is worth the investment of time. Make sure you comment to let me know your thoughts!
Introduction: Not My Preferred Gospel
If I’m honest, I am not a fan of the fourth gospel, the Gospel According to John. The high christology and the surface-level anti-Jewish rhetoric leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I’m not sure when exactly I formed the particular belief—an albeit correct one, from the near unanimous academic consensus—that Jesus is Jewish, not “Christian,” and his movement was never meant to replace nor supercede the Hebrew covenant. For as long as I can remember, my characterization of Jesus has been that he was a Jewish teacher, a rabbi, from a poor agricultural area, who healed, taught, welcomed everyone, spent time on the margins of society, and pursued justice, nonviolence, and peace.
These are each pretty sophisticated concepts, and no doubt I have memories of children’s books describing both the nativity and crucifixion in ways that I would not accept on simple terms today. Christmas was about the birth of God’s son, Holy week was about his death, and Easter was about his bodily resurrection. These were lessons in my childhood. I don’t want to falsely claim a humanistic or academic insight as a five year old in Sunday school.
But it is true that many theological doctrines, including original sin, transubstantiation, and substitutionary atonement, were not features of my childhood religious education.
I know we have some readers here who did not grow up within the Christian tradition, so to offer an overly-simplified summary, these doctrines are that humankind is fallen and sinful and require baptism and atonement (original sin), that through communion, Christians do consume the body and blood of the Christ (transubstantiation), and that Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of the world (substitutionary atonement).
These doctrines and other commitments held by some (many? most?) in the Christian community were not necessary conditions for my faith. I don’t remember a time in my life when I thought only followers of Jesus would be the ones in heaven, and when I pause to think about the most significant religious teaching from my childhood, it’s to raise my hand with everyone else when someone asks, “Who here is a loved child of God?” Also, the weekly refrain spoken from the pulpit, “No matter who you are, or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.”
The Gospel According to John, as far as I treated it for most of my adult life, is the dusty gospel after Mark, Matthew, and Luke that emphasized Jesus’s divine status and complained about the Pharisees, and often, “The Jews.”
It just didn’t speak to me. Like, at all.
I realize I’m infusing a lot of my bias into this post, and to those who find great value in the fourth gospel, I don’t mean to insult the book that may serve a significant basis for anyone’s devotion or faith-based understanding! And yet, I can’t shake my dis-favor for John’s gospel, but over the years, I’ve learned the historical context, and in this post we’ll learn that rhetoric against “The Jews” demands careful and nuanced commentary. Let’s see what we can do with my least favorite gospel account.
History of Authorship and Composition
The Jewish Annotated New Testament, that you’ll see abbreviated as “JANT” throughout this publication (see my resources), is one of my go-to sources for Greek Scriptural commentary, and on the fourth gospel, you’ll find terrific information! There we learn that many open questions exist around the history of authorship and composition for John’s gospel—not someone named John. In fact, the gospel according to John cannot be separated from the Johannine community that may have been the gospel writer’s target audience. Clues about authorship and this community, like all work on the historical Jesus and Biblical criticism, can help us. I’ve heard a few of you have picked up your own copy of JANT, so you’ll want to reference (p. 154ff.) and (p. 546ff) to play along at home.
What’s curious is that on the one hand, there are some parallels that exist in John that match the Synoptics (Mark, Matthew, and Luke), but overall it’s been the consensus that the fourth gospel is up to its own project, not in line with the Synoptics. On the other hand, the bi-optic hypothesis argues that John’s author and tradition were more in dialogue with the Synoptic tradition than is generally accepted—more dialectical than derivative, in the fancy academic jargon. From go in John, we see that questions about John’s authorship remain unresolved. What do scholars feel confident asserting?
Dating John
We’ve studied that Mark is the earliest gospel to be written (around the 70s of the common era), and 75% of Mark is included in Matthew and Luke (written around 90s-100s of the common era). The 25% of the content that Matthew and Luke share that is absent in Mark likely derived from a source of Jesus’s sayings referred to as the “Q Source,” from the German word for source, quelle, that begins with a “Q.” In short, Q is a “sayings source” that was combined with Mark to create Matthew and Luke.
John, too, is derivative from multiple sources. Notably, the many “signs” that Jesus purportedly performed—for example, turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11)—that are reported in John likely derived from its own source, a “signs source,” or semeia. This means it’s difficult to date John because the signs source may have been circulating independently for years before its inclusion in the final composition of John.
One conclusion for the dating of John is inferred from archaeological evidence: A papyrus including a small portion of John was discovered and dated to 135-160 CE. Following its discovery in Egypt, scholarly assumptions about the time and distance it would take for this manuscript to travel from its place of origin to Egypt, scholars back date John to 85-95 CE based on this evidence.
This dating matters because the Temple, the central institution of Jewish life, was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE, and the further we get in time from the destruction of the Temple, the more established Jewish sects may be defining themselves against rival groups. We already noticed animosity among the Dead Sea community and their attitude toward Pharisees and Sadducees, rival religious groups. Theological pluralism and competing interpretations of Hebrew law were common features of Pharisaic and post-Pharisaic Jewish thought that ultimately formed the basis for Rabbinic Judaism.
