The Promise of New Life

By Themba Gamedze

This section of Jesus’ life of ministry is associated with a number of potentially thorny issues, both theological and practical. In order to address these adequately, but without interrupting the flow of the story format of the book, a number of stand-alone appendices have been included in this volume in order to enrich the reader’s appreciation of these issues.
The topics explored in these appendices range from a high level discussion of The Synoptic Problem; making sense of Matthew’s haphazard chronology; tackling the challenges of interpreting Luke’s Travel Narrative as a presentation of literal journeying; addressing what at first reading appears to be an embarrassing anti-Semitism running through John’s Gospel to exploring Jesus’ teaching on
the afterlife.
This volume has preserved the look and feel of the first of the series and has thereby retained its potential for establishing a rigorous framework for assessing the level of consistency between the Gospels and portraying their central character, Jesus of Nazareth, referred to as Y’shua.
“Having completed another volume in a planned series of five, I am still in awe of both the complexity and simplicity of one whose influence does not seem to have diminished over the last 2000 years of history.”
Author, Themba Gamedze
“I have edited many, many Christian books over the years, and this work is by far – by a truly immense margin! – the BEST I have ever set eyes on. It is more informed than anything I have seen before, more helpful in getting to know Y’shua the man, gave me far more food for thought, and was more inspiring than any of the over-emotional (even soppy!) works that I have seen, could ever hope to be. This work deserves an international readership! I regard it as a landmark work.”
Editors’ Comments

• Language: English
• Publisher: Themba Gamedze
• Release date: Aug 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005182458

Book preview

Introduction

This series is a portrayal of the Canonical Gospels (the Gospels) through a little-explored but what I feel to be an extremely enlightening approach. I have consolidated all the events recorded in the four Gospels and attempted to place them in strictly sequential order.

In fact, the acronym ATOGA arose from the description, A Time-Ordered Gospel Account.

There is an increasing body of research and analysis in the area of Biblical Chronology to which readers may wish to make reference as part of their own background reading. One of these is a 2008 Thomas Nelson publication: The Chronological Study Bible. I have also come across a detailed Chronological Gospel with extensive commentaries on the website www.chronologicalbible.org. I discovered these some four years after I began my study and was therefore rather unfortunate not to be able to take full advantage of the monumental work they represent.

Although the approach I have followed cannot be described as unique, I am nevertheless quite convinced that the way I have presented the material has the potential to inspire the reader in a dynamically fresh new way.

It is not difficult to work out that one could end up with a number of different sequential orderings of these events, each of which is consistent with the Gospel record. As I see it, that fact does not diminish the value of this process at all. The important thing by far is the tantalising prospect of reconstructing any chronological framework at all. Unlike many other religious writings, the Canonical Gospels do not simply represent a stream of consciousness based on spiritual concepts and wise teachings. Most of the content is linked inextricably to specific objective reference points.

These reference points are explicitly named places; seasons and times; and even specified individuals. In studying the Gospels there is no escaping the sense that one is reading the copy of four journalists writing for newspapers representing disparate worldviews. As such, they provide an excellent template for investigating the level of factual consistency across the Gospels.

In that simple process, I believe that the ATOGA Kingdom Series achieves one very important result: It removes the cop-out option of rejecting the Gospel record out of hand as fanciful myth, legend and folklore or as being full of contradictions.

Indeed, I would say that introducing the extra dimension of time brings an element of rigour into the study of the Gospels that has very far-reaching implications.

However, the sword cuts both ways.

This framework has occasionally challenged the orthodoxy of one or two of my own long-held and much-taught beliefs, an issue to which we shall return in due course.

The contents of this volume follow the chronological order of events that appears in Appendix D: Granular timetable for ATOGA Volume II which is a section of the backbone of the ATOGA Kingdom Series project. In that sense, then, it would be fair to describe the ATOGA Kingdom Series as being more of a Gospel background commentary. Apart from an obvious de-emphasis on exegesis, the major differences from standard commentaries are the following:

• The ATOGA Kingdom framework encompasses a cross-cutting approach by incorporating the Gospel record as a whole. This is in contrast to the traditional method of following the content of individual Gospels, an example of what could reasonably be described as a silo approach.

• As the focus of my remarks, I have concentrated much more on aspects of the narrative that are easily overlooked if one follows a silo approach. These features are however easily accessible to anyone following our approach and do not require any non-intuitive presuppositions or esoteric interpretations.

• A direct consequence of using this template is that it makes it impossible to avoid having to face up squarely to any potential discrepancies between the different Gospel accounts.

