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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - John 1:13 - 1:13
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13. S. John denies thrice most emphatically that human generation has anything to do with Divine regeneration. Man cannot become a child of God in right of human parentage: the new Creation is far more excellent than the first Creation; its forces and products are spiritual not physical.
αἱμάτων. The blood was regarded as the seat of physical life. Gen 9:4; Lev 17:11; Lev 17:14. The plural is idiomatic (cf. τὰ ὕδατα, ‘the waters,’ τὰ γάλακτα), and does not refer to the two sexes. In Eur. Ion, 693 we have ἄλλων τραφεὶς ἀφ' αἱμάτων. Winer, p. 220.
οὐδὲ ἐκ θ. σαρκός. Nor yet from will of flesh, i.e. from any fleshly impulse. A second denial of any natural process.
οὐδὲ ἐκ θ. ἀνδρός. Nor yet from will of man, i.e. from the volition of any human father. Ἀνήρ is not here put for ἄνθρωπος, the human race generally; it means the male sex, human fathers in contrast to the Heavenly Father. A third denial of any natural process.
ἐγεννήθησαν. Were begotten. There is an interesting false reading here. Tertullian (circ. A.D. 200) read the singular, ἐγεννήθη, which he referred to Christ; and he accused the Valentinians of falsifying the text in reading ἐγεννήθησαν, which is undoubtedly right. These differences are most important: they shew that as early as A.D. 200 there were corruptions in the text, the origin of which had been lost. Such corruptions take some time to grow: by comparing them and tracing their ramifications we arrive with certainty at the conclusion that this Gospel cannot have been written later than towards the end of the first century, A.D. 85–100. See on Joh 1:18, Joh 3:6; Joh 3:13, Joh 9:35.