Recently I was thinking the differences between the gospel accounts of Jesus, and how these differences can mostly be boiled down to, not four versions, but two: the "Synoptic" Jesus (Matthew, Mark, Luke) and the "Johannine" Jesus (Gospel of John). When you look at it that way, adding in the consideration that, in both cases, the presentation of Jesus is compressing years' worth of experiences into, what, 50 pages or so of the "essentials," plus one of the two (the Synoptic) comes from a time very near the time of the events, while the other (John's) comes after maybe 50 years' worth of recollection and through the eyes (and ears) of an apostle who plausibly saw, heard and, yes, understood things that the others didn't--when you put all that together, it would actually be more bewildering if there weren't palpable, even jarring differences between these presentations. The really riveting thing is how, despite that, at the heart of these differently shaded, angled, focused portrayals lies unmistakably the same Person, Heart and, ultimately, Deed. The core is identical. The Life and its Miracle are the same.
Today, continuing to read the Gospel of John, listening to the tenor of the "debates" and confrontations between Jesus and "the Jews" (John's phraseology that people often find troubling), the thought struck me with a wallop that something more is at play here, not in contradiction to what I said before but actually intensifying it.These conversations in John, so much more, what would I say, ephemeral, conceptual, even esoteric, frequently bringing in the subtleties of relationship between Law and its "spirit," and then Jesus' sometimes brutal-sounding rebukes to "the Jews," that they don't keep the law, that they don't understand it, that they will die in their sins because they haven't perceived Him or His Father, that, cherishing their law they fail to see it's about Him--these conversations simply do not sound like things Jesus would say to the people at large. They sound like Jesus getting into, one might say, if it is not too inelegant, "the weeds," the nitty-gritty, with--again, if it is not too inelegant--the nerds, the obsessives, the fastidious and imperious control-freaks--rather like encountering a college freshman who just finished Philosophy 101 and is ready to tell you why everything you think is wrong because he's an expert on "deep thought" now. The people coming at Jesus with their technical objections and proof-text arguments ("How can you be Messiah if you're not from Bethlehem?"), these aren't just "the Jews," though that's the blanket-term John uses for his 1st-century Greek readers. These are the religious intelligentsia controlling the public square, dictating the day's talking points and approved jargon, and everything Jesus is saying and doing is shattering their paradigm. This is amply supported by the multiple times John specifies that it's the Pharisees and teachers of the laws coming at Jesus this way. Then too there's the nighttime encounter with Nicodemus--again, a uniqely "elite" encounter. The meeting with Nicodemus is somehow paradigmatic of the whole gospel. Everytthing about it--Nicodemus' status, the conceptual intensity of the conversation, these are things that, yes, really do happen in lives, in OUR lives, privately, uniquely, in ways that we wouldn't repeat with many people, but they happen. And John seems to have been uniquely placed, both immediately at the time of their occurrence and, later, in terms of reflection and interpretation, to transmit them, in a way that Mark wasn't and, therefore, neither were the other Synoptic writers. (In essence, that's really what we've got: Mark's version, with two variations, and John's.)
It seems, actually, that John is presenting us with the Jesus who had to "get into it," and no holds barred, with the religious ruling class, and didn't hold back, in a way that, say, Mark or Matthew don't quite, at least not in the same way. There's no shortage of "Woe unto you!" in the Synoptics but you don't get the intensely conceptual back-and-forth and hashing it out, in something like a scene out of "Yentl" with the Torah students debating at full volume, like you do in John. And it makes sense. Jesus would never have done that with the "common" people. The common people were too...smart for that. It makes sense of the whole tenor of Jesus' statements to them as well--his refusal to cater to their premises, serve up answers phrased the way they want, hop to yes-no questions loaded with specious implications. Jesus' elusive style, while at the same time he continually comes back to the heart of things in a way they don't want to hear, is, again, quite different in tenor from his addresses to the common folk, the non-elite, yes, the powerless.
Thinking about it more, it strikes me that in the gospels we can see three "faces" of Jesus, perhaps four. This isn't about hypocrisy, by the way. You have a "face" for your nearest and most intimate ones that you don't show to, let's say, your boss at work or even your neighbor. There's the face Jesus shows to his disciples, and the face he shows to the masses, and then the face he shows to the ruling elite and putative representatives of God. He is the same person in all those "faces," but the thing is, they are not the same people and so Jesus is giving them what's called for.
Oh yes, the fourth face.
That's the face He shows His Father. When that face breaks through the Gospels suddenly go nuclear with radiation.
To me there is a link here as well with two other things: Jesus' relationship with Lazarus and his sisters, and the rather enigmatic reference to the acquaintance between the High Priest and "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (presumably John, though there are other theories, like for instance Lazarus).
Lazarus appears to have been well-off. The high priest certainly was; therefore whoever the "disciple whom Jesus loved" must have enjoyed some kind of social status to be the high priest's acquaintance. Again this underscores to me that John's Gospel is presenting to us the Jesus who made his case (and thereby, of course, sealed his fate) to the Jewish elite: the Pharisees, the law-experts, the priests. It also makes sense of why John's gospel so much more details and emphasizes Jesus' activity in Jerusalem than do the other gospels.
