Manuscript Variants and Protasis and Apodosis in John 8: 37-38

NIV (1984) text:

(38)“I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

(39)“Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would do the things Abraham did.”

NIV “alternate” reading from the footnotes:

(38) “I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence.  Therefore do what you have heard from the Father.”

(39) “Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you are Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then do the things Abraham did.”

Raymond E. Brown (hereinafter "REB") in The Anchor Yale Bible series, The Gospel According to John I-XII (hereinafter references to "REB writes" or "REB notes" and the like mean this publication):

(38) “I tell what I have seen in the Father’s presence;

Therefore, you should do what you have heard from the Father.”

(39)“Our father is Abraham,” they answered him. Jesus replied

“If you are really Abraham’s children, you would be doing works worthy of Abraham.”

This text raises two questions. The first is whether in verse 38 Jesus refers to two different fathers: “the Father”, that is “my father,” the person in whose presence Jesus has seen things to tell others, and “your father,” that is, the father of those among the Jews in Jesus’ audience with whom he is contending.  As you can see, the NIV text indicates two different fathers.  The NIV alternate translation in its footnotes and REB’s translation (pp. 352-353) indicate that Jesus is referring to one father for both, the same father, God the Father. 

If the meaning is that there are two different fathers, then to whom does Jesus refer as the father of his contenders?  (His contenders answer that their father is Abraham.) REB states (p. 356) that certain manuscript “variants” show two different fathers (my father vs. your father) and they are meant to show that Jesus sarcastically refers to the devil as the father of his contenders. Those variants anticipate what Jesus expressly states in verse 44. 

There are other variants, however, and they do not show “my father vs. your father.” REB prefers those variants because, he states (p. 356), at this point in the text Jesus “is still trying to convince his audience to obey the real Father, God.”

By way of parenthesis, let me state that choosing among “variants” in the early manuscripts is hardly unorthodox. 

In the Preface to the NIV 1984 edition, for example, the “Committee on Bible Translation,” comments generally on the differences shown in footnotes to its text as follows:

The footnotes in this version are of several kinds, most of which need no explanation. Those giving alternative translations begin with "Or" and generally introduce the alternative with the last word preceding it in the text, except when it is a single-word alternative; in poetry quoted in a footnote a slant mark indicates a line division. Footnotes introduced by "Or" do not have uniform significance. In some cases two possible translations were considered to have about equal validity. In other cases, though the translators were convinced that the translation in the text was correct, they judged that another interpretation was possible and of sufficient importance to be represented in a footnote.

In the New Testament, footnotes that refer to uncertainty regarding the original text are introduced by "Some manuscripts" or similar expressions. In the Old Testament, evidence for the reading chosen is given first and evidence for the alternative is added after a semicolon (for example: Septuagint; Hebrew father). In such notes the term "Hebrew" refers to the Masoretic Text.

Why is the response of Jesus’ contenders to his statement in verse 38 “Our father is Abraham”?  This depends, REB writes (p. 356), on the meaning of the second line of verse 38.  “If the reference is to the devil, then ‘the Jews’ say this by way of protest.  If the reference there is to Jesus’ Father, then here the Jews are saying that they want nothing to do with his “father” for they have Abraham.

The second issue appears in verse 39, particularly Jesus’ response to his contenders’ assertion that their father is Abraham.

REB writes (pp. 356-357) that his translation of what Jesus says is “awkward English [that] is a careful rendition of the confused situation in the Greek.”  He writes that the “witnesses are divided on three readings:”

(a)            Real condition: “If you are .  .  .  do.” REB notes that “Codex Vaticanus and Papyrus 66 read an imperative in the apodosis.”

(b)           Contrary-to-fact condition: “If you were .  .  .  you would be doing.”  REB notes that “the Byzantine tradition supports this reading, which implies that ‘the Jews’ are not Abraham’s children.  This seems to contradict vs. 37.”

