Why I Am Not Going To Write About The Gospel Of John (3)

for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life

for God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world

but that the world through him might be saved.

When I mentioned Proverbs 13:34, you probably had to look it up. I know I did. But you almost certainly knew the chapter and verse of this passage. The Gospel According To Saint John, The Third Chapter, The Sixteenth Verse. 

For very many people of an evangelical bent Christianity is reducible to John's Gospel, and John's Gospel is reducible to its third chapter; and the third chapter is reducible to this verse. The Bible in a nutshell, they call it, very frequently. Some of them have it on teeshirts or tattooed on their arms. One American fellow used to show up at football matches with the reference -- not the quotation, just the reference -- on a placard. There's someone in Bristol right now fly-posting it on lamp-posts.

JOHN 3:16

Evangelicalism makes a very big deal out of the Bible. But in practice it all comes down to one Gospel, and one chapter of one Gospel and one verse of this one chapter. Advanced students probably added one verse of one chapter of one Epistle as well. But John 3:16 and Romans 3:23 is pretty much the whole kit and kaboodle. For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

The idea appeals to me very much. I like the idea of reducing complicated ideas to simple frames. The Hero's Journey. From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. We hold these truths to be self-evident. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Forty-two.

That's how we managed to convince ourselves that everything in the Old Testament was really about Jesus. Medieval exegetes thought that since loving God and loving your neighbour was the heart of the Law, it followed that any Old Testament passage could, by definition, be twisted so it either advocated Love or condemned Hate. They used a lot of allegory in this regard. We were equally sure that everything in the Bible pointed to John 3:16. Daniel rescued from the lions' den? That's to remind us that anyone who believes in Jesus will not perish but have eternal life. Noah and his family rescued from the big flood? People who believe in Jesus will not perish. Chapter after chapter of rules about Jewish temple ritual? It's there to remind us that God gave his only begotten son. The sheep and the goats are kind of like Jesus, in the same way that the metal snake is kind of like Jesus.

This was what my friend in the study group was thinking about, all those years ago when she wanted to abandon our study of Solomon and turn to John instead. John 3 was her faith. Proverbs 13, not so much. And in a way she wasn't wrong. God so loved the world that he gave his only son. If you believe that, why would you want to spend your study hour thinking about a three thousand year old Jewish King who thought that good people eat to their heart's content while the stomach of the wicked goes hungry? (Which is not, incidentally, true.) Why would you particularly care who rebelled against King David and what he did about it? Why, if it comes to it, would you need to listen to Paul going on and on about the miscellaneous shortcomings of the churches in Corinth and Rome and wherever it is that Colossians come from?

I think that the dividing line between evangelical -- or, if you prefer, born-again -- Christians and liberal or modernist Christians is very probably this verse. Do you see Jesus as a saviour, or is he a teacher, an example, and an all around good chap. Some hyper-modernist clergy -- the kind who write columns in the Guardian -- seem to think that "God so loved the world" was foisted on this quite admirable Jewish rabbi by nasty Roman Emperors and even nastier American radio hosts. My whole infatuation with Aslan, C.S Lewis and Jesus (in, I am very much afraid, that order) came about because the idea of a God who loved the world so much in such a way that he gave his only son is a central, mystical, intuitive, self-contradictory lens through which everything else seems to make sense. If you take away the nasty-Constantinian-death-cult aspect, you are not left with a liberal, reformed version of Christianity: you are left with a void. In a funny way, I am more inclined to defend the Bishop of Woolworths (as C.S Lewis called the author of Honest to God) than I am the modern historical-Jesus-hyper-liberals. He at least appeared to recognise that if you took out God So Loved The World out of Christianity, there wasn't really very much left. And he did see that as a problem. Reducing the Bible to one verse is a childish, simplistic, cliche. But in another way, it is blatantly obviously right. If that verse isn't the heart of the Bible, then what is?

And that's why I don't feel I can write about John: not in the way that I wrote about Mark. 

John is altogether too religious. When I hear the first chapter of Mark, I see a desert, and water, and a man in a rough loincloth, and another man walking through the desert to meet him. (There may, for all I know, also have been sand-worms and jawas.) When I hear the first chapter of John, I smell candle wax. I hear a piping choir boy singing Once In Royal David's City and a booming clergyman saying John Expoundeth The Mystery of the Incarnation.

When I think of John I think of big black Bibles. No, it's much worse than that. I am sorry to have to keep admitting this stuff, but what I really think of when I think of John is a glossy colour tract we used to give out in the Christian Union, called something like LIVING WATER FROM JOHN, with a little number before every verse, and photos of sunsets and doves and lambs on every page, to be given to the un-evangelised because it contained everything they needed to know to be Saved. (I think they had to be predestined to be saved first, but my theology on that point has always been rather shaky.) We also gave out one called LIVING WATER FROM ROMANS which must have baffled them even more.

When I began writing about Saint Mark, I tried to imagine a context. I pictured a man in a toga surrounded by eager children in sandals. "Well, since you ask me about Jesus of Nazareth, let me tell you what Peter told me..." As I read a bit more, that mental image changed. The idea that Mark's Gospel is literally the Memoirs of Peter -- or at any rate an unmediated account of a first century Galilean tradition -- is hopelessly romantic. Clearly what I was reading was stories; stories which follow an identifiable pattern. The technical word for that is Form Criticism. A lot of scholars think that the stories of Jesus circulated as oral tales before they were collected into gospels. They think that by studying the structures of these stories, and comparing them with what we know about other oral traditions, it is possible to make educated guesses about who first told them, and to whom, and why. I don't know anything about that. But it became much more useful to picture "Mark" going into taverns and market places and saying "Hey -- I've got a new Jesus story -- want to hear it?" than as a Homeric figure narrating a sacred saga from beginning to end.

How on earth am I to imagine John? A starry eye prophet, I suppose, on a rock, or by the beach, staring into the middle distance, chanting? The disciple who Jesus particularly loved; the one who the first Christians literally thought was going to live forever. Maybe the same fella who witnessed the end of the universe on Patmos. 

None of that really helps. One can only picture John as "the person who wrote the book of John". It is pure text without context. It is the book which is most easily thought of as "inspired scripture" in the naive sense. A book written by God, with some first century human as the conduit. I don't think that Muslims see Mohammed's personality going into the Koran: he is the favoured human who Allah chose to transmit it through.  

Mark begins with a man eating sticky insects with a bit of cloth to cover his modesty. John begins with cosmic light and platonic paradoxes. His first word is an allusion to the first word in the Bible. His second word is a piece of untranslatable jargon. Douglas Adams began the second volume of the Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy thus: "The story so far: in the beginning the Universe was created...." One feels that John is doing the same thing. In the beginning was the word...

And there's the problem. Having pictured Mark as a story teller in a tavern or a market place I feel quite free to be frivolous. To pretend I think his Gospel is a bit like Star Wars. One can be frivolous, I hope, without being flippant; and one can be disrespectful without showing disrespect. At any rate one can disrespect the story without disrespecting the Story. But drawing an analogy between Saint John the Evangelist, Beloved Disciple; Lofty Eagle of the Apocalypse and a quite funny radio writer feels sacrilegious. Cheap. Even analysing John Three Sixteen with a solemn face on still feels like stabbing at the heart and essence of Christianity. Of the whole universe. L'amor che move I sole e 'lalre stelle. (I bet I got it right.)

