John 1:24

Ver. 24. “ And those who were sent were of the Pharisees. ”

We translate according to the T. R., which is in conformity with the majority of the Mjj., with the Mnn., and with the greater part of the Vss. According to this reading, the participle ἀπεσταλμενοι, sent, is defined by the article οἱ, the; it is the subject of the sentence. The design of this remark added here by John is easily understood; it is to explain the question which is to follow. John likes to supply in this way, as a narrative progresses, the circumstances, omitted at first, which serve gradually to explain it; comp. John 1:41; John 1:45; John 4:30; John 9:14; John 11:5; John 11:18; John 13:23, etc. The Pharisees were the ultra conservatives in Israel; no one could have been shocked more than they by the innovation which John the Baptist had taken it upon himself to make in introducing baptism. Lustrations undoubtedly formed a part of the Jewish worship. It is even maintained that the pagan proselytes were subjected to a complete bath, on occasion of their passing over to Judaism. But the application of this symbol of entire pollution to the members of the theocratic people was so strange an innovation, that it must have awakened in the highest degree the susceptibility of the authorities who were guardians of the rites, and very particularly that of the party most attached to tradition. The Pharisaic element also was the main one in the deputation which the Sanhedrim had chosen.

We see how skillfully the plan of the examination had been laid; first of all, the question relative to the mission; then, that which concerned the rite; for the latter depended on the former. Nothing can be more simple than the course of the narrative, as thus understood. This mode of explaining the intention of the remark in John 1:24 appears to me more natural than that of Weiss and Keil, according to which John would thereby characterize the spirit of unbelief which animated the interrogators of the Baptist. The fact of their unbelief not being noticed in the narrative, did not demand explanation. Opposed to the reading of the T. R. there is another supported by the Alexandrian authorities and by Origen, and adopted by Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort, which rejects the article οἱ before ἀπεσταλμένοι; the meaning is: “and they had been sent from the Pharisees,” or, as Origen understood it: “and there were persons sent (come) from the Pharisees,” as if the question were of another deputation than that of John 1:19. Neither the one nor the other of these meanings is possible. For the Pharisees did not form an officially constituted body, from which a proceeding like this which is here spoken of could have started. The Alexandrian reading is, therefore, indefensible, as, in this instance, Weiss and Keil themselves acknowledge. It is, probably, as is so frequently the case, an arbitrary correction by Origen, to serve his false interpretation of this whole passage, from the end of the Prologue. Weiss and Keil see here a mere case of negligence of a copyist arising from the preceding καί, in which the οἱ was lost. But how many similar errors should we not have, in that case, in the New Testament!