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Joh_7:52. Thou art not surely (like Jesus) from Galilee, so that your sympathy with Him is that of a fellow-countryman?
ὅτι προΦήτης , κ . τ . λ .] a prophet; not; “no very distinguished prophet, nor any great number of prophets” (Hengstenberg); nor again: “a prophet has not appeared in Galilee in the person of Jesus” (Godet); but the appearance of any prophet out of Galiles is, in a general way, denied as a matter of history; hence also the Perfect. The plain words can have no other meaning. To Godet’s altogether groundless objection, that John must in this case have written οὐδεὶς προΦ ., the reference to Joh_4:44 is itself a sufficient answer. Inconsiderate zeal led the members of the Sanhedrim into historical erro; for, apart from the unknown birth-places of many prophets, Jonah at least, according to 2Ki_14:25, was of Galilee.[274] This error cannot be removed by any expedient either ertical[275] or exegetical; still it cannot be used as an argument aginst the genunieness of the Gospel (Bretschneider), for there was all the less need to add a correction of it, seeing that it did not apply to Jesus, who was not out of Galilee. This also tells against Baur, p. 169. The argument in ὅτι προΦ ., κ . τ . λ . is from the general to the particular (“to say nothing of the Messiah!”), and is a conclusion from a negative induction.
[274] Not Elias also, whose Thisbe lay in Gilead (see Thenius on 1Ki_17:1; Fritzsche on Tob_1:2; Kurtz, in Herzog’s Encyhl. III. p. 754). It is very doubtful, further, whether the Elkosh, whence Nahum came, was in Galilee or anywhere in Palestine, and not rather in Assyria (Michaelis, Eichhorn, Ewald, and most). Hosea came from the northern kingdom of Israel (Samaria); see Hos_7:1; Hos_7:5.
[275] By giving preference, namely, to the reading ἐγείρεται , according to which only the present appearance of a prophet in Galilee is denied (so also Tiele, Spec. contin. annotationem in loc. nonnull. ev. Joh., Amsterdam 1853). This ἐγείρεται would have its support and meaning only in the experience of history, because προφήτης , without the article, is quite general, and cannot mean the Messiah. This also in answer to Baeumlein.