Jewish Midrash and the Lengths of Love

In the Beginning

Let’s start at the beginning. Literally. With Genesis, “In the beginning…” and the opening prologue to the fourth gospel, “In the beginning was the Word [Logos]…” Daniel Boyarin, in the essay, “John’s Prologue as Midrash” (JANT, 546), writes, “The use of Logos in John’s Gospel is thus a thoroughly Jewish usage.” Paradoxical as it may seem, given the shocking anti-Jewish rhetoric within the fourth gospel, Jewish genres of writing, theology, motifs, scriptures, and appropriated characters are core features of the fourth gospel (ibid., 152). Editors of the JANT explain the paradox in this way:

While John’s difficult rhetoric should not be facilely dismissed, it can be understood as part of the author’s process of self-definition, of distinguishing the followers of Jesus from the synagogue and so from Jews and Judaism. This distancing may have been particularly important if the ethnic composition of the Johannine community included Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles (ibid. 156).

As we will see in this post, both the deep familiarity and the distancing underwrite the portion of John’s gospel that is assigned for reading Maundy Thursday, Thursday, April 6, 2023. In the assigned reading, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. We ask here, what is he doing? Why?

John 13:1-15

As is our custom on this publication, we begin with the text; well, in translation at least. From the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition:

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already decided that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray Jesus. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from supper, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.”

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had reclined again, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

We’ve gone some way in this publication to better characterize the composition of the gospels. We’ve followed Marcan Priority that holds Mark’s gospel was the earliest, dated to late-60s to early-70s of the Common Era; at least 35 years after the death of Jesus. Following Mark, Matthew and Luke used a majority of the Marcan material, supplemented with an independently circulating source of preserved Jesus sayings. These gospels, Matthew and Luke, were later than Mark, reaching as late as the 90s CE. John’s gospel shares some common events from Jesus’s purported life reported in the Synoptics, but the fourth gospel, dated between 85-90 CE, is largely up to its own agenda, drawing from an independently circulating source of Jesus’s signs for its composition.

In short, the Synoptics and the fourth gospel developed over a 40+ year period, during the second half of the first century. These gospels are composed within the context of post-Temple Jerusalem and surrounding areas, written from a Jewish perspective, drawing from the Hebrew scriptural tradition (especially for the Synoptics) and late-first, early-second century themes of eschatology, Biblical expansion and interpretation, and Greek-informed philosophy (especially the fourth gospel).

John both amplifies the christology of Jesus, the christos (greek: anointed one), and rhetorically taps into second century CE ideas that show up in both Jewish and hellenistic philosophical writings. Scholars are unsure whether there was dialectical exchange of ideas between the Johannine author and other sects and schools or simply that these conceptual frameworks were in the intellectual “air,” so to speak.

The polarizing nature of the fourth gospel leaves readers with love of the divine imagery or with a distaste for the anti-Jewish rhetoric; I fall into the latter camp. Still, concludes Boyarin, “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” (JANT, 549).

I bring us back to these notes on composition to better understand the broader narrative context in which this foot washing scene occurs. This scene appears only in the fourth gospel, which suggests there is a good Johannine reason for it being there! What are those reasons?

An Aside: Textual Negotiation

I want to remind us that when interpreting the texts, we always have choices. No one person has the authoritative reading of the text, and no one should tell you how you have to read the text! Anyone reading the Bible and applying it to their context is negotiating with the text—this is Walter Brueggemann’s notion, and this negotiation has been an ongoing project since the first story was told.

The Bible is the outcome of scribes and scholars negotiating with the text for centuries. Univocality is a myth—the idea that the Bible speaks with one consistent voice from Genesis to Revelation. So, too, is the idea that a single characterization of God is present throughout the Bible. The ideas of God change, evolve, borrow, and take from neighboring tribes and cultures. Where some find risk in acknowledging the multiple source documents included in the composition of the Bible, I find encouragement to take the text on my own terms, but always with a principled approach. The difference between contextualizing and relativism is nuanced but important. This is not anything-goes interpretation; rather, we define our approach and proceed in a principled way. For me, the “source critical” approach is most gripping. In other words, I am curious where Biblical content shares its material with other sources.

The most straightforward explanation for Jesus washing the disciples feet is offered in several commentaries: The act of foot washing would be the duty of an enslaved person. Jesus humbled himself to the role of slave and does so to exemplify the servant leadership required of his disciples. That is a beautiful and empowering interpretation of the text and is satisfying on its own. If that is your reading, no more need be said. Your servant leadership will improve the world.

Footwashing: A Source Critical Approach

Driven by the observation that only the fourth gospel includes the story of footwashing, I was curious to review other interpretations on offer, and I began with this well-researched doctoral dissertation (Thomas, John Christopher. “Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine community.” PhD diss., University of Sheffield, 1990. Link to PDF. )

In this expansive dissertation, Thomas operates under two assumptions: First, that Jesus is preparing disciples for their mission, and second, footwashing was practiced and an extension of baptism. I found the first assumption to be supported by the text. The foot washing scene occurs at the beginning of the “farewell discourse,” indicating that this practice was intended to prepare the disciples. As for the second assumption that this practice was an extension of baptism, the evidence is a little shakier. It is not immediately clear that this practice was implemented within the Johannine community, and so, it is suggested that some other rhetorical purpose may be on the mind of the Johannine author.