(c)            Mixed condition.  This is how REB translates it and he notes that his translation is supported by Papyrus 75 and Codices Sinaiticus and Bezae.  “The idea is that the Jews are really Abraham’s children, but are denying it by their actions.”

“The confusion in the witnesses [REB writes] is best explained by assuming that (c) was the original reading, and the (a) and (b) are attempts to iron out the mixed condition by making it consistent in both protasis and apodosis.”

(Protasis: the clause that expresses the condition in a conditional sentence.  Apodosis: the clause expressing the conclusion or result in a conditional sentence: opposed to protasis.  From Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language College Edition (1960))

I find that REB’s translation is much more satisfactory.  Would Jesus say that the Jews are not Abraham’s children?  I doubt that he would, and why should he?  Why should he pick a fight on that issue?  His criticism of them is much more pointed when he concedes that they are Abraham’s children, but then asserts that they do not act like it.

As a penultimate point to this long post, just how were the Jews not acting like Abraham?  REB writes (p. 357) about this when he comments on verse 40, which I do not set out above: “That Abraham would not kill a divine messenger may be a general reference from Abraham’s character, or perhaps a specific reference to a scene like that of Gen.xviii where he welcomed divine messengers.”  The Jews who are contending with Jesus are hardly welcoming of him.

 Finally, I would respectfully suggest an application for Christians: How often do Christians, who claim God as Father through Jesus Christ, not behave accordingly.  Who is really out there in the crowd disputing Jesus, wanting to rid their culture of him?  Is the problem in Jerusalem the pagans or is it the believers?  Jerusalem, the metaphorical "City upon the Hill" that Jesus elsewhere identifies with his disciples and that John Winthrop identifies with the church in America.

The Collective Singular in John 8:31-36

In chapter 8 of John, there are ongoing exchanges between Jesus and the "Jews" (NIV) during the Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem.  Some of them "believed" him.  Nevertheless, Jesus statement in this particular passage (verses 31-36) is the subject of considerable contention between him and the people:

³¹ To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. ³² Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

³³ They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

³⁴ Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. ³⁵ Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. ³⁶ So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.

The word  that the NIV translates "descendants" is more literally translated in KJV (but not NKJV) as "seed," a collective noun.  It could mean either plural or singular.  The Greek noun is also a collective, sperma.  Brown, in his Anchor Bible translation on page 352, translates sperma as "descendant" not "descendants."  He has the Jews saying, "We are descendant from Abraham," a little awkward, but the point of singularity is conveyed,  Here is what Brown says in his note to verse 33 (page 355):

In the mouth of "the Jews" this phrase may mean, "We are the descendants of Abraham."  But it is not impossible that John, like Paul in Gal iii 16, is playing on the singular word to indicate Jesus is the real descendant of Abraham.  We have tried to leave this nuance possible in our translation.

Here is Galatians 3:16 (NIV):

¹⁶ The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

In this Galatians passage, the NIV translates sperma as "seed."   What were the "promises [that] were spoken to Abraham and to his seed?"  From Genesis 17:

¹⁹ Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.

Again, the Hebrew word that the NIV translates as "descendants" is a collective noun.  KJV translates it "seed" once more.  That word in Hebrew is זָ֫רַע or zera: a sowing, seed, offspring.  See also Psa 132.11, Mic 7:10, Lu 1:55, Rom 4:13 and 16, Rom 9:8, Gal 4:28. 

Whether a collective noun is to be translated to refer to a group or to a single person depends on the context.  When we view the collective noun in question from the perspective of the Cross, we see that it refers to Messiah in cases where the relationship is to Abraham, perhaps not always to the exclusion of the collective, but very central in meaning.  In the NT, where the collective is included, in the mouths of the witnesses the collective is the Church. The same could also be said of the OT as to faithful Jews, a part of the same Church.

Jesus' "I Am" Passages in the Gospel of John

There are seven passages in John where Jesus uses the phrase “I am” (the Greek ego eimi) in a special way.  Although “I am” can simply be a phrase of common speech, it had “solemn and sacral use in the OT, the NT, Gnosticism, and pagan Greek religious writings” (Brown, p. 533).   In these passages, it has such a use.