There are many excellent commentaries written by top biblical scholars who have spent many decades of their lives on their studies in this area. This eclectic commentary by an amateur makes no attempt to emulate their exceedingly thorough analysis of scripture. I have therefore restricted my focus to the above priorities. The approach I have used throughout is to compare and contrast the accounts presented by the different Gospel writers in their portrayal of the central figure.

In order to highlight his out and out Jewishness, I refer to him as Y’shua, rather than by his Hellenised name of Jesus. Ultimately what emerges is the closest thing to what some would call the story of Jesus – and what a story it is!

In Volume 1 I shared a few of my thoughts on the priorities of these Gospel writers as I now understand them. I also tried to delve a little bit deeper into their various accounts to see whether it is at all possible to detect something of their individual personalities buried in the events they reported.

In my opinion, the way each of these writers related to their subject matter has left a personality trail that has not been dulled even over 2000 years of history and even the trauma of repeated manuscript copying and translation. The way they reported the events, the details they emphasized, glossed over or even ignored, and even those events they left out completely, provide an intriguing set of clues. Together they serve as a sort of psychological genome trail leading back inexorably to those long-dead First Century eye-witnesses and their confidants.

My priority therefore has not been so much on the content itself as recorded by the writers, but rather on a holistic combination of that content with two other specific ingredients.

These are, on the one hand, the discernible but nevertheless subtle shadow of the Gospel writer, and secondly, the nature of Y’shua himself.

All of these elements have been investigated as an integral part of Y’shua’s quite extraordinary diary, as it emerges from the analysis.

In trying to put all this together, it was absolutely critical not to remove these events from their special historical context. I have done my best not to stray from this aim. However, retaining a continual sense of the First Century Jewish, but politically highly fractious post-Hellenic, socio-economic environment ruled from Rome was never going to be an easy task. We really are products of our times and I have no doubt that there are many 21st centurisms buried in here, despite the care I have taken.

The ATOGA Kingdom Series

The ATOGA Kingdom Series is principally a tool for a study of the Gospels.

In my mind I see the reader with the Gospels open side by side with the ATOGA Kingdom Series. This permits each reader to check independently for any discrepancies between the actual Gospel text and the comments I make in the ATOGA Kingdom Series.

Reading the ATOGA Kingdom books without taking the time to at least skim over the scriptural references will make it very difficult indeed to appreciate the text, and I urge you to make the effort to read the related passages of scripture for yourself before considering my thoughts on each event.

May all who take up this challenge to deepen both their understanding and their appreciation of the Gospels receive every blessing and a lasting renewal of faith.

Acknowledgements

I must recognise the immense value of a book to which I had access when I began this journey, courtesy of the Begbie-Kloppers in East London in the Eastern Cape. Jesus and the Four Gospels by John Drane served as an excellent primer for a non-theologian like me.

To avoid excessive clutter, I have not explicitly referenced quotations of scripture, as these are simply too numerous to itemise one by one. However, I think it appropriate to mention my extensive use of the search tools, especially Strong’s Concordance, on www.blueletterbible.org.

Almost all factual information on the Jewish background of the ATOGA Kingdom Series has come from www.Jewfaq.org and www.Hebcal.com. These sources provided the content and timetable of the regular readings of the Jewish scriptures, the timing of the religious festivals in each relevant year around Y’shua’s lifetime, and a number of key cultural aspects of Judaism in First Century Israel.

I would also like to mention my use of a truly useful reference to the personalities who lived around the time of Y’shua, Who’s who in the age of Jesus by Geza Vermes. It is packed full of insights into political and religious figures, as well as other more esoteric personalities such as ascetics and other charismatic leaders of the time. Finally, I would like to recommend to you the "Holman Bible Atlas" by Thomas Brisco, which provides a wonderful sense of both the geographical scale and the historical context of the events under discussion.

Dedication

I dedicate this entire series to my wife, Shirley, and children, Londi, Thandi, Asher, Thuli and Nomsa.

During the initial six months of my research, I remember each of the children asking me, in one way or another, the question: Are you writing a new Bible? This was such a gloriously abandoned inquiry, given the enormous implications in terms of orthodoxy and potential for heresy embedded so innocently in such a question, that it warms my heart even now as I write, even though so much water has flowed under the bridge since then.

It certainly re-establishes my faith in the beautiful innocence of children, and causes me to smile wistfully about the transience of all things.

And just for the record, I am not writing another Bible at all, although I may perhaps end up with suggestions for a Consolidated Gospel. I would envisage that work as an aggregation of the different Gospel accounts into a single paraphrase-type record annotated appropriately.

However, even though the outcome of that process could correctly be regarded as a presentation of the story of Jesus or perhaps even the content of the Gospels, it could not possibly be regarded as a Gospel as such, for many reasons beyond the obvious theological ones.