To try and understand the rhetorical aim, I next turned to this paper: “The Gospel According to John: A Midrash of the Oral Tradition of Jesus.” Here the author argues that the community or school that created the fourth gospel was likely a Jewish/Christian rabbinic school that used the Midrash method as it’s didactic; its teaching method.

The fourth gospel is characterized as a sort of manual that forms faithful and informed readers on how to be disciples of Jesus. The paper agrees with the essay from JANT: The authors of the fourth gospel are “writing a commentary, an exposition, an explanation, an exegesis of the first creation story in Genesis in order to create a Midrash of the Jesus tradition.” This Midrash is a commentary on the text, applying that meaning to the Jesus tradition.

Securing the premise that the Johannine author engages in Midrash and extending that tradition to the setting of a Rabbinic school to form disciples is useful material, but we have not yet solved what the foot washing tradition suggests, now viewed in the light of pedagogy and Biblical commentary. I turned to yet another resource: Van der Watt, Jan. “The meaning of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (John 13).” Neotestamentica 51, no. 1 (2017): 25-39. Link to PDF.

This paper counters the idea that this practice was an extension of baptism, and further, the paper argues that the idea of Jesus implying that his disciples should become like slaves is not adequate.

The author entertains a second explanation that foot washing is a custom of hospitality in many first century contexts, but here the explanation is challenged by the text itself. In the first century context foot washing was a ritual of hospitality before the start of the banquet, but in John 13, the foot-washing takes place after the meal had already started (verse 4: “he rose from supper”).

The counter-evidence continues, if the illustration performed by Jesus were designed to instill in the disciples servanthood, it is curious that Jesus would affirm that he is, “Lord and Teacher/Rabbi” (13:13). Why uphold his higher status to the disciples if the message is humble oneself to the point of servanthood?

Van der Watt asserts:

What he has done, he did as their Lord and Teacher. That implies that Jesus as the more important person washed the feet of his disciples not to humiliate himself, but, precisely in his function as the more important person, to illustrate the extent of intense love. Such love is not focused on promoting one’s own position, but on the interests of fellow believers.

Van der Watt continues, “I would argue that the foot-washing is primarily understood as an act of love, functioning as an example of what intense love means. Loving disciples should not become slaves of one another. The symbolic action rather illustrates the lengths to which an intense-love relationship might take a loving person.”

Midrash on Genesis: Joseph and Aseneth

Did you feel the excitement of a light bulb moment? I did when I read that paper. The foot washing is not a sign of servanthood, but of deep love.

But the question remains, does this tradition, even with the sophisticated commentary, appear anywhere else. No surprise that we’ll find the answer in Jewish Midrash! The love story of Joseph and Aseneth provides such a basis.

Genesis 41:45 (NRSVUE) reports:

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-paneah, and he gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, as his wife. Thus Joseph gained authority over the land of Egypt.

The story of Joseph and Aseneth, a text from Hellenistic Egypt, dated to 100 BCE to 100 CE, tells a romantic story of Joseph and Asenath’s courtship. In this story it is only after Asenath repents and changes her allegiance to Israel’s God that Joseph marries her. Ah-ha! Something of repentance and allegiance to the God of Israel is present here; a link to the Johannine aim? If the Johannine community did include Jews, gentiles, and Samaritans, it would be rhetorically useful to recall a story of an Egyptian establishing their allegiance to the God of Israel—is this not what John’s author aims to achieve in that community?

Itself a Midrash, read what happens with Joseph and Aseneth:

When Joseph visited Aseneth the following happened: Aseneth invited Joseph to a dinner that she prepared and led Joseph to her father’s seat. She brought water to wash his feet and Joseph remarked: “Let one of the virgins [i.e. servants] come and wash my feet.” Aseneth’s reply is significant: “No Lord, from now on you are my Lord and I am your maid. Why do you want that another virgin wash your feet? For your feet are my feet and your hands are my hands and your soul is my soul; another will not wash your feet.”

Asaneth, herself above the slaves, performs the foot washing as a sign of her intense love for Joseph. Van der Watt explains that this attitude of intense love is also the reason why Jesus would give his own life on the cross (John 10:17–18):

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

This Midrashic story about Joseph and Asaneth was also composed in a Jewish diaspora community that may have ties with Syriac Christianity. Are the Johannine communities and Syriac communities similar in so far as they are diaspora communities negotiating Jewish ideas for a new setting that are both drawing new boundaries for Christians outside of an explicitly Jewish context?

Conclusion

As Christian communities prepare for the Last Supper and ready themselves for Jesus’s state-sanctioned execution by Rome on Good Friday, it is worthwhile to reframe our thinking about Jesus’s instruction to humble ourselves to servanthood. I am concerned that such an interpretation risks glorifying enslavement as the act that Jesus asks of us. After all, Passover is a festival to do the opposite! To celebrate liberation from enslavement. Rather, operating with our full identities and autonomy in tact, the Jesus as characterized in John draws on Jewish Midrash to challenge would-be disciples to act in such a way that they test the limits of what intense love would have them do for others.

Note: For those who wish to view Adam deliver a message on these themes during a Christian Maundy Thursday service, you may live stream that service here, beginning at 7:30pm EST, Thursday, April 6, 2023.