Only be sure that thou eat not the blood (John 6)

John chapter six thankfully looks a lot easier than chapter five was. Especially since I already answered "Can God be seen?" in chapter one.

So, this chapter has a few miracles, the first of which was feeding five thousand men. Funny thing that occurs to me about this miracle is that I've heard many sermons on Jesus feeding large crowds, and typically they will say at some point, "This is five thousand men; imagine how big the crowd was if you counted women and children, too!" I think this is making a bit of a possibly unwarranted assumption: that the Apostles literally did a head count, but said, "Let's not count the women and children." While I don't think there's a reason to think the number is hyperbole, I really doubt that it was anything more than a rough estimate, and if it was, who knows what exactly was counted? Some people have suggested that rather than a miracle, this is a story about a crowd of people who became very generous when they saw a young boy give up his lunch for Jesus. It's not out of the question, but the fact that there was so much food gathered up afterwards makes it seem unlikely; would these people be so generous they gave more than was needed to feed everyone? Anyway, shortly after this, Jesus walks on water which, as a miracle, is of course antiscientific and absurd to the SAB. Go figure.

Verse 29 is an interesting note in the discussion of salvation by faith vs. works: Jesus says believing in him is "the work of God". Verse 46 once again raises the question of whether God can be seen, which I answered in John chapter one.

Verse 53 has Jesus talking for the first time in this Gospel about eating his body and drinking his blood. Christians of all denominations take this to be talking about communion, but there is a lot of disagreement on what communion really is, when it should be taken, and other things. As the SAB seems to be implying in a clever way, Catholics believe that when the elements of communion are blessed, they literally become the flesh and blood of Jesus, a process known as transubstantiation, while Protestants believe it's entirely symbolic. I once heard a pastor point out that since Christians are taking the communion, and it becomes part of them, then since Christians as a whole are called by the Bible "the body of Christ" then there is a sense that transubstantiation happens in the end anyway.

Is it OK to eat blood? This is a straightforward no, since it is forbidden not just to Jews, but it was forbidden before the Jewish Law and by the leaders of the early church. Yes, Jesus tells people to drink his blood, but this is obviously a special exception, whether it's only symbolic drinking of his blood, or somehow literal. And going back to the subject communion, in case John 6:55 is not quite clear enough in the KJV, the New International Version reads, "For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink." So Jesus does seem very serious about this. However, the wine and bread of communion originated from the Jewish Passover, where it is also symbolic of blood in part.

Lastly, the SAB makes note on verse 70, about Jesus saying one of the Apostles is a "devil", that supposedly Jesus made a mistake. It's definitely not a mistake, as Jesus knows about Judas's betrayal before Judas is even called. You can see here that Jesus is aware already, and when you look at the evening of Jesus's betrayal, you see that Jesus doesn't just know he's going to be betrayed, he actually tells Judas to betray him! More on this when I get to John 13:27-30.

Before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice (Luke 22)

Luke 22 opens with the intriguing question Did Satan enter Judas before or after the last supper? I suppose the SAB can see this as a contradiction, but it's quite possible that Satan entered into him more than once.

So then we come to the Last Supper, of course in the midst of which, Jesus gives his disciples bread that he says is "my body" and wine which he says is "my blood". The SAB marks this is violent for some reason; I guess they are assuming this is not bread and wine but actual flesh and blood? Even among Christians who believe in transubstantiation (that the bread and wine magically transform into flesh and blood) the Eucharist doesn't start out that way, so I can't see the violence there.

In verse 30, Jesus says the apostles will "sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." The SAB asks which tribe Judas will judge. First of all, it doesn't say that each of them will get a specific tribe to judge; I assume they all will judge all the tribes jointly. Second of all, there's no reason to assume that this applies to Judas.

Now I have no idea why I didn't cover this in Matthew 26 or Mark 14 (I'm pretty sure this isn't a new note in the SAB), but in the book of Mark, Jesus tells Peter that the cock will crow twice when Peter will deny Jesus, which is different from the other three tellings of this story. The thing that may be especially interesting about this discrepancy is that Mark's gospel is considered by some scholars to have been written by Mark based on interviewing Peter about the events within it. So while this discrepancy is a minority reading, it's in the gospel that one would most expect to get the details right. Whichever version is right in the end, this seems to be a small but real contradiction. (The later note about Did the cock crow before or after Peter's denial? is of course closely related, and I would respond to it similarly.)