The passages should be read in light of Exodus, chapter 3, where God appears to Moses in the form of the Burning Bush.   In that chapter, God describes to Moses the great mission upon which he sets Moses, that is, to liberate the children of Israel from Egypt.  (Here is another parallel of Jesus with Moses, where Christ comes to liberate the world from sin.)  Moses asks God to tell him his name, because the children of Israel will want to know.  In verse 14, God tells him, it is Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh or YHWH or “Yahweh.”[1]

In form the divine name Yahweh is either a simple indicative or a causative indicative of the verb “to be,” meaning “he is (alive, present, active)” or “he brings into being,” and the formula in which the name is disclosed (Ex. 3.14 “I am who I am”) means either “I reveal my active presence as and when I will” or “I bring to pass what I choose to bring to pass.”  [New Bible Dictionary (Third Edition) InterVarsity Press, p.  801]

Think about the significance of the implications of this name.  How would you relate it to your own life and situation?

Jesus adopts this way of referring to himself in the Gospel of John.  Scholars have identified seven passages which especially mark this way in which he identifies himself, although there are other places which arguably have this characteristic.  Those passages are:

Passage in John	How Jesus Describes Himself in  Particular
6:35	I am the bread of life
8:12	I am the light of the world
10:7	I am the gate
10:11	I am the good shepherd
11:25	I am the resurrection and the life
14:6	I am the way, the truth, and the life
15:7	I am the true vine

This is hardly how a mere "good man" would describe himself, or prophet or revolutionary.

---

[1] The Heb. Word Yahweh is in EVV [the English versions] usually translated “the Lord” (note the capitals) and sometimes “Jehovah”.  The latter name originated as follows.  The original Heb. Text was not vocalized, in time the “tetragrammaton” YHWH was considered too sacred to pronounce; so “donay (“my Lord”)” was substituted in reading, and the vowels of this word were combined with the consonants YHWH to give “Jehovah”, a form first attested at the start of the 12^th century AD.  –from the New Bible Dictionary,pp. 420-421.

The Mystery of the "Word of God"

The mystery of "the word of God" is appreciated only when we take both sides of that expression seriously.  It is a human word, for God does not speak.  But it is OF God, and not simply a human composition about God.  The Bible makes us confront the seeming contradiction of a divine self-revelation in human terms.

-Brown's "summary of the theme" of the first chapter of his The Critical Meaning of the Bible.

The first time I was deeply awakened to the way Scripture is to challenge us was during a week-long series of sermons on The Sermon on the Mount given at our church in Miami Springs by non-other than Bruce Metzger.  (Can you imagine, Bruce Metzger!)  So obviously a most faithful Christian (as Brown was), he at one point used the phrase "wooden literalism" to describe an approach to Scripture that was faulty.  I had been able to make it all the way through Duke and its great religion courses and UC law with its special training in secular exegesis without allowing myself to be challenged by the critical problem.  Not until Metzger's remark.  From him now to Brown.  What a liberation it has been.  My faith has only been strengthened in the process.

Critical Biblical Study as Prophetic

In the judgment of most scholars biblical criticism is a correct (but not all-sufficient) approach  to the Bible; and so, unless religious people and communities want a complete break with scholarship, they have little choice about working with the meaning of Scripture derived through this method. But the use of the critical method should be more than an unpleasant necessity; for when responsibly presented, the meaning derived thereby is not destructive.  Rather it can be enormously helpful in challenging Christians and the Church(es),  much as the prophets challenged Israel, and Jesus chal­lenged the people of his time.  A non-critical biblicism often tends to confirm the Church(es) and Christians in their status quo because the Bible so read yields what they have always thought it meant. Espe­cially with regard to the NT, Bible-based Churches tend to use literalism to prove that they conform to the biblical directives for what the Church should be. Yet even an elementary study of history sug­gests that one should start with the opposite assumption, namely, that no twentieth-century Church is the same as the Church or Churches of NT times, and that inevitably twentieth-century Chris­tians have a worldview different from that of first-century Christians. A critical study of the NT can point out unexpected differences, thus reminding us how much things have changed and what has been lost (or gained). True, one must avoid a naive romanticism that such a study will enable Christians to restore perfectly what once was. Nev­ertheless, Churches and Christians, confronted by a critical picture of NT times, can be led to needed reform, either by chopping away distracting accretions or by compensating for deficiencies.

