John 2:22

Ver. 22. “ When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. ”

Into docile hearts the light came, although slowly. The event explained the word, as in its turn the word contributed to disclose the deep meaning of the event. It is surprising to meet here the limiting words τῇ γραφῇ, the Scripture; for the Scripture had not been quoted by Jesus, unless we think, with Weiss, of John 2:17, which is unnatural in view of the formal opposition established by John 2:22 between the time of the one and that of the other reminiscence. The evangelist undoubtedly wishes to intimate that the first point on which the light fell, in the hearts of the apostles, after the resurrection, was the prophecies of the Old Testament which announced that event (Psalms 16; Isaiah 53; Hosea 6; the prophet Jonah), and that it was by the intermediate agency of the interpreted prophecies that the present word of Jesus came back to their remembrance and was also made clear to them.

This little point which belongs to the inner biography of the apostles, stamps the narrative with the seal of historical reality. Let the reader picture to himself, with Baur, a pseudo-John, in the second century, inventing this momentary want of intelligence in the disciples with regard to a saying which he had himself ascribed to Jesus! The moral impossibility of such a strange charlatanism as this is obvious. This remark applies to the similar points, John 4:32-33; John 7:39; John 11:12; John 12:16; John 12:33; John 13:28, etc.

The Synoptics relate an act of Jesus similar to this; which they place at the beginning of the week of the Passion, either on Palm-day (Matthew 21; Luke 19), or more exactly on the next day after that (Mark 11). We might naturally enough suppose that these three evangelists, having omitted all the first year of Jesus' ministry, were led thereby to locate this event in the only visit to Jerusalem of which they relate the story. This is the opinion of Lucke, de Wette, Ewald, Weiss, etc. Keim goes much further; he claims that it would have been the grossest want of tact on Jesus' part thus at the start to advertise His Messiahship, and to break with the old Judaism as He does in John. But what gives to the corporeal act its meaning and its character is the words with which Jesus accompanies it. Now these words, which constitute the soul of the narrative, are very different in the Synoptics and in John, to such a degree that it would be impossible to unite them in one consecutive discourse. In the Synoptics, Jesus claims, on the ground of Isaiah 56:7 (“ My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples ”), the right of the Gentiles to the place which, from the beginning, had been conceded to them in the temple (1 Kings 8:41-43). In John, there is no trace of this intention; Jesus has in view Israel itself and only Israel.

This difference, as well as the characteristic reply, John 2:19, argues two distinct events. If, as we may not doubt, the abuse which is in question really existed at the moment when Jesus presented Himself for the first time as Messiah, and as Son of God, it was impossible that He should tolerate it. It would have been to declare Himself Messiah and abdicate the Messianic office by one act. Thus John's narrative is self-justified. But it is, also, wholly true that if, after having been reduced during more than two years to the simple activity of a prophet, Jesus wished to reassume on Palm-Sunday His office as Messiah-King, and thus to take up again a connection with His beginnings, He could not do so better than by repeating that act by which He had entered upon His career, and by repressing again that abuse which had not been slow in reproducing itself. By the first expulsion He had invited the people to the reformation which could save them; by the second, He protested against the profane spirit which was about to destroy them. Thus the narrative of John and the Synoptic narrative equally justify themselves.

This contrast between the two situations agrees with the difference between the words uttered. In John, seeing His appeal repelled, Jesus thinks of His death, the fatal limit of that first rejection; in the Synoptics, seeing the fall of Israel consummated, He proclaims the right of the Gentiles, who are soon going to be substituted for the Jews. As for Keim's objection, this author forgets that, by acting in this way, Jesus made an appeal precisely to that which was deepest in the consciousness of every true member of the theocracy, respect for the temple. Beyschlag has justly called this proceeding on the part of Jesus, “the most profoundly conservative Jewish act.” It was precisely the wonderful character of this act, that it inaugurated the revolution which was preparing, by connecting it with that which was most vital in the Israelitish past.