The Fall of Peter (John 18:1-12)

As noted in a previous post, after returning from my first intensive course at the Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural Studies, I have decided to start writing a series of posts on John's gospel, starting with some of my own thoughts about chapters 18 & 19. I'm starting with those two chapters primarily because of a group discussion our class had on those two chapters, and I want to share my own thoughts while our group discussion is fresh in mind. Below are some of my own thoughts.

John 18:1-12 follows a neat chiastic arrangement:

A)  vv. 1-3 -- "band of soldiers" and "officers of the Jews"
    B)  vv. 4-5 -- "ego eimi" ("I AM")       
        C)  v. 6 -- John's observation: soldiers and officers fall down from "ego eimi" ("I AM")
    B')  vv. 7-9 -- "ego eimi" ("I AM")
A')  vv. 10-12 -- "band of soldiers" and "officers of the Jews"

In this section we find many literary connections between Judas's actions and Peter's. Judas is mentioned twice as "the one who betrayed him" (vv. 2, 5) just as Peter is mentioned twice as the one having a "sword" (vv. 10, 11). We also find Judas bringing in backup to arrest Jesus, and they bring lanterns, torches, and weapons with them--a triple emphasis (v. 3). Peter attempts to stop Jesus' arrest with his sword, and there we find another triple emphasis: he draws his sword, strikes with it, and cuts off the right ear of the High Priest's servant, Malchus (v. 10). In the middle of all this, we find another triple action, only it's from the words of Jesus (vv. 5-8). Three times the divine words ego eimi ("I AM") are highlighted, and the central reference comes from John, the author, who says the soldiers fell down to the ground by the Word of God. Interestingly, just as Judas was mentioned twice at the beginning as the one who betrayed Jesus, in the following pericope (18:13-27) it is Peter whose words of betrayal are explicitly stated twice, saying ouk eimi ("I am not", vv. 17 & 25). All these judicial witnesses of two's and three's in a garden can hardly be accidental on John's part.

In this scene, Judas is portrayed as a subtle serpent entering the garden to tempt and trap Jesus, the second Adam. But Jesus knows the will of His heavenly Father (v. 4), and so he doesn't give into the serpent's temptation. Jesus also knows He has complete control over the situation. He manifests His great power with the breath of his mouth, knocking down his enemies. It is only after this manifestation of divine power that find Jesus doing something shocking. He knows His enemies have arrived with lanterns, torches, and weapons to seize Him, but He doesn't defend himself. Instead He defends His disciples by giving up his own life for them: "If you seek me, let these men of mine go." (v.8 ESV). By doing this, Jesus manifests himself as the greater Adam. Jesus does what the first Adam should have done in the Garden. Jesus protects his Bride by laying down his life for Her. 

However, the narrative doesn't end there. According to the way John records this series of events, it seems like Peter had not been paying much attention to what Jesus was saying, or to the fact that some soldiers fell down by His word. Peter, instead, seems to remain focused upon the soldiers with lanterns, torches, and weapons. His response to all of the commotion is to war with the serpent in the garden, seizing authority not given to him by God, by drawing, striking, and cutting off the ear (apparently aiming for the head) of the high priest's servant. By going to war with the serpent, Peter is also portrayed as ignorant of what Jesus' divine mission is. If anyone in this narrative understands the divine mission, it's the soldiers who just fell down on the ground from the mere breath of the Lord. But John doesn't tell us anything more about those who fell down. It is clear enough that those who fell down had perceived Jesus to be the one in complete control. All John continues to tell his readers is that Peter attacks the high priest's servant, Malchus, as though the divine affirmation of Jesus' authority wasn't good enough.

