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Joh_8:57. The Jews, referring κ . εἶδε κ . ἐχάρη to the earthly life of Abraham, imagine the assertion of Jesus to imply that He had lived in the days of the patriarch, and professed to have been personally acquainted with him! How absurd is this!
πεντήκοντα ] Placed first to indicate emphasis, corresponding to the position afterwards assigned to the word Ἀβρ . Fifty years are specified as the period when a man attains his full growth (comp. Num_4:3; Num_4:39; Num_8:24 f.; Lightfoot, p. 1046 f.): thou hast not yet passed the full age of manhood! Consequently, neither the reading τεσσαράκοντα is to be preferred (Ebrard), nor need we conclude either that Jesus was above forty years of age (the Presbyters of Asia Minor in Iren. II. 22. 5); or that He was taken to be so old διὰ τὴν πολυπειρίαν αὐτοῦ (Euth. Zigabenus); or that He looked so old (Lampe, Heumann, Paulus); or that they confounded “the intensity of the devotion of His soul” as it showed itself in His person, with the traces of age (Lange, Life of Jesus). In the act of instituting a comparison with the two thousand years that had elapsed since Abraham’s day, they could not well care about determining very precisely the age of Christ. In answer to E. v. Bunsen (The Hidden Wisdom of Christ, etc., Lond. 1865, II. p. 461 ff.), who seeks to establish the correctness of the statement in Irenaeus, see Rösch in Die Jahrb. für deutsche Theol. 1866, p. 4 f. Without the slightest reason, Bunsen finds in the forty-six years of chap. Joh_4:2, the age of Christ. But even Keim is not opposed to the idea of Christ being forty years of age (Gesch. Jes. I. p. 469; comp. his Geschichtl. Chr. p. 235).