There is an online film of David Suchet reading the whole of Mark's Gospel at St Pauls's Cathedral. (Suchet has actually done live readings of the whole Bible, poor chap.) The clergyman who introduces him says that Mark's gospel is the story of a "man who changed the world". And I think that that is what I expected before doing my walk through the text. Mark, the earliest Gospel, I thought, presented Jesus as a super-duper holy teacher-man; whereas John, the latest, re-invented him as a divine being. The holy preacher man who tells human beings about God becomes God working undercover in the body of a human being. The proclaimer, as a very wise man whose name currently escapes me said, becomes the proclaimed.

But this could hardly be wronger. 

As a matter of fact, I do think that Mark was probably an Adoptionist. He thinks -- or writes as if he thinks -- that Jesus had an ordinary birth and an ordinary human life but that he became God after he was baptised by John (the baptist). And he thinks -- or writes as if he thinks -- that Jesus was exalted to the highest point in the universe as a consequence of his crucifixion. And I do think that John (the gospel writer) believes -- or writes as if he believes -- in something much closer to what later became formalised as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Jesus had the quality of God-ish-ness before he was baptised; before he was born; before, indeed, the creation of the universe. In the BEGINNING was the word, and the WORD was with God and the Word WAS God. In the Authorised Version it rolls nicely off the tongue. The word BECAME flesh and camped out on earth, temporarily. Certainly, Jesus speaks to Nicodemus in the voice of an outsider. "No-one's ever been up to heaven except the the person who came down from heaven -- and who was that? This guy: who's still in heaven right now."

But it is entirely misleading to talk in terms of High Christologies and Low Christologies and much more misleading to say that what Mark is describing is simply a very influential man. In a sense, Mark's Jesus is God in a more straightforward sense than John's. Because what Mark gives us is mythology. The sky rips open. God flaps down to earth in the form of a pigeon and perches on Jesus. The founders of Judaism come down from heaven and chat with him. God joins them on the mountaintop. The guy from the obscure village has God inside him. To all intents and purposes, he is God. And we go forward on that assumption. God is sleeping in the fisherman's spare room; God is giving orders to Satan; God is telling the weather to stop being naughty. Everyone in the town, the country and eventually the world is magnetically drawn to wherever God happens to be at that moment.

What if God were one us us? What would he be like? (A stroppy, pedantic rabbi.) Who would his friends be? (Sinners. Collaborators. Fishermen.) Who would he not get on with? (Religious people. Obviously.) What would happen if he went to the place where God is supposed to live? (He'd start smashing it up. Obviously.) What would happen in the end? (The Jews and the Pagans would have a temporary truce and do away with him.) Would that be the end...?

John seems to be struggling to fit all that into a philosophical formula. How can we describe a God-Bloke without it sounding like nonsense? How can we talk about it without resorting to holes in the sky and magic birds? Well... God's teaching was always there. And God's teaching is God. So what if God's teaching turned into a person and stayed on earth for bit?

What if God were one of us? Well, he'd been a mysterious, other-worldly sage, who spoke elliptically about the great truth that God has become one of us...

I am confused and exasperated and puzzled by Mark's Jesus. I think that is because Mark intends him to be confusing and exasperating and puzzling. I think Mark intends you to wrestle with his Jesus: to chew on the parables and think "What did he mean by that?" Wrestling with God is a good thing to do. (I have Kirby's drawing of Jacob and the Angel above my writing desk. The Angel looks like a Celestial, as you would expect.) You can't wrestle with John's Jesus. You can't argue with him, and it would would be the height of lèse-majesté to find him exasperating. Asking what he means is beside the point. The only thing you can do is sit at his feet.

Mark's parables engage our brain. John's mysticism washes over us. Mark gives us teaching. John sometimes feels like spiritual mood-music.

At times, I almost want to abandon the idea that John's Jesus is a person. 

We are told that when John says "in the beginning was the logos" he is talking about some difficult, neo-Platonic concept. (The neo-Platonists had mostly read John.) Well, maybe. But so far as I can see, the New Testament mostly uses logos in a straightforward, non philosophical sense. It can mean report ("this logos was widely circulated among the Jews to this day.") It can mean statement ("let your logos be yes, yes, or no, no.) It can mean language or speech. ("Don't use harmful logos, but helpful logos.") It can mean news or tidings ("the logos about them reached the ears of the Church in Jerusalem.") The one thing it practically never means is "word" in a grammatical sense. But most often it means preaching or teaching: the Word of God. The sower in Mark's parable sows the logos; when the disciples gather around Jesus in Peter's house, he speaks the logos to them.

So "the Word became flesh" needs to be taken at some level at face value. God's teaching wrapped itself in a human form. 

Luke begins his story of Jesus' ministry by saying that in such-and-such a year "the Word of God came to John [the baptist] in the Wilderness." Can we entertain the possibility that John is using a literary device -- allegory, personification -- to show us that occurrence?

Perhaps when John talks about The Light he means enlightenment and goodness. Perhaps when he says that people hate the Light and run away from the Light he means that people prefer ignorance to knowledge and wickedness to virtue. But he personifies that as the rejection of a character called Jesus. He describes the Judeans turning against Jesus; but he means that religious people reject virtue and truth. He shows Nicodemus failing to understand Jesus: that's to show that the Pharisees don't understand the word of God. Perhaps he is not presenting a person who, in a metaphysical sense is the incarnation of the divine teaching: perhaps he is pretending that the divine teaching is a person for literary and didactic effect. Perhaps, in fact, he is doing the same kind of thing that Solomon did when he imagined Wisdom as a person in the market place. No-one supposes that Solomon was going to point to some actual lady at the vegetable stall and say "Look, there's that Wisdom person I was talking about -- follow her!" 

I don't think this reading, Jesus-as-symbol works. Not consistently, in any case. In a disconcerting way there are passages where John is much more naturalistic than Mark. But it conveys something of my difficulty. Mark's Jesus is a person. John's Jesus is an idea. Mark says "This is what God would be like if he were a man". John says "This is what God is like." 

Perhaps he was influenced by those gnaughty gnostics, who resolved the difficulty of God walking around in the body of a carpenter by dropping the "in the body" part altogether. Their Jesus is a force-ghost whose feet never touch the ground; a symbol of the secret knowledge but not in any sense a guy. But John goes to some lengths to make it clear that that's not what he believes.

Mark's Jesus is more dangerous than John's. More shocking. John's Jesus is very much what we would expect the Son of God to be like. Mark's decidedly isn't. 