I want to acknowledge publicly the value I place on my wife’s incredible reserves of patience. She allowed me to withdraw even more than I normally do from our shared responsibilities of parenthood, and my sincere hope is that she will see the end-result as having been worth the extra burden this has placed upon her.

Thank you so much, Shirley!

Author Themba Gamedze

Place Johannesburg, South Africa

Time July 2016

Ode to Y’shua

What do you give to the Heir of all things?

Second movement - The inner longing, unseen

What do you give to the Heir of all things?

What can you offer the One for whom it all exists, in whom it all finds its meaning –

The One before whom myriads of angelic beings fall in ordered rank – in lordly adoration?

What gift is worthy of the Creator of universes –

Planter of floral forest glades – virgin to the presence of man – yet intimately known to Him

Designer of ocean depths, forever to present mysteries to the sons of earth?

What could one present to the One who knows all things from their beginning to their end,

The one who unearths all hidden secrets by his piercing, fiery gaze –

How could He have need or desire of anything?

What could one offer this King from whose hand all authority radiates to the very ends of creation,

On whose shoulders all power rightfully finds its place of rest?

What gift of value could be presented with pride to One whose depths none can plumb –

The mysterious beginning and end, without beginning or end?

What can one present to heaven’s favourite, to the eternal Prince of Peace –

The joy of angels, the very sunshine and breath of heaven?

And yet it seems there was something –

Only the Father could sense it, only the Spirit discern it –

A burning desire, a longing beyond comprehension, a call from deep within

Even within the One who drew oceans of love, and adoration, and honour

And praise from the angelic host on simply catching a glimpse of his face – or just the mentioning of His Name.

Yes, He ached.

From deep within him keened a silent cry that sprang from a profound yearning –

For a bride…

That’s what drew Him – what drove Him – what urged Him on

Indeed, that was why He was so willing – not just willing – but eager

Eager with an intensity that only the Spirit could share, that only the Father understood.

How it all began

It may be hard to believe, but this document began when, to my delight at the time, and to my wife’s subsequent shock, she innocently bought me a copy of The Da Vinci Code.

This she gave me as a birthday present in October 2005.

I must admit that the hype had got to me too. Furthermore, the joy of delving into the facts of a controversy does appeal to the adventurer in me.

Yes, I know that the existence of such an alter-ego may be hard to imagine and even more difficult for many to accept. After all, we are talking about someone (myself) who had decided that the best way to cocoon himself from too interesting a life was to qualify as an actuary!

Anyway, I remember immediately expressing surprise at how desperate my wife must have become for ideas for presents because she now had to resort to trafficking in heresy. You should have seen the look on her face at that description of a book many had thought of up to then as just a thriller!

However, having begun as I have, I must apologise sincerely for raising any expectations of huge controversy in the pages to follow. The contents of The Da Vinci Code are not in fact directly a matter for the ATOGA Kingdom Series. Nevertheless, having said that, Dan Brown’s book did make me think afresh about the basis of my faith.

…And so it all began!

So, whatever anyone else one may say, and no matter how distorted or illogical I found the content, thank you Mr Brown!

As a result of carrying out the research for the ATOGA Kingdom Series, I have developed a far deeper passion for the Gospels. This has also extended to a much closer affinity with their focal point, the historical figure of Y’shua of Nazareth, than I had had before. My hope is that by sharing my thoughts on the Gospels, I may be able to reignite, in all who read these books, the hope and longing for a better world that most of us hold dear.

My personal interest in such an outcome is based on the fact that I have two brothers who are each regarded by many as authorities in their specific areas of ministry. One is a Christian preacher in the Kingdom Teaching stream of the Pentecostal movement, ministering in South Africa. The other is a Jewish Rabbi, in the Hasidic tradition. He has lived in Israel since 1989 and converted to Judaism not long after that.

I find it quite ironic that both of my brothers have access to and could find themselves commenting on the whole Bible, a book written almost entirely by Jews. The likelihood, however, is that while one brother is teaching from the New Testament letters, the other is probably expounding the Tanakh (Old Testament scriptures).

My hope is that perhaps in the Gospels, we may all find an area of common discussion and genuine sharing.

Major features of the events of this second volume

The fact that it has taken me quite so long to complete this second volume after the first (just over six additional years) is to a large extent the result of a number of special characteristics of the section of the various Canonical Gospel narratives based on these events.

In summary, it is only as I began to put down my thoughts in respect of some of the events of this second volume that I found myself having to pause deliberately to ensure that I would be able to provide what I genuinely consider to be at least adequate commentary on every significant complexity arising from these narratives.

In broad terms, these challenges can be summarised as arising from the following aspects of the various texts. First of all there are structural considerations that I have explored further in Appendix A: The internal structure of each Gospel and Appendix C: Where was Jesus?

