As twenty-first century readers of the Bible, we are faced with several challenges when it comes to our understanding of what we are reading. For a start, the books of the Bible were written between 2,000 and 3,000 years ago, depending on whether they are from the Old or New Testament. Obviously they reflect a very different time in history, and they are heavily influenced by the cultural attitudes and literary styles of the day. We can’t read them through our twenty-first century lens and interpret them literally.
Secondly, all the books of the Bible were the works of Jewish born authors with the exception of the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. Both of these books were written by the same author who was born a Gentile, but who became a ‘proselyte’, that is, a convert to Judaism. So in reality, we can say that all the books of the Bible are Jewish books. If we are to understand their true meaning, we need to read them through a Jewish lens, from a Jewish perspective.
A further problem we face, is that from the middle of the second century of the Common Era (CE), the Church had become largely a Gentile Church, and for centuries the Church read and interpreted these texts through a non-Jewish lens, and the teaching of the church reflected that. The result of that is that our understanding of the Bible has largely been shaped by that teaching.
With all of that in mind, let’s turn our attention to the gospel reading for Sunday 28 April, which is the Fifth Sunday of Easter, and which comes from the Gospel of John. This was the last of the four gospels to be written, and it was written somewhere in the final decade of the first century CE. At the time it was written, relationships between Jewish Christians and the Jews who practiced Judaism had become quite strained. Most Jewish Christians had probably been practicing Jews when they started to follow Jesus, and so they were still attending worship in the synagogues with their fellow Jews. However disagreements arose between Jewish Christians and Orthodox Jews regarding worship which resulted in Jewish Christians being expelled from the synagogues. Needless to say, the author of John’s Gospel, was writing to a community suffering from this very situation.
Another interesting piece of information before we go further, which has ramifications for how we read the Gospel of John, is that relating to the Jesus Seminar. This group consisted of some 200 New Testament scholars and was formed in 1985 with one of its aims being to indicate the degree of authenticity of the words and deeds attributed to Jesus in the gospels. In the judgment of the Jesus Seminar Scholars, about 18 percent of the sayings and 16 percent of the deeds attributed to Jesus in the gospels are authentic. However, in its opinion, NONE of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of John were actually authentic sayings of Jesus.
In the gospel passage for this Sunday (John 15:1–8), the author has Jesus declaring himself to be the “true vine” and his followers “the branches.” The author is saying that Jesus has replaced the nation of Israel as the “true vine”. In several books of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), the nation of Israel is referred to as the vine that God had rescued from Egypt and planted in the land of Canaan. But it had failed to bear fruit because the people of Israel had turned away from God on more than one occasion to follow foreign gods.
In the verses attributed to Jesus in this passage, Jesus tells his followers that God is the “vinedresser” who will remove any branch in Jesus that does not bear fruit. Jesus also tells his followers that they have already been cleansed by the teaching he has given them. He also says to them, “I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” (John 15:5-6 NRSV)
It’s easy to imagine Orthodox Jews becoming angry after hearing words like these and taking action to expel Jewish Christians from the synagogue. For the author is saying that Jesus has superseded the nation of Israel, and not only that, as I mentioned in last week’s blog, he has attributed to Jesus language used in the Book of Exodus to describe God. Jesus says, “I am the true vine”, and of course in Exodus God says to Moses, “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14 NRSV)
The author of John’s Gospel is clearly stating that Jesus is also God, which for Orthodox Jews would have been blasphemy, which is of course the charge brought against Jesus by the Jewish religious leaders which brought about his death.
