John 20
20:4–5. Comparison of characters was important in ancient writing and a standard rhetorical technique. That the beloved disciple (on the traditional view taken in this commentary, John, but perhaps also meant to represent disciples in general through his anonymity) is faster than Peter fits some other comparisons in the Gospel (13:23–24; 21:7). Depictions of physical prowess were part of narratives extolling characters (e.g., Josephus outswims most others in Life 15.3), so comparison may be in view here, showing that a normal disciple is as important as the famous Peter.
20:6–7. Had robbers stolen the body (a rare practice) they would have taken it in its wrappings; had they left the wrappings, they would have left them in disarray. Whoever left them, left them there neatly. The face cloth separate from the linen is not merely “folded up” (NIV) but “rolled up” (NASB, NRSV, TEV), which could be an indication of neatness, or that it was still rolled the way it had been when it was wrapped around Jesus’ head—that his body had risen straight out of the wrappings and cloth.
The skeptic’s proposal that Jesus had only swooned and then recovered would not explain how he could have loosed the strips tied around him or escaped a sealed tomb, but it also ignores the nature of crucifixion: Josephus had three of his friends taken down alive from a cross, but two of them died despite medical attention because their bodies had been so weakened from the crucifixion.
20:8–10. This disciple’s faith may have been due to parallels with John 11 or to the way the cloths were laid (20:6–7); John implies that they would have already believed it from Scripture had they understood.
20:12–13. On the “white” clothing see 19:40; black garments were used for mourning.
20:14. In Jewish tradition, angels could appear in different forms. Jewish traditions in Pseudo-Philo also speak of God changing the appearance of some Old Testament human characters so they would not be recognized, and this evidence might reflect more widespread Jewish tradition.
20:15. Gardeners were at the bottom of the social scale, and a gardener there would have tended to the gardening, not to the tomb itself. But Mary has no better guess concerning his identity. (That he could be a tomb robber does not occur to Mary; tomb robbers were unlikely to come during the mourning period, when visits to the tomb were still frequent, and he would have reacted with more fear or hostility at seeing her if he were one.)
20:16. “Rabboni” means “my teacher” and is more personal and less formal than the title “Rabbi.”
Now all that has changed. Feel the force of verse 17: ‘Go and say to my brothers, I am going up to my father and your father, to my God and your God.’
Something has altered, decisively. Something has been achieved. A new relationship has sprung to life like a sudden spring flower. The disciples are welcomed into a new world: a world where they can know God the way Jesus knew God, where they can be intimate children with their father.
She is the first apostle, the apostle to the apostles: the first to bring the news that the tomb was empty.
If it hadn’t been for Easter, nobody would ever have dreamed of celebrating Christmas.
20:20. Wounds were sometimes shown as evidence in court; here their function is to identify that it is the same Jesus who died. In much of Jewish tradition, the dead would be resurrected in the same form in which they died before God healed them, so that everyone would recognize that the person who stood before them was the same one who had died. “Hands” includes one’s wrists, which was where the spikes would have been driven; a nail through the palm would not have secured the person in place on the cross, since the victim’s weight would have ripped the hand open.
20:21. In Jewish tradition prophets often appointed their successors. Judaism sometimes conceived of prophets as God’s agents; the sender authorized agents with his authority to the extent that they accurately represented him.
20:22. Jesus’ breathing on them recalls Genesis 2:7, when God breathed into Adam the breath of life (it might also be relevant that later Jewish tradition sometimes connected this passage with Ezek 37, when God’s Spirit or wind revives the dead). Jewish literature especially connected the Holy Spirit with the power to prophesy, or speak for God.
20:23. Acting as God’s agents (20:21) the disciples could pronounce the divine prerogative on his authority (i.e., pronouncing it when he would do so).
20:26. See comment on 20:19. Now that a week had passed, the feast would be over and the disciples would thus soon be ready to return to Galilee unless they received orders to the contrary.
20:29–31. Jesus’ blessing (v. 29) applies to the readers of John who believe through the apostolic testimony (v. 31); verse 30 is the culmination of John’s signs motif: signs sometimes lead to faith and sometimes lead to opposition.
20:31 that you may believe Presents the theme and purpose of John’s Gospel. On the basis of the book’s testimony, John calls for people to believe in Jesus—the world’s King and Savior, as well as God’s Son—and receive the eternal life that comes through His death and resurrection (3:16–17).