Secondly, there is the issue of the Synoptic Problem, discussed in summary form in Appendix E: The Synoptic Problem.

Thirdly, it seemed unavoidable to investigate more closely what superficially appears to be John’s antisemitism in Appendix B: The Jews of John’s Gospel.

Finally, there was no getting around trying to get to grips with Y’shua’s teaching on the afterlife and I have sought to do this in Appendix F: Jesus on the afterlife.

All of these big issues cried out for attention and thereby imposed the type of complexity I was (with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps somewhat naively) seeking to avoid when I began to compile the ATOGA Kingdom Series well over a decade ago.

While the events covered in ATOGA I: The Kingdom Awakens were presented very easily in chronological order in each of the Gospels, it does not take long to realise that this is not at all the case in respect of the events we shall be examining more closely in this volume.

However, before pursuing that particular issue any further, it is worth mentioning a few of the other interesting features of this volume.

To begin with, this is the section of the Gospels that includes the famous Sermon on the Mount which incorporates the unutterably beautiful Beatitudes and Y’shua’s quite extraordinary insights into and teaching about the Kingdom of God.

This volume also delves in some detail into the fascinating events of what I refer to as Y’shua’s absolutely massive day. That single day in Y’shua’s life included the most concentrated parable-teaching to be found in the Gospels, as well as a blow-by-blow account of a huge clash between Y’shua and the religious authorities that preceded that parable session on the shores of the Lake of Galilee.

It is also worth noting in passing that this section of the combined Gospel narrative also holds the distinction of having the least intersection with John’s Gospel.

However, as alluded to earlier, one of the most striking features of all that we come across as we compare the corresponding narratives is the unmistakeable loss of strict chronology that is discernible in both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke.

While I will attempt to comment on this whenever it seems natural to do so, I have reserved a fuller treatment of this issue for Appendix A: The internal structure of each Gospel.

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this introductory insert, I now also present a very short summary of the structural features of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke that I deem to be critical to a fuller appreciation of the narratives presented in those Gospels.

Matthew

The structure of Matthew’s Gospel has been commented on by many New Testament scholars over the years, and it is clear that even though chronology was not a key priority for the writer, the collection of most of Y’shua’s teaching into five major blocks may have been.

Allowing perhaps for a difference of one or two verses at most, in the literature these are unanimously identified as Matthew 5:1–7:29; Matthew 10:1–11:1; Matthew 13:1-53; Matthew 18:1–19:2 and Matthew 24:1–26:2.

These teaching blocks are usually regarded as part of an overall structure as outlined for example on www.Gospel of Matthew Five Discourses.htm in The Gospel according to Matthew: Five Major Discourses of Jesus by Felix Just, S.J., Ph.D.

• Introduction: Infancy Narrative: Chapters 1–2

o Narrative: 3–4

 First Discourse: Sermon on the Mount: 5–7

o Narrative: 8–9

 Second Discourse: Missionary Instructions: 10

o Narrative: 11–12

 Third Discourse: Collection of Parables: 13

o Narrative: 14–17

 Fourth Discourse: Community Instructions: 18

o Narrative: 19–22

 Fifth Discourse: Sermon on Eschatology: 23–25

• Conclusion: Passion & Resurrection Narrative: 26–28

My fascination with the research of this particular approach to the structure of Matthew is with the observation that relatively scant attention seems to have been paid to analysing the filler Narrative sections in between these five major discourses.

My hope is that the reader will find my conclusions in that regard to be of some interest. It is in this particular context that I consider it to be of some importance to state upfront my deep conviction about the flow of Matthew’s Gospel.

My firm conclusion is that Matthew has sought to present a narrative that consistently supports Y’shua’s special Messianic credentials. This focus on Y’shua’s credentials simmers throughout the text and eventually builds up to the emphatic statement of Y’shua’s extraordinary claim to all power in heaven and earth as expressed in Matthew 28:18.

Matthew achieves this goal by reiterating over and over well-structured evidence in Y’shua’s life and ministry based on just four very specific aspects that support Y’shua’s very special and perhaps even unique credentials.

These are Y’shua’s healings; his teachings; his signs and his inter-relationships.

While this statement initially appears to be fairly mundane, the manner in which Matthew constructed his narrative around these four elements is far from mundane and should come as something of a shock when first recognised.

My belief is that this framework for understanding Matthew’s Gospel goes a long way towards restoring aspects of Y’shua’s ministry that have been pushed out to the periphery by the relative marginalisation of major aspects of Y’shua’s ministry and an over-emphasis on Y’shua’s teaching in the academic literature.

If we think of these four aspects of Y’shua’s ministry as representing his credentials, then my conclusion is that the core of the Gospel of Matthew has been structured neatly into twelve such credential quartets. Each of these quartets presents evidence to back Y’shua’s claims about himself based on the four elements mentioned earlier.

