John 12
John 12 is the twelfth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It narrates an anointing of Jesus' feet, attributed to Mary of Bethany, as well as an account of the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. The author of the book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that John composed this Gospel.
Text
The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 50 verses.Textual witnesses
Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter in Koine Greek are:- Papyrus 75
- Papyrus 66
- Codex Vaticanus
- Codex Sinaiticus
- Codex Bezae
- Codex Alexandrinus
- Papyrus 2
- Papyrus 128
- Papyrus 59
Places
- Bethany, about 15 stadia away from Jerusalem
- Jerusalem
Old Testament references
- :
- :
- : a;
- :
- :
- :
New Testament references
- reflects.
The anointing at Bethany (verses 1–8)
Verses 1–3
The narrative suggests that Jesus and His disciples travelled to Bethany from Ephraim, where Jesus had been staying to avoid the Jewish leaders who were plotting to kill him. He dined with Lazarus, Martha and Mary, a family well known to Jesus. This family group had been introduced to the readers of John's Gospel in chapter 11, where Mary is described as "that Mary who anointed the Lord with fragrant oil and wiped His feet with her hair".Verse 2 notes that "Martha served", while Lazarus was "one of those reclining with at table". John Chrysostom notes that Mary did not "serve" because she had a different role in this narrative: she was a disciple rather than a server".
Verse 12:3 is curiously foretold in verse 11:2, and shows many striking similarities with, but also differences from, various traditions narrated in the other canonical gospels, which has created much scholarly controversy. New Testament scholars try to establish how John's narrative of the raising of Lazarus and the subsequent feet-anointing of Jesus by Mary of Bethany was composed by seeking to explain its apparent relationships with the older textual traditions of the Synoptic Gospels. The author of John seems to have combined elements from several – apparently originally unrelated – stories into a single narrative. These include the unnamed woman's head-anointing of Jesus in Bethany, the sinful woman's feet-anointing of Jesus in Galilee, Jesus' visit to Martha and Mary in the unnamed Galilean village, Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and possibly others involving Jesus' miraculous raising of the dead. Meanwhile, other elements were removed or replaced; for example, Simon the Leper/Simon the Pharisee was replaced by Lazarus as the host of the feast in Jesus' honour, and Bethany in Judea was chosen as the setting, while most elements of John's narrative correspond to traditions that the Synoptics set in Galilee. Scholars pay particular attention to verse , which may represent an effort by the author or a later redactor to stress a connection between these stories that is, however, not found in the older canonical gospels. They further argue that the actual anointing will not be narrated until verse 12:3, and that neither Mary, nor Martha, nor the village of these sisters, nor any anointing is mentioned in the Gospel of John before this point, suggesting that the author assumes the readers already have knowledge of these characters, this location and this event, and wants to tell them that these were connected long before giving the readers more details. Esler and Piper posited that verse 11:2 is evidence that the author of the Gospel of John deliberately mixed up several traditions in an 'audacious attempt to rework the collective memory of the Christ-movement'. According to Esler, the author did not strive to give a historically accurate account of what had happened, but instead, for theological purposes, combined various existing narratives in order to construct Lazarus, Mary and Martha of Bethany as a prototypical Christian family, whose example is to be followed by Christians.
Verses 4–6
, described as "one of disciples" and "Simon’s son, who would betray Him", asks “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to poor people ?” The New International Version, New King James Version and New Living Translation all equate this amount to a year's wages. In the oil is also valued at three hundred denarii; in it could have been sold for "a high price". H W Watkins computes that, since in, two hundred denarii would purchase food for 5,000, three hundred denarii would have fed 7,500 people.John's Gospel is the only one which observes that Judas was responsible for the disciples' "common fund" or "money box", both here in verse 6 and again in. The term το γλωσσοκομον "means literally "a case for mouthpieces" of musical instruments, and hence any portable chest. It occurs in the Septuagint texts of.
