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Joh_10:8. See Ewald, Jahrb. ix. p. 40 ff. The actual antithesis to the ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ θύρα is formed by the many who had come forward to be the teachers and leaders of the people of God, without connecting their working with Christ. He describes them from the point of view of the time at which they came forward before me; they came forward before Christ had appeared as the door to the sheep; they had developed their power and activity since the time of the second temple, in a way that gradually grew more and more pernicious, and they formed now the party of hierarchical, specially Pharisaical, antagonists of Christ. The members of this hierarchical caste are intended; the expression used by Christ, however, is popular, and not to be pressed as hard and unhistorical (Hase); the use of the present εἰσί , moreover, gives it a living relation to the leaders of the people, as they then actually were before his eyes. On the other hand, passages like Joh_7:19, Joh_5:39; Joh_5:45, Joh_4:22, exclude even the possibility of a reference to Moses and the prophets; hence the inadmissibility of Hilgenfeld’s idea that the saying is “very harshly anti-Judaistic,” as also that it refers to the entire Old Testament past, i.e. to all the pre-Christian leaders of the people of God,—an application which he tries to justify by bringing in the Gnostic dualism. It is also inadmissible to set aside in any way the temporal meaning of πρό , whether it be made to mean, with Calovius: in advance of me (antequam mitterentur); or, with Brückner (after Stier): before they have sought and found me as the door; or, with Wolf, to convert it into χωρίς ,—a view which comes substantially to that of Olshausen (“without connection with the Logos”); or, with Tittmann and Schleusner, to take it for ὑπέρ , loco, and with Lange to import into this view, “instead of me,” the further notion of absolute pre-eminence, as though the one who advances forward designed completely to set aside the one who was put in the background. πρό , in the sense of instead, is foreign to the New Testament, and rare also in Greek writers. But when ἦλθον , with a view to the removal of everything objectionable, is taken pregnantly, making it express an arbitrary or unauthorized[62] coming forward (Hieronymus, Augustine, Isidore, Heracleon, Euth. Zigabenus, Luther, Melancthon, Jansen, and several others; also Luthardt, Ebrard), a meaning is imported into the word, which in itself, indeed, may be regarded as a matter of course, but which, at the same time, must have been distinctly expressed (say, as in Joh_10:42), if it were to be emphatical.[63] This also against B. Crusius, who lays the stress on the intention expressed in ἦλθον (“in order to give the people a new time”). The explanation, finally, of false Messiahs (Chrysostom, Cyril, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Euth. Zigabenus, Theophylact, Grotius, Maldonatus, Hammond, Tittmann, Schleusner, Klee, Weizsäcker, and several others), is unhistorical, as they first began to come forward after Christ’s day; a circumstance on which B. Bauer, however, grounds a charge of anachronism against John. De Wette considers the discourse to be out of harmony with the wisdom and gentleness of Jesus. But the worthless men, to whose entire class He alludes, stood actually in His presence, and had surely done enough to call forth His severity and wrath.
κλέπται εἰσὶ κ . λῃσταί ] namely, of the sheep, Joh_10:1. Comp. the wolves in sheep’s clothing. Instead of ΠΆΝΤΕς ὍΣΟΙ , ἍΠΑΝΤΕς ὍΣΟΙ would have been still stronger, Strabo, p. 18, 1. 11, Isocr. Loch. 12.
ἀλλά ]. The want of success which attends this predatory (soul-destroying) procedure.
ΟὐΚ ἬΚΟΥΣΑΝ ] did not listen to them. For their adherents did not belong to the true people of God ( τὰ πρόβατα ).
[62] Nonnus takes it in the sense of creeping in secretly: πάντες ὅσοι πάρος ἦλθον ὑποκλέπτοντι πεδίλῳ .
[63] In ἦλθον by itself, so far as it precedes πρὸ ἐμοῦ , it is impossible to find, as Luthardt does, the thought “on his own responsibility,” or “so that he places Christ after himself.” ἦλθον denotes neither more nor less than the simple venerunt; as in ver. 10. ἐγὼ ἦλθον is equal to the simple ego veni; the emphasis rests primarily on πάντες ὅσοι , omnes quotquot, and then on πρὸ ἐμοῦ , which is placed at the end.