Mark's Jesus fits into my headspace. Granted a flat earth with heaven upstairs and hell downstairs and the sky in the middle, I know what it means to say that God crashed through a hole in the sky and came down to earth in the form of a Holy Dove. I don't know what it means to say that God was God's teaching and God's teaching was God and that God's teaching was turned into meat and set up a tent on earth. I can affirm it, but I can't imagine it. Except in some banal way: "Jesus lived such a jolly good life and he was such a jolly good example of all the things that God approves of that Jesus' life itself is better than any number of sermons." And that clearly isn't what John is saying. It would be a very circuitous rout to get to "Jesus is a very good example of how to live." And in any case, he isn't. Not particularly. John's Jesus doesn't do works of charity in the conventional sense. Mostly he talks about himself. The Logos incarnates to tell us the glad tidings that the Logos has incarnated.

We don't believe in three tier universes and sky-domes any more. Not even in Texas. But we can imagine them. John's version we can't imagine. We just have to piously attend to it. God was the Word. The Word was God. The Word became flesh. Perhaps, if we just say John Three Sixteen, John Three Sixteen over and over again the phos and the logos and the gnosis will kind of seep into us. Perhaps that's what being born of water and air means. Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare. 

I am not trying to set Mark up above John. I am not trying to say that we should read Mark instead of John. I am not saying that Mark has it right and John has it wrong. I am not saying that Mark has, as the scholars say, priority. The aforementioned Bishop of Woolworths thought John was the more historical of the two. I am saying that Mark is telling a story. And I know how to talk about stories. And what John seems offer is an exposition of Mark's story. And when you have expounded it, it ceases to be a story. If I try to talk about John I am at worst expounding an exposition; and at best, setting my exposition up against the one the Church canonised. Which feels rude. And that pushes me into a style of writing that I don't feel comfortable with. I am just not sure that I can do it. I am not sure that I ought to. 

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Why I Am Not Going To Write About The Gospel of Saint John (2)

there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus 

a ruler of the Jews.

the same came to Jesus by night,

and said unto him,

"Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God

for no man can do these miracles that thou doest

except God be with him"

Jesus answered and said unto him,

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

Except a man be born again,

he cannot see the kingdom of God"

An eminent Jew comes to Jesus "by night" to ask him questions. The pharisee, Nicodemus, speaks in prose: Jesus speaks in a kind of mystical poetry. The answers don't seem to have much to do with the questions: that's one thing John's Jesus definitely has in common with Mark's version. It isn't clear which sections of the text ought to be printed in black and which sections ought to be printed in red. Are all the poetic bits supposed to be words which Jesus actually spoke? Or are some of them commentary: things which the narrator, "John" is telling us about Jesus? And isn't it more than a little suspicious that it is so hard to tell one from the other?

Nicodemus thinks Jesus is a prophet because of all the miracles he has been doing. But John has, in fact, only mentioned one miracle at this stage: a private one, at a wedding, in Galilee, to which Judean pharisees were presumably not invited. 

So: John's listeners can't be hearing this story for the first time. They already know of Jesus as a miracle-worker; they take it for granted that it he has been doing miracles "off-stage" and that learned Pharisees would be expected to have heard of them. 

Nicodemus's word for miracle, incidentally, is semeion, "a sign", where Mark generally uses dunamis "a (work of) power".

Nicodemus says that Jesus must have come from God and that God must be with him with him. Jesus answer seems to contradict him. You say that I am a teacher sent from God; you say that I am a miracle worker because God is with me. But you are mistaken. No mere teacher can be said to have been sent from God and no mere man can be said to have God with him. The Kingdom of God is something which no human can see. He says "no man has the power to see it". 

No human being can perceive the reign of God. Unless...

Unless that person has been "born from above"; "born all over again". 

Even if you have never heard of Nicodemus, you know that Christians have a thing about being born again. People used to talk about "born-again-Christians" as if they were a specific sub-class. The term doesn't seem to have existed before 1970, but by 1980, being a bornagainChristian was the in-thing. When I first came across the expression, I took it to mean a person who was raised in a Christian community, fell away from his faith, but re-embraced it as an adult, at a deeper and more committed level. Copywriters took it to mean "with a renewed interest in": he's a born again comic book reader, a born again whiskey drinker. A lot of people simply used it to mean "a religious person who makes a great deal of fuss about it." Catholics are devout; protestants are staunch; Christians are born again. Jews are observant. I don't know what Muslims are: fanatical, I suppose. When Cliff Richard told one of his musical associates that he was a born again Christian they replied "So what? I'm a born again Jew -- bubala." 

But this is clearly not what John means. On no possible view is Jesus telling Nicodemus to re-embrace his faith at a more committed level. 

William Blake mentions the story of Nicodemus in his rambling poem the Everlasting Gospel. He takes John to be contrasting Jesus's anarchic spirituality with that of the rule-bound Pharisee. He puts John's story alongside Luke's about the boy Jesus disobeying his parents. See how much Jesus cared about rule-following?

When the rich learned pharisee

Came to consult him secretly

Upon his heart with iron pen

He wrote Ye Must Be Born Again.

I don't know where the "iron pen" came from. I suppose not that many things rhyme with Again. Not many things rhyme with Jesus, either: Blake is one of only two poets I can think of to go with "please us". [*]

Nicodemus saith unto him,

"How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb

and be born?"

Jesus answered,

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee,

except a man be born of water and of the Spirit,

he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.

That which is born of the flesh is flesh;

and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Marvel not that I said unto thee, 

Ye must be born again."

"Marvel not." Don't be surprised. I haven't said anything very remarkable.

Nicodemus doesn't know what Jesus means. He double-checks that he isn't talking literally. "A person can't go back into his Mummy's tummy, can he?" This happens a lot in John: Jesus says something obscure and esoteric, and his listeners take him grotesquely literally. 

Jesus seems, at some level, to be talking about baptism. Mark's John the Baptist said that he baptised with water; but that his successor would baptise with the holy spirit. (Matthew says "with the holy spirit and fire".) I think we are supposed to remember this when Jesus talks about being born of water and the spirit.

But John the Baptist's baptism was about washing: a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus appears to be talking about procreation: to perceive the rule of God you need to be born of water and spirit. Evangelical Christians do tend to see baptism in this way: initiation, rebirth -- being born-again. That is why they prefer total-immersion to sprinkling. Being pushed under the water and coming up out of it works pretty well as a birth-symbol; sprinkling water on someone's head feels much more like cleaning all the bad stuff away. But maybe "getting spiritually cleaned up" and "being born all over again" are different ways of saying the same thing?

John's Jesus doesn't seem to be particularly interested in cleaning Nicodemus up; he doesn't talk about his sins. He seems to be saying that there are, or are going to be, two distinct kinds of human: the ones made of flesh (because their mothers were made of flesh) and the ones made of spirit (because their mothers were made of spirit). And only these spirit children can see, or perceive, or understand this thing called the kingdom, or reign, of God. Perhaps when Nicodemus goes for the literal, physical, and rather silly meaning of "born again" as opposed to a deeper, metaphysical, spiritual one is what shows that he can't yet perceive God's kingdom? 

"The wind bloweth where it listeth

and thou hearest the sound thereof

but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth:

so is every one that is born of the Spirit."

The same Greek word, we have to keep reminding ourselves, does for air, breath, spirit and wind. It is astonishingly unhelpful of our Bibles to translate pneumas as "wind" at the beginning of the sentence and "spirit" at the end: because it introduces an unnecessary non-sequitur into the saying. The wind blows where it wants: that's what people whose parents are the wind are like. The spirit breathes where it wants: that's what people whose parents are the spirit are like.

