Wednesday, November 2, 2022

George R. Beasley Murray on John 20:17

  

17 There is a clear contact between Mary’s attempt to take hold of Jesus and the scene in Matt 28:9, where the women to whom Jesus appears “seized” (ἐκράτησαν) the feet of Jesus and prostrated themselves before him. In this context the term κρατέω is virtually synonymous with ἅπτομαι (so Bultmann, 687 n. 1). It is even possible that Matthew’s statement about the women generalizes the action of Mary. Remembering Eastern customs, we are probably to assume that Mary did just what Matthew describes: she prostrated herself before Jesus and sought to clasp his feet. It was an act of joyful adoration combined with a simple desire to hold Jesus, not because she feared to lose him again, but in a perfectly normal expression of affection. Blank remarks, “Contact belongs to the primary ways in which man in this world becomes aware of outward reality. But meeting and contact with the risen Jesus takes place on another plane, namely in faith, through the Word, or in the Spirit” (170–71).

 

Bernard’s suggested emendation of μή μου ἅπτου to read μὴ πτόου “do not be afraid,” to avoid the difficulty entailed in the next clause and the comparison with the Thomas episode (671) is ingenious and plausible, and is even supported by the μὴ φοβεῖσθε of Matt 28:10. Nevertheless, like all other suggested emendations of the NT text, it should not be resorted to if sense can be made of the extant passage.

 

The rest of v 17 is one of the most perplexing sections in the Gospel. The difficulty relates especially to the concept of ascension presented in it. Mary is given a message to the disciples that Jesus is about to ascend to the Father; why not rather that he is risen from the dead? If ascension is Jesus going to the Father, how can that be separated from his death and resurrection as a “lifting up” to the Father? Mary is told not to attempt to hold on to Jesus because he has not yet ascended; Thomas is invited to thrust his hand into the wounds of Jesus. Does the ascension take place between the two occasions?

 

We begin with the observation that v 17 is reminiscent of Matt 28:10. There the message for the disciples is that they are to go into Galilee to meet Jesus (it is in the angelic declaration of 28:7 that the women are to tell them that Jesus is risen). Matthew’s message thus assumes the resurrection of Jesus; so does the message through Mary. The last thing that the disciples have learned about Jesus is that his body is missing; here they are to learn that he is alive, and on his way to his Father to complete his saving task.

 

We should further observe that the emphasis in the word to Mary is not the negative ‘I am not ascended,’ but the positive “I am ascending.” Lagrange pointed out that v 17 should not be split into two halves, as was done by Westcott and others, but be seen as one, and its unity maintained. He wrote: “There is only a phrase with an opposition (indicated by the time) between ἀναβέβηκα, ‘I have ascended’ and ἀναβαίνω, ‘I am ascending.’ The message given to Mary Magdalene is but a parenthesis, and the force of δέ must apply to ἀναβαίνω, thus: ‘Do not insist on touching me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father; however, I will not delay much to go.… This is what you must say to my brothers, that they may be better prepared than you have been to understand the nature of my presence’ (511). The paraphrase “I will not delay much to go” is better rendered “I am on my way,” since the force of ἀναβαίνω is “I am in process of going” (so BDR § 324, 3, modifying BDF §323.3). That suggests that the “ascension” to which Jesus refers, which has not happened but which is on the way, relates especially to the work that Jesus is accomplishing in the completion of his saving task, i.e., in his mediation of the saving sovereignty of God to the world. This work of his, for which he dies and rises and ascends to the Father, has been made known to the disciples, especially in the Upper Room discourses. We recall his promise to prepare a place for the disciples in the Father’s house (14:2); to banish their sadness and fill them with joy through reunion with them (14:18–19; 16:16–22); the new relationship whereby the Father and the Son will make their home with them (14:21–23); the new era of effective prayer and power in their service for God (14:12–14; 16:23–24); and above all the bestowal of the Paraclete-Spirit, who will take the place of Jesus and expound his revelation to them and enable them to carry out their mission.

 

The virtual replacement of the language of resurrection with that of ascension is an indication that the two are fundamentally one, and indissolubly bound with the death of Jesus. Schnackenburg thinks it possible that in the Evangelist’s source the exhortation of Jesus to Mary not to keep holding him was that she might go and tell the disciples that he was risen, and that the Evangelist modified the language to convey the full import of Jesus’ resurrection as one with Jesus’ total saving work: “For him, everything is compressed into Jesus ‘hour’, therefore it is not really possible to dissect the event into death, resurrection, lifting up and installation in heavenly glory” (3:318–19). The ascension in this sense, accordingly, is not to be located at a date in the future; it is in process. It is noteworthy that the vision of ascension narrated in Acts 1:9 is set by Luke in the Gospel in closest association with Easter Day (Luke 24:50–51; the impression is given that it happened on Easter Day, but that is through Luke’s compression of his narrative). The Acts narrative is a parabolic action, signifying the conclusion of the Easter appearances. For John the “ascending” of Jesus is the conclusion of his “hour” whereby the salvation of the kingdom of God is wrought. (See further the excellent expositions of this passage by Brown, 2:1011–17, and Schnackenburg, 3: 317–20.)

 

The message through Mary is more than the simple announcement that Jesus ascends. “Go to my brothers,” Jesus says, “and say, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.’ “Clearly the “brothers” are not the brothers of the flesh (contrary to Dodd, Historical Tradition, 147, 324), but the disciples (as Mary understood, v 18). We may therefore interpret them as believers who by virtue of the “lifting up” of Jesus and the impending bestowal of the Spirit are to become sharers in his sonship with the Father. The distinction between the only Son of the Father and the sons who by the Spirit share his sonship is naturally assumed. But as Brown points out, it is not the difference but the likeness that is proclaimed here: “The statement of the Johannine Jesus is one of identification and not of disjunction” (2:1016). By way of illustration, Brown cites Ruth 1:16: “Your people shall be my people and your God my God.” The parallel is apt, but it should be noted that while it is Ruth who chooses to come under Naomi’s God, it is the Redeemer who has chosen to come to us, and in virtue of his total saving activity, living, dying, rising and ascending, makes us the sons of the Father and the people of God. (George R. Beasley Murray, John [Word Biblical Commentary 36; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1999], 376-78)