These twelve credential quartets are presented by Matthew within a brief introduction and epilogue, both of which are structured as credential duets (i.e. semi-quartets) incorporating only Y’shua’s inter-relationships and certain signs that were carried out by or associated uniquely with him.

In this context it may be relevant to note the complete logic behind the missing aspects of teaching and healing in both sections.

Certainly neither teaching nor healing was possible during Y’shua’s infancy!

In respect of the post-resurrection period, Matthew’s message to us is that Y’shua had by then said and done all that he was going to say and do in terms of his mission of healing and teaching. Matthew’s clear implication in terms of Y’shua’s inter-relationships and signs is that these are inseparable from the person of Y’shua in all situations, even after the issue of the ancient alienation between God and humanity had been dealt with.

For an author who takes such great pains to use and draw attention to numerical patterns, the number twelve does seem to be somewhat suggestive of the twelve tribes of Israel. I shall however leave the consideration of that particular line of thinking to others.

Turning to the number four, my view is that this may also have been intentionally chosen, perhaps being patterned on the classical basic elements of the universe being earth, air, fire and water.

In this context it may be of interest, though clearly a matter of fanciful imagination, to observe that a modern reading might also draw a potentially fruitful analogy with the four nucleotides that make up the DNA double helix which represents the physical template of our very identities.

The major loss of chronology that one can easily discern from Matthew 5 at least to the end of Matthew 13 in essence comes about when, in order to complete any given credential quartet, Matthew is forced to draw from elsewhere in the narrative timeline for an event that demonstrates a credential that would otherwise be missing from the construction of a full credential quartet.

Luke

Luke’s complexity is as subtle as it is profound.

In reading his opening remarks it is perhaps easy to get the impression that Luke’s intention in respect of his orderly account is to present a strictly chronological account. My conclusion now though is that, while this assumption does indeed explain a lot about the structure of Luke, it is not perfectly accurate and certainly does not really capture Luke’s meaning of the use of the rather multi-faceted Greek term we translate into English as orderly in respect of his account.

As far as Luke is concerned, Y’shua’s story is embedded inextricably within the even greater story of God’s sovereign ongoing interventions in the life of his ancient people of Israel, and in the world in general, in pursuit of his plan for the salvation and redemption of humanity.

Luke first of all traces in an orderly manner the transfer of the Holy Spirit-inspired prophetic ministry from John the Baptizer to Y’shua. He then does the same in respect of the transfer from Y’shua on to his followers: certainly to the Twelve and then the seventy. However, this ministry transfer process is presented most emphatically in respect of the unprecedented mass outpouring of the Holy Spirit onto the hundred and twenty disciples in the upper room at the feast of Shavuot/Pentecost immediately following Y’shua’s resurrection.

As a narration of this complex story, Luke’s Gospel is therefore almost necessarily chronological in nature, even if not in every detail.

There is in my view in fact just one special place where Luke very deliberately departs from his otherwise strict commitment to chronology, where he uses the now familiar modern cinematic technique of flashbacks and flash-forwards in a section that I refer to as Luke’s intermission.

This is presented in Luke 11:1–13:21, principally as an explanatory filler, particularly in respect of the emergence of the Apostles of renown with which we are familiar. However, that section also includes a number of warnings to his disciples and even a preview of eschatological teaching that Y’shua actually presented somewhat later on during Holy Week.

This device employed by Luke here has the effect of streamlining the later narrative to maximise its impact on us as we consider The Passion as an aspect of Y’shua’s special contribution to God’s redemption story, without the potential distraction of references to Y’shua’s interactions with his disciples.

In that regard, Luke has managed to ensure that the main themes of the sections that follow Y’shua’s intermission are given a neat and balanced treatment.

I see the key themes emerging from the post-intermission section as the following:

• Y’shua’s role in preparing his disciples to take up his ministry: Luke 13:22–21:38

• Y’shua’s unique contribution in respect of God’s redemptive plan: Luke 22:1–24:12

• And then finally Y’shua’s handing over responsibility for the teaching of the Kingdom to the disciples: Luke 24:13-53; Acts 1:1–2:47 (and their eventual progress in that regard, as narrated in the rest of the book of Acts).

The intermission section itself has in effect neatly allowed Luke to chart the evolution of the powerful faith of these disciples (as demonstrated explicitly through Peter’s great confession in Luke 9:20) from that of the novices of the early days of Luke 6:12-16. In my view this undoubtedly helps the reader understand the inputs that went into the shaping of the Apostles to the extent that Y’shua felt comfortable with the idea of handing over the reins of the Kingdom of God to them.