Verse 7
The New Revised Standard Version, differing from other translations, reads "She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial".The plot to kill Lazarus (verses 9–11)
A great many of the Jews came to Bethany, "not for Jesus’ sake only, but that they might also see Lazarus, whom He had raised from the dead. The wording of verse 9 suggests that Jesus remains a while in the town. But the chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also, because on account of him many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus". Augustine comments on "the folly of the priests — as if Christ could not raise Lazarus a second time!" Matthew Poole asks, "What had Lazarus done?" The plot to put Lazarus to death may be read alongside the developing plot to kill Jesus as if there were parallel plots "to kill Lazarus as well as Jesus", or even to kill Lazarus first - as Albert Barnes suggests: "as it was determined to kill Jesus, so they consulted about the propriety of removing Lazarus first, that the number of his followers might be lessened, and that the death of Jesus might make less commotion". But the observation that "on account of many of the Jews went away and believed in Jesus could indicate that in the early church Lazarus was influential in converting many Jews to the belief that Jesus was the Messiah.Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem (verses 12–19)
John 12:12 states that on "the next day", a great multitude who had come to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover, "heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem", and so they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him. presents Jesus in Bethany "six days before the Passover", so His entry into Jerusalem can be understood as taking place five days before the Passover, on "the tenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, on which the paschal lamb was set apart to be 'kept up until the fourteenth day of the same month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel were to kill it in the evening'.Greek pilgrims in Jerusalem (verses 20–36)
Some ethnic Greeks had also made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the feast. Jesus' interest in teaching the Greeks of the diaspora has already proved a matter of some intrigue in chapter 7. Bengel's Gnomen notes that "it is not clear that they were circumcised: certainly, at least, they were worshippers of the One God of Israel" – they were present in Jerusalem "that they might worship at the feast. John uses the same word, προσκυνειν, proskunein, literally to kneel and kiss the ground, in in relation to the Jewish-Samaritan debate over the sacred place "where one ought to worship", where He announces that "the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem".Meyer's New Testament Commentary and the Expanded Bible both state that these pilgrims were "gentiles". They had presumably "heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem" on the same basis as the Jewish multitude mentioned in John 12:12, although Meyer raises the possibility that "they came to Philip accidentally". The evangelist raises the question of whether they can see Jesus. "They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida of Galilee, and asked him, saying, 'Sir, we wish to see Jesus'. Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn Andrew and Philip told Jesus. The evangelist repeats the information already provided at, that Philip came from Bethsaida in Galilee, which was "also the city of Andrew and Peter". Both Philip and Andrew have Greek names. Watkins considers it "a striking coincidence, and perhaps more than this, that the Greeks thus came into connection with the only Apostles who bear Greek names".
Verse 23
Watkins observes that the coming of the Greeks is mentioned "not for the sake of the fact itself, but for that of the discourse which followed upon it", while Swedish-based commentator René Kieffer notes that it is to them, along with the rest of his audience, that Jesus reveals the mystery of his imminent death:Verses 24–27
Jesus' discourse, set out in John 12:24–27, leaves readers "in doubt as to the result of the Greeks’ request":The evangelist addresses directly the issue that the Messiah had died: "Strange as it may seem to you that the Messiah should die, yet this is but the course of nature: a seed cannot be glorified unless it dies". Paul refers to the same idea in : "What you sow does not come to life unless it dies".
Theologian Harold Buls suggests that the grain of wheat which "falls into the ground and dies" refers to Jesus alone, whereas the teaching that "he who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life" applies "to all people, Jews and Gentiles". The, apollyei is written as ἀπολέσει, apolesei in the Byzantine Majority Text, but Watkins argues that the present text has "slightly more probability":
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges notes that in verse 25, two Greek words, ψυχὴν, psychēn and ζωὴν, zōēn, are both translated into English as "life": "in the first two cases, 'life' means the life of the individual, in the last, life in the abstract. By sacrificing life in the one sense, we may win life in the other". This work also comments that Matthew 10:39,,, and all express the same idea, and that a "comparison of the texts will show that most of them refer to different occasions, so that this solemn warning must have been often on lips". The Living Bible makes the distinction clearer by paraphrasing ζωὴν as "eternal glory".