New Testament Note 367 et Finis

John 21:1-25

Compare Matthew 16:28; 26:30-35; Mark 9:1; 14:26-31; Luke 9:27; 22:31-34, 39; John 8:51-52; 13:36-38; 16:32; 18:1

In this chapter, which some have called an “appendix” to the gospel of John, we see Peter’s threefold affirmation of his love for Jesus (which may have been intended to compensate for his threefold denial just after the arrest of the Savior), a prediction of his death as a martyr, an unclear allusion to the idea that John the Apostle would not die until the return of the Lord, and, in the very last verse of the four gospels, yet another admission by the gospel of John that it has left quite a bit out of its account of the life of Jesus.

And, with that, I bring this hastily-done and all too cursory commentary on the New Testament gospels to a close.  It’s appropriate, I suppose, that I do so from very near the place where Jesus was crucified, where he atoned for our sins, and where he rose from the tomb.

***

Today, among other things, we visited the traditional Catholic (Franciscan) site of the “Shepherds’ Fields” in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem.  I read from the standard Christmas account given in Luke 2, and offered some historical and linguistic comments on it.  We also sang several Christmas carols.  (It’s always Christmas in Bethlehem.)

After our usual (excellent) lunch in the Tent Restaurant there, we visited Justinian’s early-sixth-century Church of the Nativity at Manger Square.  To my surprise and delight, there was effectively no wait to get down into the grotto, the traditional place of Christ’s birth (and one of the likely causes of the Crimean War).  Then we went next door to St. Catharine’s, which is a Catholic church (unlike the Nativity, which is Orthodox), and down into the caves where St. Jerome and his associates lived, worked, and are buried.  I offered a few remarks on Jerome and on the significance of the Vulgate Bible, which he created and which has had such enormous influence in the history of Western Christendom and Western culture generally.  (I took the opportunity to correct the notion that the ancient Church was trying to keep the Bible from the common people.  That was certainly so in the days leading up to the Reformation, but Jerome’s goal in the late fourth century was precisely to help in the wide dissemination of the Bible.)

Posted from Jerusalem, Israel