John 8:59

Ver. 59. “ Thereupon, they took up stones to stone him; but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. ”

In the face of this reply, there was indeed nothing left to the Jews except to worship or to stone him. The word ᾖραν, strictly: they lifted up, indicates a volition, a menace, still more, perhaps than a well-settled purpose. Comp. the stronger expression in John 10:31. These stones were probably lying in the court, for the building of the temple, which was not yet finished. The word ἐκρύβη, hid himself, does not include, but rather excludes the idea of a miracle. Jesus was surrounded by a circle of disciples and friends who facilitated His escape. Whatever may be the authority of the documents and Versions which support the T. R. here (see the note), it is evident that the last words are a marginal gloss formed by means of the first words of the following chapter and of Luke 4:30. Baur defends their authenticity, and tries to draw from them a proof of the Docetism of the author. But the normal expression, from the Docetic point of view, would have been, not ἐκρύβη (he hid himself), but ἄφαντος or ἀφανὴς ἐγένετο (he vanished).

Here is the end of the most violent conflict which Jesus had had to sustain in Judea. Chaps. 7 and 8 correspond in this regard with chap. 6. The general victory of unbelief is here decided for Judea, as it had been in chap. 6 for Galilee. So from this time Jesus gradually abandons the field of battle to His adversaries, until that other final ἐκρύβη, John 12:36, which will close His public ministry in Israel.

We have seen all the improbabilities, which criticism has found in such large numbers in this chapter and the preceding one, vanish before a calm and conscientious exegesis. The answers and objections of the Jews, which Reuss charges with being grotesque and absurd, have appeared to us, when placing ourselves at the point of view of those who make them, natural and logical. The argument of Jesus which, according to Renan, “is very weak when judged by the rules of Aristotelian logic,” appears so only because it is forgotten that the question is of things which Jesus, counting on the moral consciousness of His adversaries, thought He might lay down as axioms. There is certainly, in the narrative of these two Chapter s, chap. 7 and 8, not a single improbability which approaches that which there would be in supposing such conversations invented afterwards outside of the historical situation to which they so perfectly adapt themselves. There is no verbiage, no incongruity, no break of continuity. This reproduction of the conversations of Jesus is made with such delicacy, that one almost gives his assent to the hypothesis of a rationalist of the past century, Bertholdt, who supposed that the evangelist had taken notes of the discourses of Jesus at the very time when he heard them. Two features strike us especially in these two Chapter s:

1. The dialogue form, so full of reality, which could have engraved itself on the mind of a witness more easily than a consecutive discourse;

2. The summary character of the testimonies of Jesus. There is always, at the beginning, a simple and grand affirmation without development, John 7:37-38; John 8:12; John 8:31-32; then, in proportion as it becomes the subject of a discussion between Jesus and His hearers, the developments are given. These two features would be sufficient to prove the historical character of the narrative.