It is almost as if in accelerating the narrative from the feeding of the 5000 (which the disciples did not seem to be able to take in, according to the Gospel record) straight to Peter’s powerful faith confession between Luke 9: 17 and 18 (a section of the Gospel narrative referred to often as The Great Omission), Luke recognises a credibility gap that he has created in the minds of his readers.

It is therefore in this sense that I see this intermission first of all as filling in perceived gaps left from the neat flow of the sub-narrative that goes through to the end of Chapter 10. This construction is in fact Luke’s innovative way of indeed fulfilling his desire to construct an orderly presentation, in which each scene is linked logically with what preceded it and leaves no questions hanging in the air as far as the reader is concerned.

By initially omitting certain content from his first ten chapters, Luke has also ensured that those chapters flow smoothly from narrating John the Baptizer’s ministry, describing his handover to Y’shua and presenting a chronological precis of Y’shua’s own ministry right through to Y’shua’s penultimate journey to Jerusalem.

That particular journey began in Caesarea Philippi, passed through Galilee and continued on southwards to Jerusalem (when it was simultaneous with the Mission of the 70) for the celebration of Y’shua’s final Feast of Tabernacles (and Hanukkah).

See Appendix A: The internal structure of each Gospel for the detail which in my view appropriately disentangles Y’shua’s final two north-south trips which have traditionally and, most unfortunately in my view, been completely conflated.

In summary then, it is my view that by means of this literary approach Luke has given himself a satisfyingly artistic way of presenting the full picture of his very complex narrative without straying from his general aim of leaving us with an orderly account.

The fact that Luke has structured this section to fit precisely half-way through his narrative must surely be regarded as being entirely deliberate and therefore as justification of my description of it as being like a half-time intermission.

BOOK FOUR

Signs and Wonders

PART ONE

Not a minute to spare!

Event Fifty two

Invalid at Bethesda: 28 CE, July

John 5:1-15

The story so far…

During the second half of the year 28 CE, Y’shua seems to have decided to take a quick trip to Jerusalem which we could refer to as his (extremely short) second Judean ministry involving only two events.

The some time later description in the text is unfortunately somewhat ambiguous. Nevertheless this was presumably deliberate by John, given the lack of detail also on which particular feast of the Jews the narrative is based.

However, a natural reading would place this event within a 10-month window between the second miracle at Cana (in say June, 28 CE) and the feeding of the 5 000 described in John 6 (in say March, 29 CE).

While the term feast of the Jews could possibly refer even to the celebration of a new month, i.e. Rosh Kodesh, it is far more likely that the writer is talking about one of the recognised feasts or festivals. Having said that, the way in which the text is worded does seem to suggest that this was probably not one of the really major festivals.

Whatever the exact date, there can be little doubt that Y’shua would have been thinking a lot about the welfare of his cousin John the Baptizer at this time. The sermons John was preaching were becoming more and more uncompromising in respect of Herod’s hypocritical moral standards, and a showdown was looking increasingly imminent.

Y’shua must have begun to anticipate the loss of yet another male role model in his life, and perhaps that was part of his personal motivation for visiting Judea this time around. It would surely have been natural for him to harbour the hope of seeing his friend at some time during his trip along the Jordan River Valley for one last time.

Comparative Gospel Analysis

If my timings are at least reasonably accurate, then the feast being referred to would in all likelihood have been one of the following four possibilities:

1. Tzom Tammuz on the 27th of June, 28 CE

This is perhaps a little bit too soon to be sensibly described as some time after a date in late May or early June, although this cannot of course be completely ruled out.

Tzom Tammuz is the first day of a three-week period of solemn commemoration of all the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people in history, as mentioned in http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/479885/jewish/About-the-17th-of-Tammuz.htm.

One of these tragedies was the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE during his quest for world domination.

2. Tish’a B’Av on 18th July, 28 CE

I personally find this feast to be the most likely.

While the New Year festivals of September 28 CE could of course just as easily fall under the description of some time after, those celebrations (together with Passover and Pentecost) are very deeply embedded in the Jewish psyche.

I therefore doubt that John would have been quite so coy about naming any of them explicitly. After all, he does later on, in John 7, refer by name to the Feast of Tabernacles of 29 CE. He also mentions the Passover a number of times. Even Hanukkah, not one of the mandatory observances of the Torah, is acknowledged explicitly in John 10.

Now, Tish’a B’Av is an extremely important day of the year in the Jewish calendar and incorporates a fast as complete and solemn as that of Yom Kippur, as explained in http://www.jewfaq.org/holidayd.htm. Despite that, I suspect that John decided to leave the festival unlabelled here to avoid raising too many distracting questions for his readers.