Is Jesus peaceful? I'm sure I've answered this many times, but it always could use another answer. Jesus was a peaceful person, and he came to bring peace between man and God, but in the end, the controversy that has ever since been brought up because of his teachings has led to a lot of violence. In this passage, Jesus is warning his disciples that with him dead and gone, things are going to be different, and they will need to defend themselves.

Did Jesus ask God to save him from crucifixion? Sort of. You'll find that in each of the gospels he seems to suggest it, but immediately adds something like, "not my will but yours."

I don't know what to say about the note on verses 43-44. I'm sure the book in the footnotes of the page sheds some light on the matter.

Did Judas identify Jesus with a kiss? It seems to be the case, although it also seems to be the case that John did not mention this fact in his gospel.

Was Jesus taken to Caiaphas or Annas first? Some facts need to be clarified about these two men. First of all, they were both acting as high priest, because the Romans had ordered that Annas be made high priest, while the Jews still accepted Caiaphas. Secondly, Caiaphas was the father-in-law of Annas, so whether at home or at the temple, these two men may have very well been together.

However, I have to admit that To whom did Peter deny knowing Jesus? is a question that just has a jumbled mess for an answer, and I've no idea why. In some sense it doesn't matter, but since it's largely accepted that some of the gospel writers copied from each other it seems strange that there would be so much discrepancy.

How did Jesus respond when questioned by the high priest? Well, while technically the gospels give different responses, they're awfully similar. I think a lot of believers know of these slight differences and aren't bothered by them, but I could be only speaking for me. It's been a long chapter.

Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions (Gen 40)

The SAB doesn't have much to say about chapter 40, but let's see what we have here, because it's a bit of a turning point in Joseph's life. One of the things I find interesting here, as I mentioned back in chapter 37, is that Joseph, for being such a supposed expert at interpreting dreams, never bothered to interpret his own (or if he did, it's not mentioned).

While Joseph is spending his time working away in prison, two men come to be interred with him, both servants of Pharaoh. One is the royal baker, and the other, while called a "butler" in this translation is really more of a wine steward or cup bearer, which is clear enough from the context anyway. It's been interpreted by some, and it makes sense, that these two men may be suspects in a criminal matter, and they are being held in jail until the matter is cleared up. Thus they both go in together and come out together, being implicated for the same crime. This is another interesting moment which is often thought as being symbolic of the Eucharist, these two men representing bread and wine.

In any case, the two men each have a dream, and the two dreams are similar. They both involve the dreamer going back into service for Pharaoh in an odd, supernatural fashion, and also both involve the number three. (Note that in each instance of Joseph dealing with dreams, there are two dreams that have an important number (12, 3 and 7) which is the same in both.) The butler/cupbearer's dream is a pleasant one, and the interpretation is pleasant. The baker's dream is an unpleasant one, and the interpretation is rather unpleasant. In both instances, Joseph uses a variation of the phrase "Pharaoh shall lift up thy head"; in the butler's case, the idiom means "Pharaoh will show you favor" while in the baker's case, the addition of "from off thee" indicates that the baker is going to be executed by beheading. When the interpretations come true (which they do), Pharaoh "lifted up the head of the chief butler and of the chief baker", which in this case means that he singles them out for special treatment. I love the way the Bible plays with words, in this case showing the flexibility of a simple idiom.

The SAB apparently finds Pharaoh's treatment of the baker to be cruel and/or violent. Actually, the KJV understates it a bit, as it's likely that what is really going on here is not that the baker was put on a gallows, but rather that he was beheaded, and his body and/or head was impaled on a spike for the birds to eat. So yeah, it is a bit violent and cruel. I find it interesting that the SAB has no issue with the fact that Joseph was able to predict the future.

I want to add a final note here about a minor point in language that also covers an issue I have heard elsewhere, although don't see mentioned in the SAB. The butler/cupbearer fails to "remember" Joseph after he's restored to his position. This word for "remember" is used many times in reference to God, perhaps most well-known and notably in Genesis 8:1 and Exodus 2:24. Some people have wondered, "If God is 'remembering' Noah or the Israelites, does that mean he had 'forgotten' them?" Not at all. The word that the KJV prefers to translate as "remember" has different shades of meaning, one of which is the second-most preferred translation: "mention" (v. 14, same word in Hebrew). The general idea is that when one "remembers" something, it is brought to the full attention. Joseph is saying, "Make sure Pharaoh knows about me and gives some attention to my wrongful imprisonment!" In the many cases where the Bible says God "remembered" something, the idea is that God decided to turn his full attention to dealing with a specific problem, because its time had come. Joseph was forgotten for two years, but frankly, his time had not yet come.