Peter also seems to expect the other disciples to join in with him in the attack. This is like Judas, who brought a band of soldiers with him because he expected resistance from Jesus and his disciples. And so, when Peter attacks Malchus, the high priest's servant, Peter is not thinking Christ's thoughts after Him. He is thinking Judas's thoughts after him. By striking Malchus, Peter is betraying his own High Priest, Jesus. By striking Malchus, Peter is striking Yahweh's servant. Interestingly, the name Malchus means "the kingly one," which again highlights the fact that by disregarding Jesus' voluntary surrender, Malchus is obeying the word of the Lord and Peter is symbolically striking the Kingly One. Malchus' actions are in line with the Father's will, whereas Peter's actions are not. In this regard, Jesus' response to Peter's actions are very telling: "Put your sword into its sheath, shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"1 (v. 11).

By highlighting Judas' betrayal at the beginning of this garden scene, there is no surprise that Jesus would be arrested and taken away. The real surprise of John's narrative is Peter betraying Jesus. Judas enters this garden with a band of soldiers because he knows Jesus often met there with his disciples, walking and talking with them in the cool of the day. But it is Peter who falls into temptation in the garden. It is Peter who thinks his eyes are open, discerning good from evil. It is Peter who is deceived by the craftiness of the serpent.

1.  Another translation of Jesus' words (however unlikely) could be: "Throw the knife into the grave! The cup that the Father has determined to give me, shall I not drink it?"

The World Beholds its King: Literary Structure and Movement in John 18-19

This past month I attended my first intensive course at the Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical, & Cultural Studies. The course was titled How To Read the Bible, which involved multiple lectures, tons of fellowship, and a full week of morning, noon, and evening worship all centered on Christ and His Word. As I've been reflecting upon that training, one of the things I valued most about the course was its two-hour group discussions for certificate students each day. Those discussions involved specific assignments of biblical texts --sometimes multiple chapters together-- and one of them was on chapters 18 & 19 of John's gospel. Those conversations with Dr. Leithart, James Jordan, and the other students were extremely helpful, which spurred further thoughts of my own worth sharing.

In his classic (and unfortunately forgotten) work, The Genius of John: A Composition-Critical Commentary on the Fourth Gospel, Peter Ellis lays out the chiastic framework recorded by the apostle John in chapters 18 & 19 (See below):

A)  18:1-2
    B)  18:13-27
       C)  18:28-19:16
    B')  19:17-30
A')  19:31-42

Working with this chiastic composition in mind, multiple parallels stand out to me. The first and most obvious parallel is A and A'. Both scenes take place in a "garden" (18:1; 19:41 ESV). This mention of a garden is what provides a clear inclusio for the literary structure of chapters 18 & 19. Even though this section begins and ends in a garden, the first garden where Jesus is arrested is likely not the location of the second garden, because the second garden is where Jesus body was buried in a tomb. But the garden scenery is very important thematically nonetheless. And so, according to John's own structure, we know that Jesus moves from arrest to burial, from the garden out into the world and then back to the garden. 

Upon closer examination of the chiasm above, this movement from garden to tomb has many other striking parallels.

First, in sections A through A', the history that John records moves from Jesus' arrest (A) to his trial (B) to his torture (C) to his crucifixion (B') to his burial (A'). Secondarily, and in a fashion of mockery, the story moves from Israel's election of Jesus (A) to his examination (B) to his coronation (C) to his procession (B') to his installation (A') as Israel's King. And last of all, but just as strikingly, John records a movement which symbolizes the Tabernacle, Courtyard, and World boundaries and Jesus' presentation in the midst of all of them. Scene A moves from his election in the garden, then out into to "courtyard" (18:15), followed by his coronation in the midst of the world--in Pilate's "headquarters" (18:28), and then proceeding back to the land where a cross-shaped tree of life awaited him on a hill, and then back into the garden where he would finally be installed as King of the world in a tomb. The movement looks like this (below):

A)  18:1-2                      Arrest          Election           Garden (Holy Place)
    B)  18:13-27               Trial            Examination     Land (Courtyard)
       C)  18:28-19:16       Torture         Coronation      World (Outside the Courtyard)
    B')  19:17-30             Crucifixion     Procession       Land (Tree/Courtyard)
A')  19:31-42                 Burial           Installation       Garden (Tomb/Most Holy Place)

These aren't my final thoughts on the matter, but the parallels are striking. Why is it that John records movement from a garden to a "courtyard" and then to Pilate's house, skipping Jesus' trip to Ciaphas' house altogether (vv. 24 & 28)? To me that seems intentional on John's part in order to move from garden to courtyard to world as those typological boundaries of the Tabernacle are laid out in Scripture. (See my previous posts here and here regarding that imagery.) All of my accumulating posts about tabernacle/temple typology can be found here. 