-from the Preface of Raymond E. Brown's The Critical Meaning of the Bible; How a Modern Reading of the Bible Challenges Christians, the Church, and the Churches.

I have found Brown's two volume work on the Gospel of John, which is published among the Anchor Bible Commentaries, enormously helpful in our Sunday School class these last many weeks.  His studies and approach have profoundly affected my own approach to the Scriptures.

Raymond E. Brown; Homosexualtiy

I purchased a bargain, used copy of Raymond E. Brown, S.S., An Introduction to the New Testament from the Anchor Bible Reference Library, on Half.com.  Although I am reading it straight through,  I can't help delving ahead in it.  This afternoon I read "Paul's Critique of Fornicators and Homosexuals (6:9-10)" in Brown's chapter on 1 Corinthians.

(This web page has excerpts of chapters copied from Brown's Introduction.  Once reaching that page, click on the link to 1 Corinthians and then scroll down to the "critique" section.  It is not a complete transcription, but it gives you a sense of his argument.  If you can, buy the book.  Brown is not to be missed, even by a few sentences.)

Here is the last sentence from that section:

Nevertheless, in insisting on the sexual limits imposed by the divinely commanded state of marriage between a man and a woman, Paul and indeed, Jesus himself, walking among us in our times, would not be frightened by being considered sexually and politically "incorrect," any more than they minded being considered overly demanding in the Greco-Roman and Jewish world of their times. [page 530; footnote omitted, although the footnote is important and classic Brown.]

The Death of the Messiah; Reading and Half.com; the Anchor Bible Reference Library

The Passion Narrative (henceforth PN), as it proceeds from arrest through trial to condemnation, execution, and burial (thus from Gethsemane to the grave), constitutes in each Gospel the longest consecutive action recounted of Jesus. Aesthetically, more than any other section of the Gospels, indeed even more than the infancy narrative, it has captured the attention and imagination of dramatists (passion plays), artists, and musicians. Literarily, passion vignettes have left their mark on language and imagery : thirty pieces of silver, Judas kiss, cockcrow, washing one's hands of blood. Historically, Jesus' death was the most public moment of his life as figures known from Jewish or secular history (Caiaphas, Annas, Pilate) crossed his path. Indeed, alongside "born of the virgin Mary", the other phrase that made its way into the creed, "suffered under Pontius Pilate", has become a marker anchoring Christian belief about the Son of God to a Jesus who was a human figure of actual history. Theologically, Christians have interpreted the death of Jesus on the cross as the key element in God's plan for the justification, redemption, and salvation of all. Spiritually, the Jesus of the passion has been the focus of Christian meditation for countless would-be disciples who take seriously the demand of the Master to take up the cross and follow him. Pastorally, the passion is the centrepiece of Lent and Holy Week, the most sacred time in the liturgical calendar. The custom of Lenten preaching has made it a most favoured subject for homilies, In sum, from every point of view the passion is the central narrative in the Christian story.

-from "Preface and Acknowledgments" in Raymond E. Brown's two volume The Death of the Messiah, from the Anchor Bible Reference Library (Doubleday 1994).  (The link is to the website for an online bookstore known as PrintAsia, specifically to PrintAsia's page on this work.  That page has the first three paragraphs of the "Preface and Acknowledgments" and the table of contents.  In that short excerpt, Brown's marvelous prose is on display.)