The LORD will be at war against the Amalekites from generation to generation (Gen 14)

Ugh, Amalekites... What a drag. (No offense to any Amalekites reading my blog!)

The Amalekites are this tribe of people who live in the general region of Canaan. They get defeated about six or seven times throughout the Bible, a couple times being "utterly destroyed". But they just KEEP COMING BACK! What the heck? Sometimes I feel like I'm helping the SAB's cause more than countering it, but the SAB might do well to have a reference page just for all the varied mentions of Amelekites and how they pop up in some strange places.

Here in chapter 14, the SAB points out that the Amalekites are mentioned three generations before the birth of Amalek, who one would think it would be safe to assume was the patriarch of the Amalekites. After all, Cush is the father of the Cushites, Canaan is the father of the Canaanites, Israel is the father of the Israelites, etc. Well, I believe the Amalek mentioned in chapter 36 does indeed become the father of a tribe of people called the Amalekites eventually. But one would be right to ask, what the heck are Amelekites doing back here before Amalek's birth? These can't be the same people, so why the same name?

Well, although it's strange that two separate nations might have the same name, it's certainly not impossible. For instance, there is a tribe in Oklahoma known as the "Kado", but there are also ethnic groups with that name in Chad and Burma, and the groups have nothing in common but their name. I think in this case, the real key to understanding what's likely to be going on is to look at the Hebrew. The name "Amalek" means "dweller in a valley". Thus "Amalekites" would really mean "the people who live in the valley". It may or may not be a genuine name, and could be simply a label that could be applied to any nation that happened to live in a valley. I think that in general, when this name appears in the Bible, there is a chance that it is referring to a people that has little in common with the other Amalekites other than happening to perhaps be located in a valley. That certainly seems to be the case here.

I'm not going to look into all of the Hebrew for this chapter, but there may be more of interest, such as "the Zuzims in Ham" mentioned in verse 5, which apparently is, rather than a title, just a generic term for nomadic people, and "Shaveh Kiriathaim" which means a plain with two cities.

Also, since I've already touched on slavery as an ancient Middle Eastern custom that differs from our modern concept, I'm not going to respond to the notes on verse 14 and 15, but refer you to my earlier post, and the comments following.

I am however going to finish this post out with some comment on Melchizedek, as promised earlier. Melchizedek appears here in verses 18-20, and it's the only place he appears, but the Bible has a fair amount to say about him. Who is he? His name means something like "King of Righteousness", and he's the king and high priest of Salem, a place with a name that means "peace", and eventually becomes Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel, location of the Jewish Temple, and location of Christ's crucifixion.

Melchizedek is an interesting person for numerous reasons. His ancestry is not mentioned (it's usually the practice to say a person's name and the name of their father), and in fact Hebrews 7 says that he was "Without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." This is suggestive, but before I follow this line, I'd like to also point out that he's in the unique position of being simultaneously a king and a high priest; in the law of Israel, a person was never allowed to be both, and you don't really see it in other nations either. (Call it "separation of church and state"; even God thinks it's a good idea!) Apparently some scholars have suggested it might be Shem who, oddly enough, is still alive according to the numbers in chapter 11's genealogy. Other people have other interesting ideas. The most significant idea, however, is that some believe this to be the first "Christophany" as it is called: a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus on the earth. Note that this guy knows who Abram is, knows who Abram's God is, and Abram gives him a tithe (one-tenth of his spoils from the war), something that in Israel's future was something people were supposed to give to their priesthood in order to honor God. Also note that Melchizedek brings bread and wine, a traditional communion plate long before communion was instituted. Whoever this was, he was definitely a messenger from God.

At the end of the story, the king of Sodom offers to give all the material spoils of the war to Abram, but he declines, saying that while he was willing to team up with the army of Sodom to win this war, he's not willing to take anything from Sodom as a gift beyond that. It seems that Abram already knows that something's not quite right with this place.