I know I have written about John 3 before, but there is always more to mine here – even without getting into the whole “should verses 13-21 be in red or black” question (i.e. is it Jesus speaking or John editorialising, and if so, where does the changeover happen?)
I understand why translators have translated the earlier part of the chapter as they have; essentially whatever choices they make are essentially saying, “this is what Jesus was saying to us, today.” That involves making theological choices.
But what I want to do today is simply ask, “what did Nicodemus hear?”
To ask the question at all, I am assuming that Jesus did speak in Greek. As I have mentioned before, He clearly could speak Aramaic, but people didn’t always understand Him when He did so; and 1st Century Judaea seems to have been much more Hellenised than we sometimes realise.
If I am wrong on this, and He spoke to Nicodemus in Aramaic, then we have to ask what His translator into Greek was thinking, to use such ambiguous language. But for now I am assuming the ambiguity was all His, and therefore deliberate.
Let me summarise the ambiguities:
ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν (in verse 3)
ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος (in verse 5)
καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν (in verse 6)
τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδας πόθεν ἔρχεται καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγει· οὕτως ἐστὶν πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος (all of verse 8)
So what is ambiguous here?
First, is ἄνωθεν “from above” or “again”. I realise I am risking the hallmark phrase of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity here; but I honestly think we only choose the “born again” option, because that is clearly what Nicodemus heard. He heard “born again” and so started saying “surely a grown man can’t climb back into his mother’s womb…” This doesn’t mean that this was what Jesus was saying. Nicodemus appears to have assumed “the Kingdom of God” was just a way of saying “Israel”, and so wasn’t primed to think that seeing God’s Kingdom might require birth “from above”; but that seems a more likely interpretation, given what we know.
Second, there is πνεῦμά, which appears first as ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, or “water and …” well, what. What did Nicodemus hear? We read John only after the NeoPlatonists have been all over it, and we have accepted a tripartite division of mankind into body, soul and spirit. So whenever we see πνεῦμά, we instinctively say “spirit”. But what did Nicodemus hear? Water and wind? Water and breath? Water and spirit seems the least likely option, unless he heard a reference to Ezekiel 36.25-27 in what Jesus said; and his “how can these things be” makes that unlikely, even if that is what Jesus meant.
So what does Jesus mean by ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος? Is water a reference to Baptism, or to Ezekiel? Or is it a reference to the first (natural) birth? You can’t see the Kingdom of God unless you are first born human, and then born from above? I suspect it is a reference to the promise in Ezekiel, and that believer’s baptism is the sign of that promise, become reality; but I am sure there are 98 other options.
And what about πνεῦμά, itself. I doubt that Nicodemus heard Spirit, even though we (probably) understand that this was what Jesus was trying to tell him. My own understanding of “the mystery” or “the secret” of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels is that it is Emmanuel – God dwelling in us, by His Spirit. Since it was very important that Satan never caught onto this plan, Jesus hints at it, but not in a way that anyone could understand until it was too late to shut the stable door on Gods plan.
Therefore I suspect that Nicodemus heard ”wind”, or “breath”, throughout. It is a bit much to translate verse 8 as being about the wind, and then about the Spirit: make it all about the wind, or all about breath, or all about the Spirit. And maybe that is the issue: whenever Jesus is deliberately playing with words (which is often), we probably need to leave our conventions of choosing one version, and give all two or three options in parallel. We can always label them. What Nicodemus heard: “the wind blows where it will…” What Jesus was saying: “the Spirit blows where it will…” – if in fact that is what we think He is doing.
Because here is the clincher: Jesus knows what Nicodemus is hearing.
εἰ τὰ ἐπίγεια εἶπον ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ πιστεύετε, πῶς ἐὰν εἴπω ὑμῖν τὰ ἐπουράνια πιστεύσετε; (verse 12)
If I have spoken to you (plural) of earthly things, and you don’t believe, how would you believe if I was to speak of heavenly things?
Jesus is saying, I have been talking to you about earthly things like birth – and maybe He is expecting Nicodemus to hear a reference to amniotic fluid and a great deal of heavy breathing – and you are not getting it. So how do I tell you things only I have seen and know, with any chance that you will follow?
And maybe He is being deliberately disingenuous; but whatever we (think we) know that Jesus was saying, it is always worth starting with what His hearer(s) heard. Then maybe we won’t be so hard on them!