Is all of this merely a coincidence?

One Year With Jadon!

Friends and family celebrated Jadon's first birthday today! To watch the YouTube video my wife made for everyone, click on this link.

The Gate Liturgy of Eden

In The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus, L. Michael Morales presents a fascinating (and practical) case in defense of what he calls "gate liturgy," particularly in the relationship between the old covenant tabernacle/temple gate liturgy and that which pertains to entering the Garden of Eden, as recorded in Genesis 1-3. Commenting on this in some length, Morales writes:

YHWH God's expulsion of the primal couple and his placing the cherubim and flaiming sword to guard the garden's (gate) entrance become particularly poignant apologies for the necessity of the tabernacle/temple cultus. If it may justly be said that Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all focus to some degree on the way of approaching God through the worship of the tabernacle, then the expulsion from the divine Presence in the garden sanctuary becomes a manifest "key" to understanding the Pentateuch as well as the tabernacle cultus. The association, already developed but relevant here, between the garden and the tabernacle/temple was recognized by the Jewish sages as evident in the midrash that states when YHWH drove out Adam "from the garden of Eden he revealed to him the destruction of the temple" (Bereshit Rabbah 21.8). The Hebrew Bible itself appears to draw a parallel when, with Hosea 9.15 as an example, similar language is used for the exile of Israel:  

על רע מעלל‍יהם מ‍בית‍י אגרשׁ‍ם  Because of the wickedness of their deeds from my house/temple I will drive them out 

This idea is only strengthened, further, if Joaquim Azevedo's reading of Genesis 4.7, whereby he concludes that Adam's children brought their sacrifices to the gate of Eden, is accepted. Without rehearsing his argument, based on grammatical and syntactical considerations, contextual and background analysis, he posits an understanding of Gen 4.7 as: "If you do not do what is right, fix it with the sacrificial offering lying at the doorway of Paradise, then his [Abel's] desire will be to you and you will rule over him again."1 Davidson appears to take a similar reading when he writes: 

After Adam and Eve are expelled, in their sinful state they are no longer able to meet with God face to face in the Garden. But...the Gate of the Garden becomes the Sanctuary where Adam and Eve and their descendants were to meet with God, worship Him, and bring their sacrifices. Here the Shekinah glory was manifested as God came down to hold communion with them.2 

To be sure, it can hardly be insignificant that Gen 4.7 presents the first usage of the thematically rich term "door" (פתח  petah), and in relation to sacrifice. Eden's entrance (3.24) is not only a reasonable referent for the door in 4.7, but the cherubim mentioned in 3.24 also correspond, in a cultic setting, "to the apprehension of the shrine as a door to heaven."3 Indeed, stationed cherubim, at an eastward entrance--what else can this be but a temple gate? An ancient reading of Gen 3.24 may have recognized, then, not only a threatening barrier to garden entry, but a cultic site, the place where YHWH, in the consuming theophany of his fiery Presence, was "enthroned on the cherubim" (ישׁב  ה‍כרובים yoseb hakkrubim  Ps 80.2; 99.1). In the tabernacle cultus, which likely serves as a conceptual backdrop to the narrative, the door of the tent served as the place to which the people came to present their offerings to YHWH (Exod 40.29; cf. Lev. 1.3; 4.7; 18). The cultic material of the Pentateuch, in other words, demonstrates a concern that sacrificial ritual takes place "before YHWH" (לִפְנֵי יְהוָה  lipne yhwh) or "at the door of the tent of meeting," making the garden entrance the likely place of sacrifice since the previous narrative has already marked Eden as the locus of divine Presence, not to mention that most occurrences of the phrase "before YHWH" have a sanctuary or shrine clearly in mind. Thus not only does the conception of paradise as sanctuary already involve its being a place for cultic sacrifice, but also that the ritual is being performed before the divine Presence.4

