Note 35 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

The first of these is iv. 44, where the Evangelist, after having mentioned that Jesus departed from Samaria into Galilee, adds, For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country, αὐτὸς γὰρ ὁ Ἰ. ἐμαρτύρησεν, ὅτι προφήτης ἐν τῇ ἰδίᾳ πατρίδι τιμὴν οὐκ ἔχει. We find the same idea in Matthew xiii. 57 (Mark vi. 4; Luke iv. 24), A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country and in his own house, οὐκ ἔστι προφήτης ἄτιμος, εἰ μὴ ἐν τῇ πατρίδι αὑτοῦ καὶ ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ αὑτοῦ. But while in the latter case it stands in a highly appropriate connexion, as a remark prompted by the ungracious reception which Jesus met with in his native city, and which caused him to leave it again: in John, on the contrary, it is given as a motive for the return of Jesus into his own country, Galilee, where, moreover, he is immediately said to be warmly received. The experience stated in the above sentence would rather have disinclined than induced Jesus to undertake a journey into Galilee; hence the expedient of translating γὰρ by although, is the best adapted to the necessity of the case, and has even been embraced by Kuinöl, except that, unhappily, it is an open defiance of the laws of language.35 Unquestionably, if Jesus knew that the prophet held this unfavourable position in his native country, πατρίς, it is not probable that he would regard it as a reason for going thither. Some expositors, therefore, have been induced to understand πατρίς, not as the province, but in a narrower sense, as the native city, and to supply, after the statement that Jesus went into Galilee, the observation, which they assume the Evangelist to have omitted, that he avoided his native city, Nazareth, for the reason given in the ensuing verse. But an ellipsis such as this explanation requires us to suppose, belongs not less to the order of impossibilities than the transmutation of γὰρ into though. The attempt to introduce the desiderated statement that Jesus did not visit his own πατρίς into the present passage has been therefore renounced: but it has yet been thought possible to discover there an intimation that he did not soon return thither; a delay for which the maxim, ὅτι προφήτης κ.τ.λ. might consistently be quoted as a reason.36 But to render this interpretation admissible, the entire period of the absence of Jesus from Galilee must have been mentioned immediately before the notice of his return; instead of this, however, only the short time that Jesus had tarried in Samaria is given (v. 45), so that in ludicrous disproportion of cause and effect, the fear of the contempt of his fellow country men would on the above supposition, be made the reason for delaying his return into Galilee, not until after a residence of some months in Judea, but until after the lapse of two days spent in Samaria. So long, therefore, as Galilee and Nazareth are admitted to be the πατρίς of Jesus, the passage in question cannot be vindicated from the absurdity of representing, that Jesus was instigated to return thither by the contempt which he knew to await him. Consequently, it becomes the interest of the expositor to recollect, that Matthew and Luke pronounce Bethlehem to be the birthplace of Jesus, whence it follows that Judea was his native country, which he now forsook on account of the contempt he had there experienced.37 But according to iv. 1, comp. ii. 23, iii. 26 ff., Jesus had won a considerable number of adherents in Judea, and could not therefore complain of a lack of honour, τιμή; moreover the enmity of the Pharisees, hinted at in iv. 1, was excited by the growing consequence of Jesus in Judea, and was not at all referable to such a cause as that indicated in the maxim: ὅτι προφήτης κ.τ.λ. Further, the entrance into Galilee is not connected in our passage with a departure from Judea, but from Samaria; and as, according to the import of the text, Jesus departed from Samaria and went into Galilee, because he had found that a prophet has no honour in his own country, Samaria might rather seem to be pointed out as his native country, in conformity with the reproach cast on him by the Jews, viii. 48; though even this supposition would not give consistency to the passage, for in Samaria also Jesus is said, iv. 39, to have had a favourable reception. Besides, we have already seen,38 that the fourth Evangelist knows nothing of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, but on all occasions presupposes him to be a Galilean and a Nazarene. From the above considerations we obtain only the negative result, that it is impossible to discover any consistent relation between the maxim in question and the context. A positive result,—namely, how the maxim came to occupy its actual position, notwithstanding this want of relation, will perhaps be obtained when we have examined the two other passages belonging to the present head of our inquiry.