Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - John 1:15 - 1:15
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Joh_1:15. It is to this great fact of salvation to which the Baptist bears testimony, and his testimony was confirmed by the gracious experience of us all (Joh_1:16).
μαρτυρεῖ ] Representation of it as present, as if the testimony were still sounding forth.
κέκραγε ] “clamat Joh. cum fiducia et gaudio, uti magnum praeconem decet,” Bengel. He crieth, comp. Joh_7:28; Joh_7:37, Joh_12:44; Rom_9:27. The Perfect in the usual classical sense as a present ( βοῶν … καὶ κεκραγώς , Dem. 271, 11; Soph. Aj. 1136; Arist. Plut. 722, Vesp. 415). Not so elsewhere in the N. T. Observe, too, the solemn circumstantial manner in which the testimony is introduced: “John bears witness of Him, and cries while he says.”
οὗτος ἦν ] ἦν is used, because John is conceived as speaking at the present time, and therefore as pointing back to a testimony historically past: “This was He whom I meant at the time when I said.” With εἰπεῖν τινα , “to speak of any one,” comp. Joh_10:36; Xen. Cyr. vii. 3. 5; Plato, Crat. p. 432 C; Hom. Il. ζ . 479. See on Joh_8:27.
ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμ . ἔμπροσθέν μου γέγονεν ] “He who cometh after me is come before me;”—in how far is stated in the clause ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν , which assigns the reason. The meaning of the sentence and the point of the expression depend upon this,—namely, that Christ in His human manifestation appeared after John, but yet, as the pre-mundane Logos, preceded him, because He existed before John. On γίνεσθαι with an adverb, especially of place, in the sense of coming as in Joh_7:25, see Krüger on Xen. Anab. i. 2. 7; Kühner, II. p. 39; Nägelsbach, note on Iliad, ed. 3, p. 295. Comp. Xen. Cyrop. vii. 1. 22, ἐγένετο ὄπισθεν τῶν ἁρμαμαξῶν ; Anab. vii. 1. 10; i. 8. 24. Both are adverbs of place, so that, however, the time is represented as local, not the rank ( ἐντιμότερός μοῦ ἐστι , Chrysostom; so most critics, even Lücke, Tholuck, Olshausen, Maier, De Wette),[102] which would involve a diversity in the manner of construing the two particles (the first being taken as relating to time), and the sentence then becomes trivial, and loses its enigmatical character, since, indeed, the one who appears later need not possess on that account any lower dignity. Origen long ago rightly understood both clauses as relating to time, though the second is not therefore to be rendered “He was before me” (Luther and many, also Brückner, Baeumlein), since ἦν is not the word;[103] nor yet: “He came into being before me,” which would not be referable “to the O. T. advent of Christ” (Lange), but, in harmony with the idea of μονογενής , to His having come forth from God prior to all time. It is decisive against both, that ὍΤΙ ΠΡῶΤΌς ΜΟΥ ἮΝ would be tautological,—an argument which is not to be set aside by any fanciful rendering of ΠΡῶΤΟς (see below). Nonnus well remarks: ΠΡῶΤΟς ἘΜΕῖΟ ΒΈΒΗΚΕΝ , ὈΠΊΣΤΕΡΟς ὍΣΤΙς ἹΚΆΝΕΙ . Comp. Godet and Hengstenberg; also in his Christol. III. 1, p. 675, “my successor is my predecessor,” where, however, his assumption of a reference to Mal_3:1 is without any hint to that effect in the words. According to Luthardt (comp Hofmann, Weissag. u. Erf. II. 256), what is meant to be said is: “He who at first walked behind me, as if he were my disciple, has taken precedence of me, i.e. He has become my master.” But the enigma of the sentence lies just in this, that ὁ ὀπίσω μου ἐρχόμ . expresses something still future, as this also answers to the formal ἔρχεσθαι used of the Messiah’s advent. Hofmann’s view, therefore, is more correct, Schriftbew. II. 1, p. 10 ff.,—namely, that the meaning of the Baptist is, “while Jesus is coming after him, He is already before him”. But even thus ἐμπρ . μου γέγ . amounts to a figurative designation of rank, which is not appropriate to the clause ὅτι πρῶτός μου ἦν , which assigns the reason, and manifestly refers to time.
ὍΤΙ ΠΡῶΤΌς ΜΟΥ ἮΝ ] is a direct portion of the Baptist’s testimony which has just been adduced (against Hengstenberg), as Joh_1:30 shows, presenting the key to the preceding Oxymoron: for before me He was in existence. The reference to rank (Chrysostom, Erasmus, Beza, Calvin, Grotius, and most comm., also B. Crusius and Hofmann), according to which we should construe, “He was more than I”, is at once overthrown by ἦν , instead of which we ought to have ἘΣΤΊΝ . Comp. Mat_3:11. Only a rendering which refers to time (i.e. only the pre-existence of the Logos) solves the apparent opposition between subject and predicate in the preceding declaration.
πρῶτος in the sense of ΠΡΌΤΕΡΟς , answering to the representation, “first in comparison with me”.[104] See Herm. ad Viger. p. 718; Dorvill. ad Charit. p. 478; Bernhardy, Eratosth. 42, p. 122. We must not, with Winer and Baur, force in the idea of absolute priority.[105] Comp. Joh_15:18; and Buttmann, neut. Gr. p. 74 [E. T. p. 84]. This also against Ewald (“far earlier”), Hengstenberg, Brückner, Godet (“the principle of my existence”). To refuse to the Baptist all idea of the pre-existence of the Messiah, and to represent his statement merely as one put into his mouth by the evangelist (Strauss, Weisse, B. Bauer, De Wette, Scholten, and many others), is the more baseless, the more pointed and peculiar is the testimony; the greater the weight the evangelist attaches to it, the less it can be questioned that deep-seeing men were able, by means of such O. T. passages as Mal_3:1, Isa_6:1 ff., Dan_7:13 ff., to attain to that idea, which has even Rabbinical testimony in its support (Bertholdt, Christol. p. 131), and the more resolutely the pioneer of the Messiah, under the influence of divine revelation, took his stand as the last of the prophets, the Elias who had come.
[102] This rendering is not ungrammatical (in opposition to Hengstenberg), if it only be maintained that, even while adopting it, the local meaning of ἔμπροσθεν is not changed. (Comp. Gen_48:20; Bar_2:5.)
[103] So, too, in Mat_19:8 and Joh_20:27, γίνεσθαι does not mean esse, but fieri (against Baeumlein); so also in passages such as Luk_1:5, 2Pe_2:1.
[104] Comp. the genitive relation in πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως , Col_1:15.
[105] Philippi, d. Eingang d. Joh. Ev. p. 179: “He is the unconditioned first (i.e. the eternal), in relation to me.” The comparison of A and Ω in the Revelation is inapplicable here, because we have not the absolute ὁ πρῶτος , but πρῶτός μου .