1.  Morales cites: J Azevedo, "At the Door of Paradise," Biblische Notizen 110 (1999) 45-59
2.  Morales cites: R.M. Davidson, "Cosmic Metanarrrative," 112
3.  Moraales cites: T. Stordalen, Echoes of Eden, 293
4.  L. Michael Morales, The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus  [Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2012], pp. 109-11

Temple-Oriented Creation

In his book, The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus, L. Michael Morales comments on the hermeneutically significant position of Genesis 1-3:

That creation is portrayed as a cosmic temple means not merely that the temple cultus is infused with creation theology, but the creation itself informs the cultus because it is itself temple-oriented. Now while the argument has already been made that the cosmic mountain forms a conceptual backdrop to ANE1 literature, including that of Israel, it may also be the case that the creation account(s) of Gen 1-3 function to establish the sacred mountain paradigm fundamental to Israel's tabernacle/temple cultus. For examplle, v 2 of Gen 1 may be read as key to understanding the nature of the waters surrounding the cosmic mountain, through which one crosses to approach the divine abode. God's division of those waters may also be understood as determinative for his judicial role in relation to them. The abundant life in the divine Presence narrated in Gen 2 would explain humanity's need to approach the mount of God, and the expulsion narrative of Gen 3 to justify the tabernacle cultus as the divinely revealed means for that approach. This expulsion, we will argue, establishes the "descent" that generates the question of ascent so central to the cultus of Israel (cf Pss 15, 24).2

1.  Ancient Near East

2.  L. Michael Morales, The Tabernalce Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus [Leuven-Paris-Walpole, MA: Peeters, 2012], pp. 52-3

Leithart and The Tree of Life (film)

Only three chapters into Peter Leithart's latest theologically sophisticated work, Shining Glory: Theological Reflections on Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, and I couldn't resist posting something from the book. For those who have not seen Malick's film, The Tree of Life, it is available for purchase here, or for those who like renting movies before buying, a 24-hour rental can be found here. 

This particular comment caught my eye early on in the book:

Juxtaposition of scenes, and the layered overlap of scenes and dialogue are crucial techniques for Malick. Early in the film, as Mrs. O'Brien completes her opening meditation on nature and grace, she says "The nuns taught us that no one who lives in the way of grace comes to a bad end." At that moment, the camera closes in on R.L., whose early death appears to be a standing contradiction to the nuns' simple message. In a charming moment early in the second half, we see toddler Jack being led by a mysterious female figure through a forest. Then he is in an underwater bedroom, his teddy bear floating nearby and his crib rising and beginning to overturn. He swims through the door and Malick cuts to Mrs. O'Brien in the final stages of labor. The underwater bedroom is the womb, the swim out of the door is Jack's birth. This juxtaposition sets up visual allusions later on. When Jack is a young teen, a boy drowns in the local swimming pool, and it is as if Jack has passed through a second birth into questioning adulthood. Near the end of the film Mrs. O'Brien swims out a door into a new life. What was initially a figure of birth finally becomes a figure of new birth, resurrection.1 

Commenting a few pages later on Terrence Malick's "thematic breadth and exploitation of the aesthetic capacities of the film," Leithart concludes:

I have watched Malick's earlier films with appreciation, occasionally with awe, but none comes close to the majesty, beauty, and challenge of the Tree of Life. ...All the life of everything is here--creation and consummation, birth and death, laughter and tears, success and failure and the failures embedded within success, male and female, sin and shame, trees and water and sky and sun, distant galaxies and the neighbor's lawn. One of the purposes of art is to enhance our attention to the world around us, and by this standard Malick's film is art of the highest order.2