If the Johannine community were defining itself against rivals, you would expect the harsh language against Pharisees that we encounter in John. For an analogy, if anyone read my wife’s facebook posts during IU v. Purdue basketball games they’d conclude, “Wow, this Whitney person really hates Purdue!” And so, if you found out that our neighbors are Purdue fans, and we all get along well, that observation about our neighbors wouldn’t match the evidence you read in the social media posts. Do you see how difficult it is to examine this material 2,000 years later!
I don’t mean this imperfect analogy to dilute the harsh rhetoric and perceived animosity between the Johannine community and other groups, but maybe this casts light on why we shouldn’t take the anti-Jewish rhetoric in John at face value.
More evidence to that end is the greek word ioudaios. This Greek word could mean “Jews,” or people living in Judah, in which Jerusalem is located, or Judeans, similar to the description of those from Judah. English translations have often just picked one of these terms for consistency and often translate ioudaios as “Jews,” in many cases. It’s important that we recognize when we encounter the English word “Jews” in the Johannine text, we cannot simply accept the meaning of the word as equivalent to someone like, well, me! And my mom’s biological side of the family.
John as Midrash
Our first insight into John’s familiarity and comfort within a thoroughly Jewish tradition is the author’s use of landmarks in Jerusalem. The Johannine author cites locations in Jerusalem that are borne out by archeology. The Johannine author further uses Hebrew scripture and displays familiarity with Jewish ritual. For example, ritual hand washing before meals is present in John’s gospel, and this practice is both ancient and still followed today! Indeed, the large containers of water in the Cana scene were likely real and familiar objects to a Jewish audience because large basins of water would be on hand at ceremonial meals for ritual hand washing.
Beyond geographical familiarity and connection to Jewish rite and ritual, the writing style of John itself is our most compelling evidence that the gospel according to John takes seriously its Jewish foundation. A midrash is special genre of Jewish literature and interpretive tradition. Midrash expands on Biblical material to offer insight and interpretation not present in the text. For example, we know very little of the Biblical figure Abraham. We don’t meet Abraham until late in his life, yet Abraham is one of the most important figures in the Hebrew Bible! For example, midrash has developed around Abraham’s life that fill in the gaps not present in the Biblical text.
One aside, midrash as a holy and sacred tradition is post-Biblical yet deemed sacred. In other words, midrash is sacred text that appears nowhere in the Bible, but expands on themes that are there. Like fan fiction! Midrash is great evidence to point to that not even ancient Biblical scholars took the Bible to be inerrant! This midrash about Abraham’s childhood is laugh out loud funny. I made a TikTok about it!
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The opening verses of John’s gospel where Jesus is shown to be the Word that was with God during creation is John’s midrash on Genesis. This quote from JANT essay author Daniel Boyarin says it best:
Until v. 14, the Johannine prologue is a piece of perfectly unexceptional non-Christian Jewish thought that has been seamlessly woven into the Christological narrative of the Johannine community” (p. 549).
Postscript on the Introduction to John
In the end what we find in the Johannine community is a late-first century Jesus movement that was interested in maintaining Jewish theology, Hebrew scriptures, and Jewish rite and ritual that was responding to a later development of certain Jesus-following Jews who felt rejected from Jewish synagogues and amassed a non-Jewish audience of Samaritans and other gentile groups who needed education about the Jewish history of the movement while distinguishing itself from other Jewish sects.
Reading the anti-Pharisaic and anti-Jewish rhetoric of John must be understood in light of these facts. With that, let’s turn to this week’s reading.
The Gospel Reading: John 3:1-17
First, because we always have to read what’s actually there, the text:
Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?
“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
In the remaining paragraphs, I want to first debunk a few more anti-Jewish verses, then we’ll meet Nicodemus, and finally I’ll wrap everything up!
Other Anti-Pharisaic Passages
I point us to 9.22 (JANT):
His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue.
This verse follows a signs scene (remember semeia, the signs source), after Jesus heals a man’s blindness with paste that Jesus makes with dirt and saliva and rubs it onto the man’s eyes. This verse, 9:22, is historically problematic because the Johannine author is anachronistically applying a later conception of Jesus as the christos (the anointed one; the mashiach, or messiah) to an earlier setting. The purported story reported here is from Jesus’s life, which scholars date up to the mid-30s of the common era; whereas the Johannine community is composing the final form of the gospel at least 50 years later near the end of the first century.
Even if it were the case that followers of Jesus who took him to be the christos were at some point expelled from synagogues, which is a spurious claim, it wouldn’t make sense to say here that those who confessed Jesus as messiah would be “put out,” because we have reports from the gospels of Jesus himself teaching in synagogues, so this claim doesn’t hold up to cross-reference with other reports about the Jesus movement.
