John 1:19

Ver. 19. “ And this is the testimony which John gave when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou? ”

It is quite strange to see a narrative beginning with the word and. This fact is explained by the relation which we have just indicated between John 1:19 and John 1:15. What gives an especial importance to this declaration of John the Baptist, is its official character. It was uttered in presence of a deputation of the Sanhedrim, and as a reply to a positive inquiry emanating from that body, the religious head of the Jewish nation. The Sanhedrim, of whose existence we find the first traces only in the times of Antipater and Herod (Josephus, Antiq. 14.9, 4), was undoubtedly the continuation or renewal of a very ancient institution. We are reminded of the tribunal of the seventy-two elders established by Moses (Num 11:16). Under Jehoshaphat (2Ch 19:8), mention is also made of a supreme tribunal sitting at Jerusalem and composed of a certain number of Levites, priests and fathers of Israel. Comp., perhaps, also Ezekiel 8:11 f., “ seventy men of the elders of Israel. ” In Maccabees (1Ma 12:5; 2Ma 1:10; 2Ma 4:44, etc.), the body called γερουσία, senate, plays a part analogous to that of these ancient tribunals, yet without the possibility of establishing a historic continuity between these institutions. At the time of Jesus, this senate, called Sanhedrim, was composed of 71 members, including the president (Tract. Sanhedr. 1.6). These members were of three classes: 1. The chief-priests (ἀρχιερεῖς), a term which probably designates the high-priests who had retired from office, and the members chosen from the highest priestly families; 2. The elders of the people (πρεσβύτεροι, ἄρχοντες τοῦ λαοῦ), a term which undoubtedly comprehends the other members in general, whether lay members or Levites; 3. The scribes (γραμματεῖς), a term designating especially the experts in the law, the jurists by profession. The high-priest was ex-officio the president. The Sanhedrim had up to this time closed its eyes to John the Baptist's work. But observing that things were daily taking a more serious turn, and that the people were beginning even to ask themselves whether John were not the Christ (comp. Luke 3:15), they felt at length that they must use their authority and officially present to him the question respecting his mission. Jesus alludes to this step (John 1:33); afterwards, He Himself answered a similar inquiry with a refusal (Matthew 21:23 f.). The Mishna says expressly: “The judgment of a tribe, of a false prophet and of a high-priest belongs to the tribunal of the seventy- one.” Sanh. 1.5. We meet here, for the first time, the title, “ the Jews,” which plays an important part in the fourth Gospel. This name, by its etymology, properly designates only the members of the tribe of Judah; but after the return from the captivity it is applied to the whole people, because the greater part of the Israelites who returned to their own land belonged to this tribe. It is in this general sense that we find it in John 2:6, “ After the Jews' manner of purifying; ” John 2:13, “ The passover of the Jews; ” John 3:1, “ One of the rulers of the Jews. ”

In this purely political sense, this term may even include the Galileans (John 6:52). But the name has most frequently in our Gospel a religious coloring. It designates the nation as an unbelieving community, which, in the majority of its members and through its authorities, had rejected the Messiah. This particular sense is explained by the history; for the focus of the hatred and rejection of Jesus was found at Jerusalem and in Judea. This unfavorable sense attached to the name the Jews in our Gospel, has been adduced for the purpose of proving that the author of this book could not have been himself of Jewish origin. But after the fall of Jerusalem the Jewish nation had ceased to exist as a political body; this name of Jews thus became a purely religious title; and as John himself belonged to a different religious community, it is quite natural that he speaks of them as people who were henceforth foreigners to him. The Jewish-Christian author of the Apocalypse expresses himself still more severely with respect to his old fellowcountrymen, when he calls them “the Synagogue of Satan” (John 3:9); and Mark, in spite of his Jewish origin, also designates them by this word, the Jews, absolutely as John does (John 7:3). The words: from Jerusalem depend, not on the substantive the Jews, but on the verb sent. The design of this limiting phrase is to make the solemnity of the proceeding appear; it had an official character, because it emanated from the centre of the theocracy. Levites were joined with the priests. It has been often supposed that they merely played the part of bailiffs. But, in several passages of the Old Testament (2 Chronicles 17:7-9; 2 Chronicles 35:3; Neh 8:7), we see that it was the Levites who were charged with instructing the people in the law, from which fact Hengstenberg has, not without reason, concluded, that the scribes, so frequently mentioned in the New Testament, generally belonged to this order, and that it is in this character, and consequently as members of the Sanhedrim, that some of their number figured in the deputation. The question which they address to John the Baptist relates to the expectation, prevailing at that epoch in Israel, of the Messiah and of the extraordinary messengers who, according to the popular opinion, were to precede His coming. “ Who art thou? ” signifies in the context, Art thou one of these expected personages, and what one? We shall see in John 1:25 what embarrassment this question was preparing for John, in case he refused to declare his title.

Origen thought that with the second clause of John 1:19 (ὅτε ἀπέστειλεν) a new testimony of John the Baptist began. The first was, according to him, that of John 1:15 f, to which John 1:19 a refers. Consequently, he appears to have read τότε, then, instead of ὅτε (when). To complete this series of misconceptions, he only needed to find further on a third testimony addressed to a new deputation; he succeeded in this through his interpretation of John 1:24 (see on that verse). Cyril and some modern writers begin with the when of John 1:19 a new sentence, of which the principal clause is found in John 1:20: “When the Jews sent....he declared.” But the καί, and, before the verb ὡμολόγησε, he declared, renders this construction inadmissible. The particle καί, and, is never in John the sign of the apodosis, not even in John 6:57. The words πρὸς αὐτόν, to him, which are added by a portion of the Alexandrian authorities, and which two Mjj. place after λευΐτας, are probably interpolated. Meyer and Weiss wrongly make καὶ ὡμολόγησε, and he declared, depends on ὄτε, when; this construction makes the sentence a dragging one. It is better to translate: “And this is the testimony...(John 1:19)...and he declared.”