Mark's Jesus talked in parables. The kingdom of heaven is like a careless farmer throwing seeds around without caring where they land. And it's also like a man who dropped seeds outside his house and was surprised when plants appeared. And it's also like mighty giant redwoods growing out of tiny, powdery seeds. The disciples don't always grok the meaning, but they understand that they are parables. They never say "So you want us to quit fishing and go into agriculture?"

John's Jesus certainly uses figures of speech: but they work quite differently from Mark's parables. You could imagine something called the Parable of the Air: "The Kingdom of God is like this: a man heard the wind blowing around -- but he didn't know where it had come from or where it was going." But it would be quite a different thing from what Jesus actually says to Nicodemus. He isn't drawing an analogy: "The children of the spirit are in this one particular respect like the wind". He isn't using the the wind as a teaching aid, an illustration -- "if you want to get your head round the idea of the children of the spirit, then thinking about the wind might help you." He isn't painting a grotesque and exaggerated picture so the message sticks in the listener's mind. He seems to be pointing out a connection which really exists; showing how things actually are. Looking through a physical phenomenon and seeing an eternal truth behind it. 

Of course the spirit-children are wind-like. That's their nature.

C.S. Lewis's friend Owen Barfield thought that the linguistic unity of pneumas pointed to a conceptual unity. There was a time when humans perceived breath as being the same as air and air as being the same as spirit. So pneumas doesn't sometimes mean breath and sometimes mean spirit: it always means breath-air-spirit-wind. The breath-air-spirit-wind blows where it chooses: that's what it's like for people whose parents are the spirit-wind-air-breath. Flesh gives birth to flesh; breath-wind-air-spirit gives birth to breath-wind-air-spirit. Unless you are born of water and breath-air-wind-spirit you can't perceive God. 

What are people whose mothers are the spirit, the air, the breath like? 

The answer, my friends....

Nicodemus answered and said unto him,

"How can these things be?"

Jesus answered and said unto him,

"Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

Verily, verily, I say unto thee

We speak that we do know,

and testify that we have seen;

and ye receive not our witness.

If I have told you earthly things,

and ye believe not,

how shall ye believe,

if I tell you of heavenly things?

And no man hath ascended up to heaven,

but he that came down from heaven,

even the Son of man which is in heaven."

"How can these things happen?" asks Nicodemus: how do these things have the power (that word again) to be done. These things must refer to what Jesus has been talking about in the previous paragraph. How can people possibly be born all over again? How can people possibly become children of the spirit with the attributes of the wind?

I find these verses quite perplexing. It isn't clear in what sense Jesus has told Nicodemus, or anyone else, of purely terrestrial matters; and it isn't clear in what sense Nicodemus has not believed them. It would make more sense to say "I have spoken of heavenly things and you crassly assumed I was talking about earthly things." And that isn't what he says. It is hard to understand why Jesus is surprised by Nicodemus's incredulity. All this talk of rebirth and spiritual children is, on any view, highly esoteric and novel: can Jesus really be implying that a learned Pharisee ought to know it already?

The clue may possibly be in the fact that the first "ye" is plural: the New International Version helpfully renders it as "you people". "WE speak of what we know and testify to what WE have seen, but YOU PEOPLE do not hear our message." My first thought is that Jesus is treating Nicodemus as representative of the Pharisees, or of the Judeans in general. This knowledge is available, in your scriptures, but you Pharisees have been entirely unable to perceive the deeper meaning. But the logic of the passage makes me think that "we" refers to "we children of the spirit" and "you people" refers to "you children of the flesh." Jesus is not saying "Come on, you're a teacher, you should know this stuff already." It's more like "No; you flesh children don't understand this stuff. Only we spirit children can understand it." There is an earthly, fleshly way of understanding things; and you haven't even grasped that properly; so when I tell you the deeper, heavenly truths they are going to blow your mind.

I think Jesus must be saying something along these lines. Because in answer to Nicodemus actual question he takes an obscure passage in the book of Numbers and reveals that it has a hidden meaning. 

"and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness

even so must the Son of Man be lifted up

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish

but have eternal life"

The Isrealites are wandering in the Wilderness. They have fallen out with God, again. God is cross with them, again. He sends a plague of snakes to wipe them out, again. YHWH spends a lot of the first five books of the Bible nearly wiping out the chosen people. To smooth things over, Moses makes a big metal snake and hangs it on a pole. As one does. He declares that people who look at the toy snake will be cured of snake bite. 

It sounds worryingly like sympathetic magic: the kind of thing Pharoah's wizards would have got up to. Some seven hundred years later the snake itself was destroyed by King Hezekiah when he rediscovered the Torah, and banned idol worship. Apparently some people had been worshiping it. These Jews, eh?

So: the magic snake-bite curing snake is, at some level, Jesus. (He says Son of Man, but I don't think that we can be in any doubt that son-of-the-human is an oblique way of talking about himself.) Specifically, the act of looking at the snake is like the act of believing in Jesus. People who looked at the snake didn't die of snakebite. People who believe in Jesus don't die, full stop. 

Mark gradually reveals a Messianic Secret. Jesus talks about kingdom, and the Gospel, and the Son of Man, and leaves us surprised and confused when his tomb seems to be empty. John lays Jesus Unique Selling Point on the first page. Clergyman love to tell us that "eternal life" is something spiritual, that "eternal" describes the quality of life, not its duration. But King James was right to go with "everlasting". What people who believe in the raised up Son of Man get is zoen aionion: life-perpetual. 

Step right up, folks. Believe in Jesus and you will live forever.

The "lifting up" of the bronze snake -- putting it on a pole -- is meant to make us think of the "lifting up" of Jesus -- putting him on a cross. You occasionally see religious paintings of crucified serpents for that reason. But it also means "lifted up" in the sense of "exalted" and "set on high". It is quite possible to push the allegory further. The Israelites disobedience to God in the desert represents Adam and Eve's disobedience to God in the Garden of Eden. The deadly snakes represent the punishment meted out on Adam. Mortality: lost access to the Tree of Life. So looking at Jesus on the cross represents the removal of the consequences of Adam's sin. The snake itself doesn't excuse the Israelites bad behaviour. But being sorry doesn't remove the consequence. First the Israelites repent; then Moses exalts the bronze artwork to defang the real snakes.

But I should be inclined to keep things simpler than that. The snake and Jesus are both examples of amazing supernatural saving-things. The original question was "What does it mean to be born again? How on earth can someone become a child of the Spirit." And the answer seems to be "Remember the story about how Moses saved all the people who were dying of poison with a magic snake? That's how."

And then comes the biggie. It isn't clear if Jesus is speaking, or if John is amplifying what he just said. And it probably doesn't matter very much, either.

for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son

that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life

for God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world

but that the world through him might be saved.

[CONTINUES]

[*]NOTE: 

Blake: "Had he been anti-Christ, aping Jesus, he'd have done anything to please us."

Leon Rosselson: "Why don't you sing something to please us, nothing nasty about Jesus".