Likewise, see also 12:42 (JANT):
Nevertheless many, even of the authorities, believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they did not confess it, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue
We can point to two issues with this verse. First, this scene (see the verses before) is used to evoke a statement appearing in Isaiah 6:10. A scene must be created to contextualize use of the prophetic tradition, as we’ve observed elsewhere in the Greek Scriptures. Indeed, anytime we encounter a Greek Scripture verse that so closely resembles its Hebrew source, we must be alert to the rhetorical technique that some stories or narratives are constructed in order to leverage the Hebrew precedent to reinforce theological claims about Jesus.
The second reason not to take this text at face value is to point out that Pharisees wouldn’t have any concern with being “put out of the synagogue,” because Pharisees didn’t run the synagogues! Pharisees were among the priestly class at the Temple, and this story purportedly occurs when Jesus is alive, and so, the Pharisees would be plenty busy at the Temple and have little, if any, influence over local synagogue policies.
And so we see the Johannine community constructing narratives with their own rhetorical goals in mind.
Meet Nicodemus
Nicodemus, in Hebrew, Niqdimon, whose name may actually have been something like Buni or Bunai, was a wealthy and respected Jewish figure of the first century who is reported in several accounts, including the Talmud, and the historical writings of the Roman-Jewish historian Josephus. This is a good example of scholarly use of extra-Biblical evidence.
However, we have to be careful, while there is a Nicodemus Ben Gurion (who I referenced in the previous paragraph), it does not follow that this Nicodemus is one and the same to the Nicodemus in John. It seems by dating the tradition, Niqdimon, or Nicodemus, the wealthy, influential Jewish figure, may be the grandfather to the Nicodemus of John 3. Nicodemus of John also appears in John 7 and John 19, where he is associated with the Jewish court of authority and with wealth and means, respectively. Nicodemus in the gospel tradition is unique to John.
The Talmud is a collection of Jewish law interpretation from around the second century of the common era—and so the development of this writing would be contemporary to the late-first century writing of the Johannine community. You can read about Nicodemus (which one?) in two Talmud writings, called tractates, here and here. Nicodemus, because of his power and influence, was known both in Jewish and Roman settings.
The Gospel according to John, the Talmud, and historian Josephus each make independent mention of a person named Nicodemus, so we infer that this figure, in some way, is historical, but just because this historical figure may have existed, it doesn’t follow that claims made about him are factually true. It is likely that he is mentioned here as a symbolic figurehead for the Johannine community’s rhetorical opponents. To that end, whether the famed Niqdimon ben Gurion or the grandson of this famed Niqdimon, the rhetorical flourish serves an end to place the Johannine community in dialogue with the Pharisaic movement.
The Kingdom of God
With all of this in hand, we are beginning to weave a beautiful interpretive tapestry! Let me add one more thread. The Book of Daniel.
The Book of Daniel was a second century Jewish text—second century! Along with the Talmud, developing around the same time as the Johannine literature. The Book of Daniel was a popular Jewish text, like on the year 200 CE bestseller list! There have been six scrolls of Daniel discovered in the Dead Sea community’s hidden library, hidden from Rome. When you pause to imagine the tedious and skilled demands on scribes, to have six scrolls of the same book in the same library is evidence that people really loved this text!
The Book of Daniel speaks about the coming Kingdom of God in an end-time setting, and it is the Book of Daniel, or its theology, that gospel writers seem to evoke in some instances when describing Jesus as a “Son of Man.” In Daniel we learn of “One like the Son of Man who is riding on clouds” and promises an “everlasting dominion that shall not pass away” (Daniel 7:13-14). Reminds me of one being “born from above”!
The Hebrew term for the coming kingdom is malkut shamayim. Either a new plane of existence or a transformed existence on Earth that God will institute, or that people institute in partnership with God, when they repent, that is, turn away from the ways of the world, and turn toward, t’shuvah, the ways of Torah. When Jesus calls for followers to repent, this is what is meant! There was no notion of individual salvation in first century Judaism. Repent is a call for all of God’s people to correct behavior and live in alignment with God’s Torah and the covenants with Abraham and Moses—and for the gospel writers, with Jesus, too.
The coming end time, the eschaton, prominent in Paul’s epistles and the gospels alike, is a divine clean up of the world, when all the nations feast at a messianic banquet. Jesus taught his followers to pray, “On Earth as it is in heaven.” The coming Son of Man riding on clouds ushering in the everlasting realm.
Conclusion: John and Judaism
Boom! Repentance, Kingdom of God, born from above, with water (baptism) and sprit (ruach, or wisdom, the Word), for those who follow Jesus as christos, not those other Jewish sects that don’t who we told you about like those Pharisees or that well known dude Nicodemus, us Johannine Christ-followers are the real deal, and Jews, Samaritans, other gentiles who are rolling with us, rest assured that those who believe in Jesus will not perish but will have eternal life.
John’s gospel is Jewish midrash, second century eschatology, a polemic in favor of Jesus the Christ, written in the decades following the destruction of the Temple, when Jews were scattered in diaspora, with no clear view of what the future would hold, but Jesus promises eternal life in our uncertainty. In that way, we see how religious movements offering absolute truth are antidotes to ambiguity, but as for me, I’d rather be unsure and inclusive than gate-keep my truth.
Hitzonim | Outsiders 
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