Amazon sells this work in paperback for $26.25 per volume, $52.50.  There is a hardback, boxed set edition of the two volumes, selling new for much more.  I was able to get the boxed set, in very good condition for $29.88, plus shipping, through Half.com.  The internet makes such bargains in books available!  The main temptation to "retirement" is simply to quit and spend the rest of my days reading.  With such accessibility to good books and a few more authors like Brown and Stott, the practice may be history.

Brown's, The Death of the Messiah, is published as part of the "Anchor Bible Reference Library."  The General Editor of this attractive series, in 1994 David Noel Freedman,  describes the library as follows:

THE ANCHOR BIBLE REFERENCE LIBRARY Is designed to be a third major component of the Anchor Bible group, which includes the Anchor Bible commentaries on the books of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Apocrypha, and the Anchor Bible Dictionary. While the Anchor Bible commentaries and the Ánchor Bible Dictionary are structurally defined by their subject matter, the Anchor Bible Reference Library will serve as a supplement on the cutting edge of the most recent scholarship . The series is open-ended; its scope and reach are nothing less than the biblical world in its totality, and its methods and techniques the most up-to-date available or devisable. Separate volumes will deal with one or more of the following topics relating to the Bible: anthropology, archaeology, ecology, economy, geography, history, languages and literatures, philosophy, religion(s), theology.

As with the Anchor Bible commentaries and the Anchor Bible Dictionary, the philosophy underlying the Anchor Bible Reference Library finds expression in the following: the approach is scholarly, the perspective is balanced and fair-minded, the methods are scientific, and the goal is to inform and enlighten. Contributors are chosen on the basis of their scholarly skills and achievements, and they come from a variety of religious backgrounds and communities . The books in the Anchor Bible Reference Library are intended for the broadest possible readership, ranging from world-class scholars, whose qualifications match those of the authors, to general readers, who may not have special training or skill in studying the Bible but are as enthusiastic as any dedicated professional in expanding their knowledge of the Bible and its world.

Faithless Form Criticism

In a column, entitled “Unbelief Unveiled,” in the March/April 2012 issue of The Layman, a publication of the Presbyterian Lay Committee,  Parker T. Williamson, Editor Emeritus, quotes from sermons by John A. Shuck, a PCUSA minister, the pastor of FPC Elizabethton, TN, and member of the Holston Presbytery:

I preach on the Bible about as much as any other preacher. I don’t preach on it as if it were a book to believe. I don’t find most of it particularly believable, at least in the way that we were supposed to believe it … When I suggest that Jesus in the Gospel of John is a more of a fictional character than an historical figure, and that John is using his creative imagination in creating this story [John’s account of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead], it isn’t that I am saying throw out the gospel.

John’s gospel is about Jesus. But the Jesus depicted here is not the historical person. John’s Jesus is an imaginative construction.  The events and the dialogue we just read from chapter 10 are probably not events and dialogue that took place, that someone (i.e. The author we call John) wrote down, but rather, a scene created by some author we call John.

The Bible is not always what it seems. It was created by numerous human authors. Every one of them had an agenda. They created these stories and these images for a variety of reasons.  Reasons that we may never know.

My views on the authorship of the Gospel of John have been challenged and shaped recently by the two-volume work by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., on that gospel in the Anchor Yale Bible Series.   The late Fr. Brown is considered a leading authority on the Gospel of John and 1, 2, and 3 John.   He holds that archaeological discoveries after WW II require a positive reassessment of those writings that, until then, had been significantly discounted by form criticism.  It does not appear to me that Rev. Shuck got the message. 

In the introduction to the work on the gospel, Fr. Brown sets out the theory of a “redactor” whose composition of John’s Gospel progressed through five stages.   I think the following excerpt from his conclusion gives one a sense of the dignified and respectful way that Fr. Brown approaches the subject, and that alone is a sharp contrast to the tone of Rev. Shuck’s remarks.  Furthermore, Fr. Brown describes his view as a theory advanced by a scholar, not as an opinion to be featured from a pulpit by a preacher (pp. xxxviii-xxxix).