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Why I Am Not Going To Write About The Gospel of Saint John (i)

I went to college to study English Literature. I spent most of my time attending Christian Union Bible Study groups and playing Dungeons & Dragons.

This was rather ironic. Some of the Christian Union thought that Dungeons & Dragons players were Satanists. Most of the Dungeons & Dragons players thought the Christian Union were annoying holy rollers. Many of the Christian Union quite liked having bona fide devil worshippers on their corridors: it presented a bit of a challenge. Quite a lot of the Dungeons & Dragons players rather liked being accused of Satanism: it made us feel less nerdy and more edgy. I had a foot in both camps: one of the C.U once said that I was salt-like. 

The two groups had more in common than either of them would have cared to admit. Earnest young people, squashed into college rooms, neglecting their degrees, sitting on beds or on the floor; fighting forces of evil which no-one else believed in. With a healthy respect for Clerics. A facilitator, nose pressed into a sacred text, directing the exploration, trying to give everyone a fair chance to contribute. Cold mugs of instant coffee. Arguments about minor points of interpretation. Bitterness and schisms.

Spiritual warfare, the whole armour of god, that old dragon Satan. The literal Holy Grail, the Sword of the Spirit. Actual Super-Powers. I am surprised that the Geek/Evangelical axis was not more pronounced. Tolkien of course was himself a Christian. Or, at any rate, a Catholic. I am not sure if that counted.

A Bible study group is a very particular thing. But then, an English literature seminar is a very particular thing as well. A Level English was a kind of bird-watching expedition, in which you explored a Text and crossed similes and metaphors and onomatopoeias off your check list, before stalking the Fully Rounded Character. (Does that make it more like train spotting?) I am told that school children today hunt rarer birds called Fronted Adverbials. Degree English was more about themes and structures and approaches to the text. You are supposed to be interested in what other people have said about a book rather than your own response to it. College English could be defined as the study of books about books: Critical Theory is of course the study of books about books about books. 

Bible Study Groups had their own approach to the Canon. You take a whole chapter of the Bible: a chapter, preferably, of a fairly obscure book. (If you've been in the Christian Union you certainly know your Colossians from your Nehemiah.) You take it in turns to read one verse out loud. And then each member of the group is encouraged to say what they think the passage meant to the people who read it first ("Jews" is the polite term.) And then what it means for Us-As-Christians. (This often involved stretching Old Testament texts so they are really about Jesus. Everything in the Bible is really about Jesus.) Then you tried to say how we should apply the passage to Our Lives Today. And finally you prayed, out loud and specifically, about what you had just read. I never got the hang of that bit. I would have had no particular problem with publicly confessing my sins, but the whole father-god-please-bless-the-meeting-and-watch-over-our-sister-with-flu thing I found (and find) mortifying.

I am rather on board with C.S Lewis who said that his great spiritual moments were more likely to come when studying a difficult theological tome, dictionary or concordance on his desk, cup of tea in his hand, pipe between his teeth. 

I named a Dungeons & Dragons fanzine after one of C.S Lewis's characters. You probably knew that.

I don't know if English Literature teachers thought that writing "irony" in the margins helped one understand Miss Austen's stories; or if Miss Austen wrote stories mainly so students could write "irony" in the margins of them. I think that some Christian Union cell group facilitators really did think that the main reason Jeremiah wrote the book of Lamentations was so that the Christian Union could have a bible study group about it. One or two Dungeons & Dragons players honestly thought that fighting 2D6 1D8HP Orcs (AC 4) was a way of interacting with Jungian archetypes; channelling the power of Story, descending into the pit of purgatory and confronting our dark sides. Come to think of it, this was probably what the Christian Union had in mind when they said we were Satanists. They actually probably had a point. 

But the process was more important than the object. Writing good lit crit was more important than enjoying Troilus and Cressida. Fortunately. Having a powerful Bible Study Meeting was more important that actually understanding the book of Ezekiel. And pushing metal figures around sheets of squared paper was obviously the most important thing in the world. 

The activities were good improving uplifting civilising spiritualising things to do. The texts themselves were only a prop.

I hardly ever played actual D&D, incidentally, but most of the punters won't have heard of CoC or Jorune. By no means all the Christian Union believed in the Satanic Panic, although some undoubtedly did. Some of them definitely thought that C.S Lewis wasn't a true Christian because of the Emeth thing. 

But this next bit is true. 

One week, the subject of our Bible study group was the Book of Proverbs. Proverbs is in the Old Testament. It is supposed to have been written by Solomon. Who was Wise. 

When we think of Solomon being Wise we probably think of the story of the baby. He's shrewd; he's clever; he second guesses the two mothers; he tricks the infiltrator into giving herself away; but he understands what it means to be a Mum. However, in the Ancient World, wisdom seems primarily to mean Common Sense. The wisdom of Solomon consists of thirty one chapters of common sense, and it's excruciating. Walk with the wise and become wise; walk with fools and become foolish. A wicked messenger brings trouble but an honest envoy brings healing. A wise son hears his father's instructions; a foolish one ignores his father's rebukes. Very true, doubtless, but not very inspiring to base a guided meditation on. 

So we are struggling a bit to find out how any of this Applies To Our Life today and in what way it is really all about Jesus. "Wisdom" does appear as a personified figure at the beginning of the book; calling out to people in markets and "the chief place of concourse" and complaining that people "set at nought all my counsel and would know of my reproof". So maybe Wisdom is Jesus, and Jesus is therefore the subject of the book? But Solomon annoyingly presents Wisdom as female, which would have taken us down paths we probably wanted to avoid. I was very much hoping that the study hour would be up before we needed to hear everyone's detailed opinion on 13:24.

And then one of the people in the group: a very nice, open faced young Caribbean woman who was approximately seventy six times more pious, spiritual and Jesus-like than I am ever likely to be, volunteered. 

"Oh, this is all very well, but can't we do something more spiritual? Maybe we could all read John 3 instead?"

Which is why I don't think I could ever write about John's Gospel. 

[CONTINUES]

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May The Source Be With You: Extended Edition

 my Patreons are reading a few out-takes which I couldn't fit into the original post (about another thousand words or so) 

How far is Anchorhead from Mos Eisley?
Why is Leia not more sad when her planet blows up?
How long is Leia on the Death Star?
Is it, in fact, only a movie? 

Appendix

MOVIE

"I don't know anyone called Obi-Wan, but Old Ben lives out beyond the Dune sea. He's kind of a strange old hermit."

COMIC

"I don't know any Obi-Wan. But there's an old Ben Kenobi lies out beyond the Dune sea. Sort of a hermit."

NOVEL

"I don't know anyone named Obi-Wan: but old Ben lives somewhere out on the fringe of the Western Dune Sea. He's kind of a local character: a hermit. Uncle Owen and a few of the other farmers say he's a sorcerer....He comes around every once in a while to trade things. I hardly ever talk to him though. My uncle usually runs him off. But I never heard that old Ben owned a droid of any kind."

RADIO

"I don't know anyone called Obi-Wan, but old Ben Kenobi lives somewhere near the Western Dune Sea. He's a kind of local character, a hermit. My uncle made him get off our property once. But I never heard of Old Ben owning a droid.'

