All the Light We Cannot See

“Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.”

John 1.40, NIV

Reading the first few chapters of John’s Gospel has reminded me that Scripture is not like The Lord of the Rings or Discworld. Tolkien and Pratchett each crafted a complete world, with some level of internal consistency. John on the other hand is eyewitness testimony, and doesn’t feel any need to explain the world around him.

Which gives us endless clues that we don’t know that world. As I have said before, 1st Century Judaea was not just “the Jewish State, with added Romans”. Huge cultural change and admixtures of peoples had happened since the one that we do talk about – peoples moved to the promised land during the Exile, and seen in John’s day in the Samaritans.

But that is to completely miss the level of Hellenisation that had taken place during the rule of Alexander and his Ptolemaic and Seleucid successors.

For example, we don’t actually know what language Jesus and His disciples spoke. The assumption that they spoke Aramaic and that everything got translated into koine Greek for later dissemination is just that – an assumption. I get grumpy when people talk about “the original Aramaic gospels”; show me even a fragment that suggests textual priority and I will be all ears.

On the contrary, Jesus tells jokes (lots) that work in Greek but not in Aramaic or Hebrew. Are we to thank an early translator? Seems unlikely, as many of those jokes seem to have gone straight over the disciples’ heads.

But when Jesus spoke a line of Psalm 22 in Aramaic from the cross, the common folk misunderstood and thought He was calling out to Elijah.

Here are a couple of other puzzles from Chapters 1-3 of John. In the wedding at Cana, John references the ἀρχιτρίκλινος as the person to whom the servants take the water turned into wine. The NIV calls him “the master of the banquet”, which makes it equivalent to the term συμποσίαρχος. But there is a problem. ἀρχιτρίκλινος is very specific in its construction: the “person in charge of a three couch dining room”. That isn’t to suggest that the wedding at Kana employed such a Roman dining room; but the word Jesus uses is found in only one other (much later) source, a late antique novel. So where does Jesus (or John) get it from? We simply don’t know; but it is a reminder that even our knowledge of koine – the “global trade language” of the Roman world – is worse than sketchy.

Here’s another. When you read the story of Nicodemus in chapter 3, surely this is the most “Jewish establishment” person who ever came to Jesus on friendly terms? Yes? So doesn’t Νικόδημος (conqueror of the people or victory of the people), seem a surprisingly un-Jewish name to be carrying around? Someone came up with a Hebrew root for this – Naqdimon – but even the proposer seems to think this is pretty thin. Νικόδημος is already attested as a personal name in Athens by around 350BC. If a Pharisee was comfortable walking around with a Hellenistic name, then this world is not quite the one we may have thought it was. (And it is worth looking at Saul/Paul as well; we seem to assume he changed his name after becoming a Christian, but it is more likely that he always went by either, depending on which world he was in. Roman citizen from birth, remember…)

All of which long introduction is just to prepare the ground for a curious passage in chapter 1. Have you ever noticed? Apparently hard-headed Galileans become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, sometimes with just a word or two.

Firstly, yes John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to his disciples on at least two occasions; and John’s testimony doubtless counted for something. But here is the passage broken down:

• Two disciples of John start walking after Jesus, and end up spending up until 4pm with Him. As a result, one of them – Andrew – goes and tells his brother Simon that they have found the Messiah. Well, what did Jesus say or do that convinced them of this? We have no idea.
• Simon meets Jesus, who says “you are Simon son of John; I think we’ll call you Rock(y).” Simon is the only one we don’t get a recorded verdict from.
• The next morning, Jesus has decided to leave and go to Galilee. He bumps into Philip and tells him “follow me”.
• Philip goes straight to Nathanael and tells him that they have found the one Moses wrote about – Jesus of Nazareth. How did Philip work that out from Ἀκολούθει μοι? (Follow me)
• Nathanael expresses some doubt that anything good can come from Nazareth. But when Jesus sees him coming, He says “here comes an Israelite indeed“ and then quotes the end of Psalm 32.2 – “in whom there is no deceit”. And this is our first tiny clue as to what may be going on. Nathanael is obviously shocked and asks “where do you know me from?” – obviously thinking they must have met before. Except that it seems likely that his shock was because he had just been meditating on Psalm 32.2; so when Jesus says “I saw you under the fig tree before Nathanael found you” – which was presumably where Nathanael had been rolling Psalm 32.2 around his mind – he makes his heart felt declaration of Jesus’s Messiahship. Not a bad journey from “Nazareth? Meh!”
• There is of course one more loose end: who was the other one of John’s disciples? No proof, but the eyewitness flavour of this passage suggests it could well have been John himself.

So there is lots we can’t know here, and John doesn’t bother to tell us what was going on in heads and hearts. But it is the most extraordinary 24 hours of gathering … well, anything. Gathering disciples, recruiting a team, call it what you like. Simon The Rock doesn’t seem to have said anything, except possibly stand there like a stunned mullet. Or a Rock. So what was the secret?

Nothing is more powerful than feeling seen, and knowing that you are known. Except possibly, the long awaited Messiah stepping into your world and demonstrating that He sees you, knows you and that you have a place with Him.

Which is exactly how it is for you and for me, too. No theological proposition can do that for you; you need to know you are seen, known and welcomed.