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Joh_1:28. On account of the importance of His public appearance, a definite statement of its locality is again given.
A place so exactly described by John himself (Joh_11:18), according to its situation, as Bethany on the Mount of Olives, cannot be meant here; there must also have been another Bethany situated in Peraea, probably only a village, of which nothing further is known from history. Origen, investigating both the locality and the text, did not find indeed any Bethany, but a Bethabara instead[114] (comp. Jdg_7:24?), which the legends of his day described as the place of baptism; the legend, however, misled him. For Bethany in Peraea could not have been situated at all in the same latitude with Jericho, as the tradition represents, but must have lain much farther north; for Jesus occupied about three days in travelling thence to the Judaean Bethany for the raising of Lazarus (see on Joh_11:17). Yet Paulus (following Bolten) understood the place to be Bethany on the Mount of Olives, and puts a period after ἐγένετο , in spite of the facts that τῇ ἐπαύριον (comp. Joh_1:35) must begin the new narration, and that ὅπου ἦν Ἰωάνν . βαπτ . must clearly refer to Joh_1:25 ff. Baur, however, makes the name, which according to Schenkel must be attributed to an error of a non-Jewish author, to have been invented, in order to represent Jesus (?) as beginning His public ministry at a Bethany, seeing that He came out of a Bethany at its close. Against the objection still taken to this name even by Weizsäcker (a name which a third person was certainly least of all likely to venture to insert, seeing that Bethany on the Mount of Olives was so well known), see Ewald, Jahrb. XII. p. 214 ff. As to the historic truth of the whole account in Joh_1:19-28, which, especially by the reality of the situation, by the idiosyncrasy of the questions and answers, and their appropriateness in relation to the characters and circumstances of the time, as well as by their connection with the reckoning of the day in the following verses, reveals the recollections and interest of an eye-witness, see Schweizer, p. 100 ff.; Bleek, Beitr. p. 256.
ὍΠΟΥ ἮΝ ἸΩΆΝΝ . ΒΑΠΤ .] where John was employed in baptizing.
[114] To suppose, with Possinus, Spicil. Evang. p. 32 (in the Catena in Marc. p. 382 f.), that both names have the same signification ( áÌÅéú òÂáÈøÈä , domus transitus, ford-house; áÌÅéú àÂðÄéÈä , domus navis, ferry-house),—a view to which even Lange inclines, L. J. II. 461,—is all the more untenable, seeing that this etymology is not at all appropriate to the position of Bethany on the Mount of Olives. Origen himself explains the name Bethabara with an evident intention to allegorize: οἷχος χατασχευῆς ( áøà ). The derivation of the name Bethany (Lightfoot: áÌÅéú äéðÅé , house of dates; Simon: áÌÅéú òÂðÄéÌÈä , locus depressionis; others: áÌÅéç òÂðÄéÈä domus miseri) is doubtful.
Note.—(1.) Seeing that, according to Joh_1:26-27 (comp. especially ὃν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε , which implies his own personal acquaintance), the Baptist already knows the Messiah, while according to Joh_1:31-33 he first learned to recognise Him at His baptism by means of a divine σημεῖον , it certainly follows that the occurrences related in Joh_1:19-28 took place after the baptism of Jesus; and consequently this baptism could not have occurred on the same or the following day (Hengstenberg), nor in the time between Joh_1:31-32 (Ewald). Wieseler, Ebrard, Luthardt, Godet, and most expositors, as already Lücke, Tholuck, De Wette, following the older expositors, rightly regard the events of Joh_1:19 ff. as subsequent to the baptism. It is futile to appeal, as against this (Brückner), to the “indefiniteness” of the words ὃν ὑμεῖς οὐκ οἴδατε , for there is really no indefiniteness in them; while to refer them to a merely preliminary knowledge, in opposition to the definite acquaintance which began at the baptism, is (against Hengstenberg) a mere subterfuge. That even after the baptism, which had already taken place, John could say, “Ye know Him not,” is sufficiently conceivable, if we adhere to the purely historical account of the baptism, as given in Joh_1:31-34. See on Matt. p. 111 ff. (2.) Although, according to Mat_3:14, John already knows Jesus as the Messiah when He came to be baptized of him, there is in this only an apparent discrepancy between the two evangelists, see on Joh_1:31. (3.) Mar_1:7-8, and Luk_3:16 ff., are not at variance with John; for those passages only speak of the Messiah as being in Himself near at hand, and do not already presuppose any personal acquaintance with Jesus as the Messiah. (4.) The testimonies borne by the Baptist, as recorded in the Synoptics, are, both as to time (before the baptism) and occasion, very different from that recorded in Joh_1:19 ff., which was given before a deputation from the high court; and therefore the historic truth of both accounts is to be retained side by side,[115] though in details John (against Weisse, who attributes the narrative in John to another hand; so Baur and others) must be taken as the standard. (5.) To deny any reference in Joh_1:19 ff. to the baptism of Jesus (Baur), is quite irreconcilable with Joh_1:31; Joh_1:33; for the evangelist could not but take it for granted that the baptism of Jesus (which indeed Weisse, upon the whole, questions) was a well-known fact. (6.) Definite as is the reference to the baptism of Jesus, there is not to be found any allusion whatever in John’s account to the history of the temptation with its forty days, which can be brought in only before Joh_1:19, and even then involving a contradiction with the Synoptics. The total absence of any mention of this—important as it would have been in connection with the baptism, and with John’s design generally in view of his idea of the Logos (against B. Crusius)—does not certainly favour the reality of its historic truth as an actual and outward event. Comp. Schleiermacher, L. J. p. 154. If the baptism of Jesus be placed between tbe two testimonies of Joh_1:19 ff. and Joh_1:29 ff. (so Hilgenfeld and Brückner, following Olshausen, B. Crusius, and others), which would oblige us still to place it on the day of the first testimony (see Brückner), though Baumlein (in the Stud. u. Krit. 1846, p. 389) would leave this uncertain; then the history of the temptation is as good as expressly excluded by John, because it must find its place (Mar_1:12; Mat_4:1; Luk_4:1) immediately after the baptism. In opposition to this view, Hengstenberg puts it in the period after Joh_3:22, which is only an unavailing makeshift.
[115] Keim, Gesch. J. I. p. 522, sees in John’s account not so much an historical narrative, as rather (?) a “very significant literary introduction to the Baptist, who to a certain extent (?) is officially declaring himself. According to Scholten, the Baptist, during his ministry, did not at all recognise Jesus as Messiah, and Mat_3:14-15 is said to be an addition to the text of Mark;” while the fourth Gospel does not relate the baptism of Jesus, but only mentions the revelation from heaven then made, because to narrate the former would not be appropriate to the Gnosis of the Logos.