MOVIE

"Ben? Ben Kenobi! Boy, am I glad to see you!"

"The Jundland wastes are not to be traveled lightly. Tell me young Luke,what brings you out this far?"

COMIC

"What happened...I...Ben! Ben Kenobi! Am I glad to see you?"

"What brings you out this far, Luke?"

NOVEL

"Ben...It's go to be. [...] Ben Kenobi...am I glad to see you!"

"The Jundland wastes are not to be travelled lightly. It's the misguided traveller who tempts the tuskens hospitality. [...] Tell me young man, what brings you out this far?"

RADIO

"Ben? Ben Kenobi! Boy, am I glad to see you!"

"The Jundland wastes are not to be traveled lightly. Tell me young Luke, what brings you out this far?"

MOVIE

"Your father wanted you to have this when you old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it."

COMIC

"Your father wanted you to have this, when you were old enough."

NOVEL

"When you were old enough, your father wanted you to have this...if I can ever find the blasted device. I tried to give it to you once before, but your uncle wouldn't allow it."

RADIO

"Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it....I wanted to give it to you once before, but your uncle ordered me off your farm and told me never to return."

May The Source Be With You (2)

What did Luke Skywalker know of the Force?

Luke seems to be aware of "the wars" (i.e the Clone Wars) and of the existence of the Jedi. When Ben says "I was once a Jedi Knight the same as your father" Luke does not reply "What's one of those?" But he is unaware of the Force.  When Ben mentions it, he simply responds "The Force?" In the novel, his "face twists in confusion" and he says "A force? That's the second time you've mention a force."

This is more than a little odd. If we assume that the Jedi didn't show off their powers too ostentatiously; and that most of their Force usage was about exerting a strong influence over the weak minded (as opposed to, say, chucking Force lightning around willy nilly) then it would be perfectly possible to know about the Force, without believing in it. This is Han Solo's position: he must know that there was once a large and influential order of mystics in the universe, but he doesn't believe that they could really perform miracles. Luke is more in the position of a person who knows what the Knights Templar were, but has never heard of Jesus Christ. Owen might have tried to keep the existence of the Force hidden from Luke while he was growing up (Herzeleide prevented Parsifal from knowing about the grail knights) but surely he would have learned about it from the wider society?

Do we know if there were schools on Tatooine, incidentally? Has Luke studied history? Can he even read and write?

Why was Luke so sad when Ben died?

Luke seems to be emotionally wrecked by the death of Ben Kenobi at the hands of Darth Vader: more so than he was by the deaths of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, and indeed, more than Leia was by the destruction of her entire planet. Why does he react more strongly to the death of a man he only met a few hours ago than he does to that of the only parents he has ever known? 

Now, I am not completely certain that the question is valid. When he realises that Owen and Beru's lives are in danger, Luke leaps into action (even though it is, according to Ben, too dangerous) to try to save the. When he discovers that they are dead he spends several minutes grieving at the burning homestead; and then returns to Ben, who tries to comfort him. ("There was nothing you could have done, had you been there.") Luke then makes a life-changing decision (to go with Ben to Alderaan) and the next time we see him he is more or less back to normal.

When Ben is killed, he similarly leaps into action (shooting wildly at storm troopers); grieves for a few minutes ("I can't believe he's gone") is comforted by Leia in exactly the same terms ("There wasn't anything you could have done") and immediately resumes his normal demeanour. George Lucas has treated the two bereavements in the same way: using cinematic compression to reduce the grieving process to a few short scenes. But that still makes Ben's death and the deaths of Owen and Beru of equal importance.

From a narratological point of view, this is relatively easy to explain. Luke meets Ben about 30 minutes into the film; his death occurs 60 minutes later. From the audience's point of view, they have been together for a very long time -- two thirds of the movie, and half its entire running length. By contrast, Owen and Beru are introduced about 15 minutes into the film and killed only 20 minutes later.

Furthermore, Lucas cunningly inserts a three minute scene in between the Millennium Falcon's escape from Tatooine and its arrival in the Alderaan system. Star Wars is modelled on the old movie serials, and there is a distinct sense that one episode has ended and a new one is beginning. This scene pointedly begins with an in media res tableau: Threepio and Chewbacca are already some way into a chess game; Ben has been teaching Luke how to use a lightsaber for some time. This set-up becomes a new status quo: by the time they are trapped on the Death Star they are a family group; not six people who recently met.

Lucas uses the same narrative trick after our heroes escape from the Death Star but before they arrive on Yavin IV: Han talks to Leia about his pay; Han and Luke talk to each other about Leia. ("Do you suppose a princess and a guy like me...?"). This serves to establish Leia as "one of the family". Before the final battle, she is clearly treating Luke as a friend and comrade, not a plucky peasant who saved her from the bad guys some 22 minutes ago. (The deleted scene between Luke and Threepio on the Landspeeder would have served a similar purpose.) 

[SEE NOTE]

So: as long as we are treating Star Wars as a movie Luke's reaction to the death of Ben presents no problems: Lucas knows exactly what he is doing. But if we want to make sense of it as an historical text several possible in-universe explanations present themselves.

1: Ben tells Luke that he will have to learn the ways of the Force if he is going to go with him to Alderaan. After his family are killed Luke says that this is indeed what he wants: to learn the ways of the Force, go to Alderaan, and become a Jedi. So it is surely possible that, before setting out to Mos Eisley, Ben takes Luke back to his home and spends some days teaching him about the Jedi.  This is more satisfactory than Brian Daley's explanation: that at Obi-Wan uses Jedi mind powers to "open Luke" to the Force more quickly than would normally be possible.

2: It is also possible that Luke and Ben met with hazards or hold-ups on the trip from Ben's home to Mos Eisley. They could have been attacked by tusken raiders, by Jabba's goons, by pirates or bandits, or encountered some other peril. This could easily have resulted in an adventure lasting several days or weeks. Friendships can form quite quickly on camping trips.

3: When we cut back to the Millennium Falcon after the destruction of Alderaan, Chewbacca and Artoo are already several moves into their chess game, and Luke has been doing his exercises for some time. Han joins them in the mess and says 

"Well, you can forget your trouble with those imperial slugs...I told you I'd out run them .... Don't everybody thank me at once." 

This is a very odd thing for him to say: they made the jump to hyperspace some time ago and settled down for some R&R: why would Han waltz in and announce something which happened half an hour ago. (Foster spots the problem and changes the line to "You can stop worrying about your imperial friends: they'll never be able to track us now.") The scene would make far more sense if Han were referring to a subsequent attack by Imperials: one we have not seen. The Falcon flew out of Mos Eisley and (for some reason) ended up in a different part of the Galaxy. We rejoin it after several more adventures, when our friends are are close to Alderaan. This is part of my "head canon" because I want there to have been a time when Luke, Ben and Han got to bounce around the universe, having fun and being heroes, before everything turned dark. 

 

However the true explanation of Luke's possible over-reaction to the loss of Ben Kenobi may be hidden in very obscure corner of the secondary canon.