This is consistent with John’s constant reminders to us of the intense clashes that took place regularly between Y’shua and the Jewish purists. Naming the feast may potentially have introduced a measure of confusion for some readers. This is because they might perhaps interpret Y’shua’s decision to make a special trip to Jerusalem for this nice to have feast as implying his deep identification with the sect of religious extremists that John refers to as the Jews. Appendix B: The Jews of John’s Gospel presents a deeper discussion of this relatively poorly understood issue.

3. New Year Celebrations in September 28 CE

In 28 CE, the Feast of Trumpets, Yom Kippur and the Feast of Tabernacles all took place between 7 and 28 September.

Based on Y’shua’s observance of other religious festivals, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that he did not attend at least part of this group of celebrations in Jerusalem. After all, the Torah urged regular pilgrimage to Jerusalem by all Jewish men for the major feasts, including the Feast of Tabernacles. So, even if Y’shua had already been to Jerusalem around Tish’a B’Av, some two months earlier, it is not unreasonable to suppose that he could possibly have made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the New Year.

Nevertheless, the flow of the combined narrative suggests to me that Y’shua did not return to Jerusalem during that time, but decided to observe the New Year in Galilee and in fact seemed to have spent at least part of it in his original hometown of Nazareth.

That being the case, it really does seem as if John’s reticence to name the Feast in question in John 5 can have only one reasonable explanation: we must surely be talking about a festival that was not part of the New Year celebrations.

4. Hanukkah in the first week of December, 28 CE

The comments I made in respect of the Feast of Tabernacles apply more or less equally to Hanukkah.

However, on 13 December, 28 CE, the fast of Asara B’Tevet would have been observed just after Hanukkah that year. The occasion being commemorated on that day is the beginning of the siege of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar already mentioned above in respect of Tish’a B’Av. This is another of those minor festivals that could easily warrant the lack of specificity employed here in the introduction of this event. The timing is also still just consistent with a common sense use of the term some time after. However, while this is a theoretical possibility, in the context of Y’shua’s reasonably short period of ministry this hypothesis may be stretching things a bit too far.

Furthermore, Asara B’Tevet’s extremely close proximity to the well-known feast of Hanukkah makes it likely that John would have noted that fact. He actually does something very much like that later on in his record of the feeding of the 5000 by observing in John 6:4 that it took place when the Jewish Passover was near.

So my conclusion is that this incident was not associated with the Festival of Hanukkah either.

Some extraordinary coincidences

Having decided that the timing of this incident is consistent with the observance of Tish’a B’Av, an examination of the detail of the narrative seems to provide very interesting support for this. This is based simply on awareness of the timing of the regular cycle of very specific readings from the Jewish scriptures carried out every single Sabbath.

In this case this is in respect of the readings for the Sabbath (here in respect of a special Sabbath called Shabbat Chazon) preceding Tish’a B’Av.

The first reading on that day is Parashat Devarim covering Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22 and the second (i.e. the Hafterath) is Isaiah 1:1–2:27.

I have quoted the specific extract from that second reading that I consider to be directly pertinent to this incident.

In particular, please take special note of the last verse.

Isaiah 1:4-6

⁴ Ah, sinful nation!People laden with iniquity!Brood of evildoers!Depraved children!They have forsaken the Lord,Spurned the Holy One of Israel,Turned their backs [on Him].

⁵ Why do you seek further beatings,That you continue to offend?Every head is ailing,And every heart is sick.⁶ From head to foot No spot is sound:All bruises, and welts,And festering sores — Not pressed out, not bound up,Not softened with oil

[From the JPS Tanakh]

Background

Those of you who have ever interacted in any significant way with a long-term invalid will be familiar with the terrible scourge of bed sores.

These are caused by the pressure exerted on the places taking most of the weight when a person is unable to move themselves much, if at all. The situation deteriorates as muscles slowly atrophy and provide reduced elasticity and resistance to the pressure of bone on flesh and skin tissue.

The rest of us avoid this problem by frequently making small adjustments to our lying position. We do this without even thinking about it, as soon as the discomfort reaches a certain subliminal level.

So you should therefore be able to imagine the state in which this person must have been after 38 years of apparently immobile invalidity. Much of that time would have been spent at the poolside, probably on a mattress on top of a hard surface.

Surely the state of his bed sores and their spread over his body would have been extensive and truly awful.

I later make a point of emphasising the focused intentionality of Y’shua’s intervention. However, that should not be taken to imply a lack of feeling on Y’shua’s part. In fact, I doubt very much if he would in fact have found it even possible to hold back his compassion, once he had become aware of the situation.

Preamble

We have already noted that the first reading of that Parashat Devarim Sabbath was from Deuteronomy 1:1–3:22.

