Thomas Finds Nathanael
Ver. 45.—Further convictions of the disciples. (b) The theme of the Old Testament. Philip findeth Nathanael. He has no sooner accepted the Lord who found him, than he is eager to communicate the Divine secret to others. It seems widely accepted, though without any positive proof, that this Nathanael was identical with the Bartholomew (Bar Tolmai, son of Ptolemy) of the four lists of apostles, on the following grounds; (1) In ch. John 21:2 Nathanael once more appears among the innermost circle of the apostles, and is moreover mentioned there in company with Thomas. In the synoptic Gospels Bartholomew is associated also with Philip, although in Acts, Luke ranks him with Matthew. (2) It is probable that Nathanael was one of the twelve, and, this being so, it is more probable that he should have been identical with Bartholomew than with any other. He is distinguished from Thomas and the two sons of Zebedee in ch. John 21:2 and the whole circumstance of his call suggests no resemblance to that of Matthew. (3) His well-known name is only that of a patronymic, and suggests the existence of another and a personal name. This identification cannot be proved, but there is no other that is more probable. Nathanael (נתַנְאל), as a name in Hebrew, is identical with Theodorus, “God is giver” (Numb. 1:8; 1 Chron. 2:14; see also 1 Esdras 1:9; 1 Esdras 9:22). Thoma (‘Die Genesis des Johannes-Evangeliums,’ p. 409, etc.) endeavours to identify Nathanael with Matthew, and to institute a series of ingenious comparisons between the synoptic “Matthew and Zacchæus” and this Israelite without guile, and to compare the marriage feast at Nathanael’s “Cana” with the feast in Matthew’s or Levi’s, house. The subtle fancy and dramatic moral which he attributes to every clause of the narrative render the authorship a greater puzzle than ever. Philip saith unto him. We have found—we, the group of friends already illumined with the sublime hope—him of whom Moses in the Law, and the prophets, wrote. This reveals the characteristics of the conversation which had passed between the Lord and the favoured three. It corresponds with what occurred on the way to Emmaus. The Lord rested upon the germinant ideas, and prophetic hopes, suggestive types, and positive predictions of the Old Testament, and met while he refined and elevated, the current expectations of his time. There was to be no break with the old covenant, except by fulfilling it, establishing its reality and its vast place in the revelation of the supreme will of God. The question naturally arises, “Well, but who is he? What is his name? whither has he come? Whence does he hail?” The continuation of the sentence is obviously not in apposition with the ὃν ἔγραψεν, but the direct object of εὑρήκαμεν. We have found Jesus the 53 Son of Joseph of Nazareth. This is the simple utterance of a matter of fact—a current piece of intelligence now circulating in the group of the earliest disciples. The idea of his being Joseph’s Son was widely diffused; the fact that the Lord spent the first thirty years of his human life in Nazareth. was a common place of the synoptic story. The argument of the Tübingen and Straussian criticism, that the fourth evangelist was ignorant of Christs’s birth from above, is contradicted by the prologue with all the assertions of the Lord’s pre-existence and especially by ver. John 3:14 with ch. John 3:6, and John 3:13. That he was ignorant of the birth in Bethlehem, with the numberless proofs of his knowledge of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels, is absurd. The language put into Philip’s does not exhaust the knowledge of the evangelist on this subject (cf. ch. John 7:42).
Spence-Jones, H. D. M., ed. St. John. Vol. 1. London; New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1909. Print. The Pulpit Commentary.
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