Someone To Watch Over Me

Ben says that he understands that Luke is a very good pilot: but in the radio version at least, Luke sees that this is only true from "a certain point of view".

"I remember that, when you saved Windy and me. And then you showed up again today, and you know about my piloting. Ben you have been sort of keeping an eye on me, haven't you?"

"Let's just say that I have kept abreast of your progress."

Abreast of your progress. The 2015 Marvel Comic series (which is regarded as canon) included a sub-plot in which Luke, in the months following the Battle of Yavin, returning to Tatooine and discovering the journals of Ben Kenobi. (This partly accounts for his increased knowledge of the Force by the time of Empire Strikes Back.) The journals provide a pretext for some flashbacks to the time when Ben and Luke were still living on Tatooine. The twelve year old Luke is portrayed as being very like the Anakin of Phantom Menace. Uncle Owen spots that his is the only homestead which has never been attacked by Sand People or fingered by Jabba's racketeers; and realises that Ben must be protecting it. When Luke crashes the family skyhopper in a Beggars Canyon escapade, Ben arranges for the Jawas to give him a box of skyhopper parts  -- which Owen returns. (Owen himself subsequently replaces it with a similar gift: their relationship is considerably more affectionate in the comic than it is in the film.) After this incident, Owen travels to Ben's home and explicitly tells him to stay away from his family, which Ben respects. A similar flashback story in the original (non canonical) 1977 Marvel Comic saw Luke and Biggs racing through Beggars canyon, and Luke negotiating the deadly "Diabalo Cut" to save his life: but Obi-Wan pointedly does not appear in the episode. 

The canonical comic book ends with Ben continuing to keep an eye on Luke: literally watching over him, from a distance, through macrobinoculars. This motif -- of Ben observing Luke in secret -- also occurs in an episode of Star Wars: Rebels in which Obi-Wan has a final and decisive lightsaber battle with the resurrected Darth Maul. 

Veteran American children's book publishers Golden Books specialise in tie-in properties for very-young readers. (They were publishing licensed Disney titles from the 1940s) Their current line includes kid-friendly retellings of all the Star Wars movies, and books with titles like "I am a Jedi" and "I am a Droid". In 1998 they published a fascinating text called Adventure in Beggars Canyon.

The story is a whistle-stop tour of canonical and secondary Tatooine motifs, and not at all badly done, given its target audience. The story tells how a teenaged Luke and his friend Windy go hunting womp rats, crash their Skyhopper in Beggar's Canyon, see off some Jawas, hide from some Sand People and are menaced by a Krayt Dragon. Just when all looks hopeless, they are rescued by a mysterious, cloaked figure, who uses the Force (un-specified) to quieten the monster. He tames three dewbacks, and takes the boys back to Luke's home. He leaves in a hurry when Uncle Owen shows up. 

I think that the children's writer (one Jane Mason) must have been using the radio show as a source: it would be very odd for two writers to independently send kid-Luke off on an escapade with Windy, who otherwise exists only in one action (stage direction) in a deleted section of Lucas's original script. It would have been far more obvious to have made Luke's partner in crime Biggs, as in the older Marvel Comic. But perhaps, nearly twenty years after the radio series "Luke and Windy had an adventure" was just a piece of lore which "everyone knows".

The picture-book finishes with the following striking comment:

"The next day, Luke and Windy took lots of tools and headed back out to Beggar's Canyon in Luke's landspeeder. As Luke bent over the skyhopper's engines and got to work, Ben popped into his mind. It almost felt as though Ben were watching over him and always would be."

In the illustration, Ben is, indeed, watching over Luke from a clifftop in the distance.

So: the original movie implied; and Brian Daley and Alan Dean Foster made explicit, the idea that Luke had met Ben before the events depicted in the first movie. However, currently canonical material -- including Rebels and the Marvel Comic -- seem to be quite clear that the two did not meet. At any rate, no such meeting has been depicted in canon. But in the current comic, in Rebels, and in the radio series Ben watches over Luke: and the children's writer realises that Luke is aware of this.

And there you have it. 

Luke has always been aware that Ben is with him, even if he has not met him directly. His apparent death severs this life long link; and Luke is bereft and alone. But almost immediately he realises that Ben's death makes no difference. He is still an unseen presence, watching over him, just as he always was.

And you are talking about this right now why, precisely?

In a few minutes, I will watch the first instalment of Disney's new Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show.

The Mandalorian (in particular) and The Book of Bobba Fett (to a great extent) were joyous Christmas gifts to all true Star Wars fans. They only touch on the very edge of the Grand Saga; but they understand -- as almost nothing since 1977 has done -- why Star Wars is The Greatest Film Ever. The Mandalorian in particular recreates that slightly ramshackle, fake-documentary aesthetic of the pre-specialisation Episode IV: droids and jawas meander across the screen, unaware of the audience, taking a long time to get where they are going. The Star Wars universe exists: someone just happens to be pointing a camera in it. Of course, there is a massive Story Arc building around Baby Yoda, Ashoka and the as-yet-unseen Admiral Thrawn; but the TV shows largely function as westerns, gangster movies, and samurai sagas. 

The Obi-Wan TV show has a much higher bar to get over. It is a prequel to Episode IV, which we all love unconditionally; and a sequel to Episodes I, II and III, which some of us never loved quite so much.

Some of us felt that the Mandalorian, set in the immediate wake of Return of the Jedi, was everything which The Force Awakens should have been. (And I speak as someone who liked the Force Awakens.) We are all hoping that Obi-Wan will be everything we originally wanted The Phantom Menace to be. (And I speak as someone who didn't hate The Phantom Menace.) If it succeeds, then it takes us back to the Tatooine that we first fell in love with and frees us up to party like its 1977. If it fails, then obviously it urinates on our memories and sexually assaults our childhoods. Again. And of course, the chess pieces are already being set up for the renewed strife between those who will automatically say that it is Woke (regardless of actual content) and those who will automatically complain that its just another film about dead old straight white men (again, regardless of what's actually in it.)

I want to believe that this Obi-Wan is the Obi-Wan of the greatest film ever made; and that this Darth Vader is his adversary and that this Luke is a younger version of the every-man hero I so wanted to be when I was twelve. The new series is under no obligation whatsoever to stick to established backstory: indeed a willingness to say "Actually, we decided to ignore that particular piece of lore because we didn't think it was fun" would be very healthy. But I am very intrigued to find out how the relationship between Luke and Ben is represented.

NOTE

Brian Daley lampshades the problem.

Leia: You care very much for Artoo Deetoo, don't you.

Threepio: I have grown used to him, even though we have been together for only a relatively short time.

Leia: It is possible to care for someone very much after only a short time. 

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May The Source Be With You

When See Threepio asks Luke Skywalker if he has heard of Obi-Wan Kenobi (for whom Artoo Deetoo claims to have a private message) Luke replies:

"I don't know anyone called Obi-Wan, but Old Ben lives out beyond the Dune sea. He's kind of a strange old hermit."

When Old Ben rescues Luke after the attack by the Sand People, Luke says:

"Ben..Ben Kenobi? Am I glad to see you!"

Old Ben replies

"Tell me young Luke, what brings you out this far?"