To sum up, although we have spelled out this theory of the five stages of the composition of the Gospel at some length, we would stress that in its basic outlines the theory is not really complicated and fits in rather plausibly with what is thought about the composition of the other Gospels.  A distinctive figure in the primitive Church preached and taught about Jesus, using the raw material of a tradition of Jesus’ works and words, but shaping this material to a particular theological cast and expression.  Eventually he gathered the substance of his preaching and teaching into a Gospel, following the traditional pattern of baptism, the ministry, and the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Since he continued to preach and teach after the edition of the Gospel, he subsequently made a second edition of his Gospel, adding more material and adapting the Gospel to answer new problems.  After his death a disciple made a final redaction of the Gospel, incorporating other material that the evangelist had preached and taught, and even some of the material of the evangelist’s co-workers.  A theory of two editions and a final redaction by a disciple would not be extraordinary among the theories of the composition of biblical books – a very similar theory is proposed for the Book of Jeremiah.

*   *   *

We make no pretense to facile answers to such questions.

There is nothing here in Fr. Brown’s commentary about a “fictional” Jesus, about “creative imagination” or an “imaginative construction.”  Why would John Shuck put the matter in the way that he does, except that he simply does not believe the truth of the Gospel.  And if he does not believe the truth of it, why would he mount a Presbyterian pulpit and “preach” on the subject?

Last Sunday morning before church, I read Fr. Brown’s discussion of the Resurrection.  In certain “general remarks” on that subject, he writes in part (p. 967):

The fact that there is a development within the formulae and also from formulae to narratives [concerning the Resurrection] raises an obvious question about the historicity of the narratives.  In discussing the narratives in general and later in discussing the Johannine narratives in particular, we shall be concerned with isolating the earliest material in these narratives; but we do not think it our task in a commentary to go further and to speculate about whether or not bodily resurrection is possible.  Objections to the possibility of resurrection take their origins in philosophy and science and not in exegesis, which is our task.  (We note, however, that such objections have their force against a crassly physical understanding of the resurrection whereby it is looked on as resuscitation; they are less forceful against the type of sophisticated understanding enunciated by Paul in I Cor xv 42 ff: “It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body.”)  There can be no question that the evangelists themselves thought that Jesus’ body did not remain in the grave but was raised to glory.  Yet, even if by comparative exegesis we trace this idea back to the earliest days, we cannot prove that this Christian understanding corresponded to what really happened.  That is a matter of faith [bold mine].

 That is the problem with Rev. Shuck’s approach, the source of his hubris and skepticism, and what appears to be his complete lack of embarrassment.  There is no faith there.

The Gospel of John - Beyond Skepticism

[T]he trend in Johannine studies has passed through an interesting cycle. At the end of the last century [the 19th century] and in the early years of this century [the 20th century], scholarship went through a period of extreme skepticism about this Gospel. John was dated very late, even to the second half of the 2nd century. As a product of the Hellenistic world, it was thought to be totally devoid of historical value and to have little relation to the Palestine of Jesus of Nazareth. The small kernel of fact in its pages was supposedly taken from the synoptic Gospels which served as the basis for the author’s elaborations. Needless to say, few critics thought that the Gospel according to John had the slightest connection with John son of Zebedee.

Some of these skeptical positions, especially those regarding authorship and the source of influence on the Gospel, are still maintained by many reputable scholars. Nevertheless, there is not one such position that has not been affected by a series of unexpected archaeological, documentary, and textual discoveries. These discoveries have led us to challenge intelligently the critical views that had almost become orthodox and to recognize how fragile was the base which supported the highly skeptical analysis of John. Consequently, since the Second World War there has emerged what Bishop John A. T. Robinson calls a "new look" in Johannine studies – a new look that shares much with the look once traditional in Christianity.

-Raymond E. Brown in his introduction to The Gospel According to John I-XII (Yale University Press 1995).