Sunday, May 14, 2023

Strack & Billerbeck and Richard David Aus on Caiaphas Prophesying in John 11

  

11:51: He did not say that on his own, but since he was the high priest that year, he prophesied.

 

Prophecies without the knowledge and will of the speaker are often mentioned within the rabbinic literature.

 

Babylonian Talmud Soṭah 12B: “This one זֶה is one of the children of the Hebrews” (Exod 2:6). R. Yohanan († 279) has said that זֶה “this one” teaches that she prophesied without her knowledge שנתנבאה שלא מדעתה that “this one” will fall (into the Nile), but no other child will fall in.—As the passage goes on to explain, the edict to kill the Hebrew boys is said to have been lifted by the Egyptians on that day. ‖ Babylonian Talmud Soṭah 12B: “Take הֵילִיכִי this child” (Exod 2:9). R. Hama b. Hanina (ca. 260) said, “She prophesied and did not know what she prophesied: היליכי, that is, הא שליכי, this one is yours!”—The same is said in Exod. Rab. 1 (67B). ‖ Babylonian Talmud Baba Batra 119B: “You will bring them in and plant them on the mountains of your possessions” (Exod 15:17). It is not said, “You will bring us in” (as one should expect in the mouth of the redeemed of Egypt), but rather “You will bring them in (i.e., others).” This teaches that they prophesied without knowing what they prophesied (for in fact it was later decreed that those who were drawn out of Egypt would not enter the land of Canaan).—A similar passage is in Mek. Exod. 15:17 (51A). ‖ Midrash Psalms 90 § 4 (194A): R. Eleazar (ca. 270) said in the name of R. Yose b. Zimra (ca. 220), “All prophets who prophesied did not know what they prophesied, only Moses and Isaiah knew. Moses said in Deut 32:3, ‘Let my teaching be like rain’; Isaiah said in Isa 8:18, ‘Behold, I and the children whom Yahweh gave me are a symbol and a sign of the miracles in Israel.’ ” (The proof lies in the fact that Moses and Isaiah speak of themselves in the first person, see below). R. Joshua the priest b. Nehemiah (ca. 350) said, “Elihu also prophesied and knew (understood the content); see Job 33:3, ‘My lips (my words) know they speak clearly.’ ” R. Eleazar said in the name of R. Yose b. Zimra, “Samuel, the master of the prophets, prophesied and did not know; see 1 Sam 12:11, ‘Yahweh sent Jerubbaal and Barak and Jephthah and Samuel.’ He does not say, ‘and me,’ but rather ‘Samuel,’ because he did not know what he prophesied.” (Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, A Commentary on the New Testament from the Talmud & Midrash, ed. Jacob N. Cerone [trans. Jacob N. Cerone; Bellingham, Wash.: Lexham Press, 2022], 2: 627–628)

 

 

The High Priest as Prophet

 

John 11:50-51 says that the high priest Caiaphas “prophesied” that Jesus should die for the people, thus the whole nation would not perish.

 

This priest’s actual name was Joseph and his surname Caiaphas. He officiated as high priest from ca. 18 to 36 C.E., unusually long in light of the one year or less enjoyed by his three predecessors. He was one of the great families in Jerusalem which supplied a large number of high priests, and his father-in-law was the better known Annas (John 18:13, 24). His name probably derives from the word “ape” (קוף), Aramaic קיפא, and not from the purported Arabic for “seer, foreteller.”

 

Many scholars consider Caiaphas’ words an unconscious prophecy regarding the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 C.E. Regarding the phenomenon of unconscious prophecy, they point to several rabbinic examples given by P. Billerbeck. ‘Avot R. Nat. B 43 even has a list of ten different persons in the Hebrew Bible who uttered unconscious prophecy. Other names could be added. While these sources point to the phenomenon of unconscious prophecy as well-known in Palestine, but one of them has to do with a high priest’s prophesying.

 

It is primarily Josephus, writing approximately at the time of the Gospel of John, who points out examples of the phenomenon of a high priest’s prophesying. He calls each of the head priests of former times the “high priest” and describes their prophesying primarily in the context of battles.

 

The Jewish historian also notes that John Hyrcanus, who reigned from 135-105 B.C.E., not only was the supreme commander of the Jewish nation. He also was the high priest, and had the gift of prophecy so that he was never ignorant of the future. On the basis of an experience in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, it is related that the high priest Simeon the Righteous also foretold that he himself would die.

 

Even in the middle of the second century C.E., belief in the prophetic power of the high priest still prevailed on a popular level. This is show in Justin Martyr’s “Dialogue with Trypho the Jew” 52, where the Christian dialogue partner maintains that up to the time of Jesus “there never failed to be a prophet among you [Jews], who was lord, and leader, and ruler of your nation.” (ANF 1:221) This describes the high priest very well, whom Josephus label “the captain of their [the Jews] salvation” (Bell. 4.318), “entrusted with the leadership of the nation” (Ant. 20.251, referring to the period after Herod and Archelaus).

 

The characterization of the high priest Caiaphas as a prophet in John 11:50-51 thus corresponds to popular belief in first-century C.E. Palestinian Judaism. It is completely wrong to seek its origin elsewhere, for example in Hellenism.

 

The destruction of the Temple (and Jerusalem) in 70 C.E. by the Romans was adumbrated according to Josephus by numerous portents, including the very brass eastern gate of the Temple inner court opening by itself during the night in 66 C.E. (Bell. 6.293-296). In b. Yoma 39b a baraitha states that the doors of the Temple opened by themselves beginning with forty years before their destruction, thus in 30 C.E. The same predating by forty years is found in the high priest Caiaphas’ “unconscious” prophecy of the 70 C.E. destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem already ca. 30 C.E. (John 11:50). Again, the Jewish-Christian author of 11:45-54 betrays his Jewish roots here. (Robert David Aus, “The Release of Barabbas (Mark 15:6-15 par.; John 18:39-40), and Judaic Traditions on the Book of Esther,” in Barabbas and Esther and Other Studies in the Judaic Illumination of Earliest Christianity [Studies in the History of Judaism; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992], 56-58)