This is a lengthy passage and I have chosen not to reproduce it in its entirety here. The extract below represents what I feel to be the section of immediate relevance to this particular event under discussion. In addition, I have used italics to indicate the heart of the discussion to come.

Deuteronomy 1:46–2:1; 2:13-15

⁴⁶ Thus, after you had remained at Kadesh all that long time, we marched back into the wilderness by the way of the Sea of Reeds, as the Lord had spoken to me, and skirted the hill country of Seir a long time.

¹ Then the Lord said to me: ³ You have been skirting this hill country long enough; now turn north….

…¹³ Up now! Cross the wadi Zered!

So we crossed the wadi Zered. ¹⁴ The time that we spent in travel from Kadesh-barnea until we crossed the wadi Zered was thirty-eight years, until that whole generation of warriors had perished from the camp, as the Lord had sworn concerning them. ¹⁵ Indeed, the hand of the Lord struck them, to root them out from the camp to the last

Discussion

The relevance to me of this extract is the following observation.

This happens to be the only reference in the Jewish Bible to a period of thirty eight years. Indeed, apart from the reference in John 5, now under discussion, the exact number thirty eight appears nowhere else in the entire Bible.

This period of time being measured in the above Deuteronomy passage commenced at Kadesh-Barnea when Israel disobeyed God’s command to enter Canaan. It ended with the injunction at Wadi Zered, as mentioned in the passage above.

This latter incident therefore became the final gathering of the generation of Israelites who were too young to have been considered to be accountable for Israel’s refusal to enter Canaan previously.

As such it came to represent the hope of a people now at last ready to follow God’s leading, which they did precisely two years later. Rather than any sense of reticence now, we discover a keenness to inherit the promises God had made to the patriarchs many years before.

In this fascinating sense, then, one cannot escape the inference that Y’shua perceived this invalid’s situation as being metaphorical of the spiritual state of the nation of Israel itself both after the Exodus and in his own day.

Later on in this same reading, there is also a rather curious reference to a bed, namely, that of the Amorite King Og. That particular bed was an enormous structure made of solid iron. It was certainly a far cry from the portable pallet or camp bed that the invalid of John’s Gospel would have been lying on. Nevertheless it does make one think a bit… although we certainly should not discount simple coincidence in this particular case.

I cannot help feeling that Y’shua might possibly have been enjoying a small private joke by drawing attention to the bed at all. He would have been aware that the link between the two beds may be made at some point since this was the scripture passage of the day!

Based on what happens later, the reasoning behind Y’shua’s command to pick up the mat on a Sabbath day is not immediately obvious, to say the least and is the issue we seek to address next.

In terms of the detail, this incident raises a number of technical aspects of the observance of the Jewish Sabbath. For those interested in a very high level summary, the issues seem to revolve broadly around the following:

1. The pool area was within a building that was (at least partially) roofed in. This presumably made the area private domain rather than public domain. This is extremely pertinent in the context of the 39 activities that are prohibited on the Jewish Sabbath.

2. The comments by the Jewish authorities indicate a concern at the breach of the carrying regulations. These in principle prohibit the carrying of an object from the private domain (in this case the Bethesda pool area) to the public domain (presumably the street outside).

3. The prohibition to carry items from the private to the public domain is sometimes resolved through the establishment of an eruv chatzerot.

The concept here is to create an area that can be regarded as representing a single extended private domain. This is achieved through a very technical and very strongly regulated process of fencing in spaces that under normal circumstances would comprise a mixture of private and public domains.

4. The effect of this process is that within a single eruv, one is permitted to perform a relatively wide range of activities.

These are in essence those that one would be allowed if one were to spend the Sabbath entirely at home.

5. The issue under discussion has been the subject of huge study over the years and is still a matter for fierce debate even today.

6. In the context of this particular event, I find the contribution to this discussion made by the Medieval Jewish commentator David Kimchi (nicknamed The Radak), see for example //en.wikipedia/.org/wiki/Eruv, to be critical. In particular, The Radak analysed the references to the prohibition of carrying loads through the gates of Jerusalem in Jeremiah 17:21.

His conclusion was that the whole of Jerusalem was in fact an eruv, with the city walls as the boundary.

7. This argument has enormous implications for this incident.

In particular, although this argument indeed concurs with the prohibition of carrying into or out of the city on the Sabbath, carrying within the city walls would not necessarily have been a breach of the Sabbath regulations, depending on the exact type of carrying.

8. For me this is potentially of crucial importance because I really I do not see Y’shua ever conspiring to get someone else to act ambivalently around the Sabbath principles.

There is no disagreement on the fact that he certainly permitted his compassion to carry him into the controversies of healing on the Sabbath if that was necessary, in his own opinion.

However, he would never in my personal opinion presume to make