1.  Peter J. Leithart, Shining Glory: Theological Reflections on Terrence Malick's Tree of Life [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013], p. 6

2.  Ibid. pp. 8-9

Misconceptions of Mosaic Law

In his book, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, James Jordan comments on the misconception that the Mosaic laws were so tough, so demanding, and so stringent that nobody could ever keep them. He writes:

  Why do people think the Mosaic law was hard to keep? In general, it is because they do not know what the law really commanded, and because they have the Mosaic law confused with the rabbinical traditions of Judaism. The rabbinical traditions were  a "heavy yoke" (Matthew 15:1-20; Mark 7:1-23; Acts 15:10; Matthew 23:4). Jesus called the people back to the Mosaic law, making it his own, and in doing so said that He was offering an "easy yoke" (Matthew 5:20-48; 11:29-30). We should, then, briefly look at the Mosaic law. 

  What about all those sacrifices, you may ask? There were the Burnt, Meal, Peace, Thank, Votive, Sin, Reparation, "Heave," and "Wave" Offerings, for starters. Some used salt, and some did not. Some used oil, and some did not. Some required a lamb; others, oxen; others, birds. Leavened bread  was used with some, unleavened with others. Some parts of the animal were burned up, others given to the priests, and others were eaten by laymen. These things differed for each sacrifice. It was an awful lot of detail to master. The Israelite citizen, however, never offered any sacrifices himself. Only the priests were allowed to do the sacrifices, and they did them every day. They soon became familiar with all these details. 

  Compare the details of the complicated sacrificial system with the details of auto repair, and it suddenly becomes clear just how simple the priests's job was. How many different kinds of cars are there? Add on the fact that they change from year to year. Now consider all the different parts and aspects that can go wrong. Next time you take your car in, look at all the volumes of "Chilton" auto repair manuals that your mechanic keeps on hand, and compare their size and detail with the book of Leviticus. If your mechanic can learn to fix cars, and enjoy it, obviously the priests of Israel had no trouble managing the sacrificial system.

  What about the sabbath? Wasn't that a burden? No, it was a time of rest. But weren't they forbidden to cook on the sabbath? No, they kept the sabbath as a feast. But weren't they forbidden recreation on the sabbath? No, the Bible nowhere says this. Well then, what did they do? They went to church to worship God (Leviticus 23:3), and relaxed the rest of the day. The sabbath was not an "impossible burden."

  What about all those cleansing rules in Leviticus 11-15? Well, in the first place, becoming unclean only meant one thing: You were not permitted to go into the forecourt of the Tabernacle and bring a sacrifice. Since most forms of uncleanness only lasted a day or a week, it was no real burden to be unclean. Second, if you were seriously unclean, you could make other people unclean for a few hours (until sundown) if you touched them; but again, that was only a matter of concern if the other person were on his way to offer a sacrifice. At the most, being unclean was an inconvenience. Of course, if you were unclean for months on end, and could not attend festivals, it became a more serious matter.

  The laws of uncleanness were not hard to keep. You were to wash out a pot if a lizard fell into it and died. We would do the same today. You were not supposed to marry your sister, aunt, or child. Few of us would be tempted to. You were not supposed to eat dog-burgers or salted roast roaches. Most of us wouldn't either. That is because these are our customs, and we don't find them burdensome. If we were used to eating dog meat, as some cultures do, then the restriction would be temporarily burdensome until we got used to it. The Jews were not to eat pork either, but that was not hard for them. They were no more tempted to eat pork than we are to eat roaches. 

  So, the Mosaic law was not horribly complicated or impossible to keep. Of course, in the New Covenant we are not under the Mosaic law. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ replaces all the sacrifices of Moses. Christ has cleansed the world once and for all in His Resurrection, and so the laws of uncleanness no longer apply to us. That is, they no longer apply as laws. In terms of their symbolism, they still provide wisdom.1

1.  James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1999], pp. 199-201