gatherings, had benches in them - and, from the liberty of speaking and teaching in
Israel, Jesus might here address the people in the very face of His enemies.
10. In the plural it occurs only in this place in St. John, and once in St. Mark (vi. 33), but
sixteen times in St. Luke, and still more frequently in St. Matthew.
11. See above, p. 148.
12. St. John x. 23.
13. Acts v. 12.
14. This, as showing such local knowledge on the part of the Fourth Gospel, must be
taken as additional evidence of its Johannine authorship, just as the mention of that
Porch in the Book of Acts points to a Jerusalem source of information.
15. Jos . Ant. xv. 11. 5; xx. 9. 7.
We know not what was the subject of Christ's teaching on this occasion. But the effect
on the people was one of general astonishment. They knew what common unlettered
Galilean tradesmen were - but this, whence came it? 16 'How does this one know
literature (letters, learning),17 never having learned?' To the Jews there was only one
kind of learning - that of Theology; and only one road to it - the Schools of the Rabbis.
Their major was true, but their minor false - and Jesus hastened to correct it. He had,
indeed, 'learned,' but in a School quite other than those which alone they recognised.
Yet, on their own showing, it claimed the most absolute submission. Among the Jews a
Rabbi's teaching derived authority from the fact of its accordance with tradition - that it
accurately represented what had been received from a previous great teacher, and so
on upwards to Moses, and to God Himself. On this ground Christ claimed the highest
authority. His doctrine was not His own invention - it was the teaching of Him that sent
Him. The doctrine was God-received, and Christ was sent direct from God to bring it. He
was God's messenger of it to them.18 Of this twofold claim there was also twofold
evidence. Did He assert that what He taught was God-received? Let trial be made of it.
Everyone who in his soul felt drawn towards God; each one who really 'willeth to do His
Will,' would know 'concerning this teaching, whether it is of God,' or whether it was of
man.19 It was this felt, though unrealised influence which had drawn all men after Him,
so that they hung on His lips. It was this which, in the hour of greatest temptation and
mental difficulty, had led Peter, in name of the others, to end the sore inner contest by
laying hold on this fact: 'To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life - and
we have believed and know, that Thou art the Holy One of God.'20 Marking, as we pass,
that this inward connection between that teaching and learning and the present
occasion, may be the deeper reason why, in the Gospel by St. John, the one narrative
is immediately followed by the other, we pause to say, how real it hath proved in all
ages and to all stages of Christian learning - that the heart makes the truly God-taught
('pectus facit Theologum '), and that inward, true aspiration after the Divine prepares the
eye to behold the Divine Reality in the Christ. But, if it be so is there not evidence here,
that He is the God-sent - that He is a real, true Ambassador of God? If Jesus' teaching
meets and satisfies our moral nature, if it leads up to God, is He not the Christ?
16. St. John vii. 15.
17. Comp. Acts xxvi. 24.
18. St. John vii. 16-17.
19. The passage quoted by Canon Westcott from Ab. ii. 4 does not seem to be parallel.