And when Ben dies, Luke is grief stricken: 

"I can't believe he's gone".

So: the subject for today's textual analysis is: how well did Luke Skywalker know Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi before the events depicted in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope?

Had Luke met Ben before the purchase of Artoo and Threepio?

Since Luke says that he doesn't know Obi-Wan, me might reasonably infer that he does know Old Ben. (At this point he still thinks they are two different people.) This would seem to be confirmed by the fact that they know each other by sight, and are on first-name terms. 

"Old Ben" appears to be a nickname, rather than a description: every time Luke refers to Kenobi, that is what he calls him, even though he is only around sixty years old. "Old Ben" seems to be relatively well-known on Tatoooine: when Luke is talking to Uncle Owen about him, he says "I wonder if (Artoo) means Old Ben..." and not, for example, "I wonder if he's anything to do with that mysterious stranger that some people claim to have run across". 

"Old Ben" has clearly lived along time in the desert: he knows how Sand People conceal their numbers on the move, and what noises will scare them off. But he is also quite familiar with Mos Eisley, even though it is a considerable distance from his home: familiar enough to know which bars are frequented by pilots. And he carries enough local cash to be able to afford to buy Walrus Man a drink. Old Ben may live alone, but he is not a complete recluse: he has some interaction with wider society.

In a deleted scene, Luke briefly mentions Old Ben to Threepio while they are chasing Artoo in the landspeeder:

"Old Ben Kenobi lives out in this direction somewhere, but I don't see how that R2 unit could have come this far."

This scene exists primarily to tell us how Luke was able to so easily track Artoo through the desert. (Answer: He didn't track him, but he knew roughly which way he was going.) Lucas presumably cut the scene because it was not a question which would occur to most members of the audience. But from our point of view it confirms that the location of Old Ben's home is relatively well known. Ben is not living in complete secrecy. [See Note 1]

When they finally meet, Ben tells Luke that his father was the best star pilot in the galaxy, and adds: "I understand you have become quite a good pilot yourself." So while he does not know Luke well, he has at least talked to other people about him. Perhaps Luke has developed a reputation and Ben has overheard people talking about his Beggar's Canyon exploits in Mos Eisley?

The original Marvel Comics adaptation by Roy Thomas follows the movie script pretty closely. However, Alan Dean Foster's novelisation is inclined to embellish the script with a novelist's and science-fiction reader's eye. (For example, he talks about Jedi scientists investigating the nature of the force; and mentions that while you can't inherit piloting skill, some of the natural aptitudes which make for a good pilot do run in families.) I think that, in studying George Lucas's script Foster must have pondered how Luke and Ben are able to recognise each other and adds a few words to smooth over the join. In this novel, when Threepio asks Luke about Artoo's message, Luke replies.

"I don't know anyone named Obi-Wan: but old Ben lives somewhere out on the fringe of the Western Dune Sea. He's kind of a local character: a hermit. Uncle Owen and a few of the other farmers say he's a sorcerer....He comes around every once in a while to trade things. I hardly ever talk to him though. My uncle usually runs him off. But I never heard that old Ben owned a droid of any kind."

[SEE NOTE 2]

George Lucas didn't write the novelisation, but it went out under his name and he approved it; and while it may not be canon, it cannot run violently counter to the way he pictured his universe in 1977. So: Luke recognises Ben because Ben occasionally visited the moisture farm while he was growing up. Is there anything else we can say? 

When did Uncle Owen tell Ben that he couldn't pass Anakin's lightsaber onto Luke?

In the movie, Ben says: "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it."

The comic book truncates this slightly: "Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough."

How old is old enough to own a lightsabre? It's a lethal weapon, and you presumably wouldn't give it to a child. (Some 1970s comics still carried advertisements for BB air rifles, which, rather endearingly, told kids to take extra chores and tidy their own rooms to show their parents that they were old enough and responsible enough to have a gun of their own.)  Anakin is considered too old to begin Jedi training at twelve; and the Younglings we see Yoda training in Attack of the Clones look to be around eight. However, we know from The Clone Wars cartoon series and a deleted scene in Return of the Jedi that padawans construct their own weapons: this is an important right of passage for a Jedi. So Yoda and the Younglings could have been using some kind of non-lethal training weapon.

If we only knew Star Wars from Roy Thomas's comic book adaptation, I think we would assume that Ben has decided that the nineteen year old Luke is old enough to own a sword. Most sensible states would not licence a fire-arm to a person before their eighteenth birthday. 

Again, Alan Dean Foster embellishes the scene:

"When you were old enough, your father wanted you to have this...I tried to give it to you once before, but your uncle wouldn't allow it."

A few minutes later (in the novel) Ben remarks:

"You've grown up quite a bit since the last time I saw you."

So Foster clearly intends us to infer that on the occasions Luke recalls Owen throwing him off the farm, Ben had really come to give Luke his father's lightsaber. 

Radio Days

Now we need to cast our ears over a fourth version of A New Hope: namely Brian Daley's 1981 radio adaptation. This was approved by Lucas and regarded as canonical or semi-canonical until the Disney reboot.

In this version, when Threepio ask about Ben, Luke replies:

"I don't know anyone called Obi-Wan, but old Ben Kenobi lives somewhere near the Western Dune Sea. He's a kind of local character, a hermit. My uncle made him get off our property once."

[See NOTE THREE

Daley takes on board Foster's suggestion that Ben sometimes visited the Lars farm. But he changes the general "my uncle usually runs him off" to the specific "my uncle made him get off our property once." And he massively expands the deleted scene from the film, where Threepio and Luke are talking about Ben while searching for Artoo Deetoo. In the radio version, Luke tells Threepio that "Ben does live out this way somewhere" and Threepio asks directly if Luke has met him. Luke replies

"In a way...about five seasons ago. My friend Windy and I rode out on his dewback into these wastes."

A dewback is one of the big dinosaurs creature that we see Sand People and stormtroopers using as beast of burden. Luke says that him and Windy fell off the animal, and ended up lost in the desert. Luke heard a voice calling his name: 

"It was old Ben Kenobi. Somehow he found us and guided us back to the farm. He told us a lot about what it was like to live in the barren land all alone." 

[See NOTE FOUR]

When they get back to the farm, Owen is angry with Ben and runs him off the farm.

"Ben was looking at me kind of funny, like he wanted to say something and Uncle Owen would give him the chance."

In Ben's hut, the significance of this is confirmed. When Ben gives Luke the lightsaber, he says: 

"Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough, but your uncle wouldn't allow it....I wanted to give it to you once before, but your uncle ordered me off your farm and told me never to return."

"Five seasons ago" would make Luke about fourteen, consistent with Foster's suggestion that Luke has grown up since Ben saw him last.

So: the original movie imply that Luke and Ben have some slight knowledge of each other before the film starts; the novel extrapolates a few visits by Ben to Luke's farm to try to hand over the lightsaber; and the radio series adds that the two of them spent at least a few hours in the wilderness together, and had one longish conversation, when Luke was about fourteen years old. Ben knows Luke's name because he is the son of his old apprentice. The prequels embellish this further and tell us that it was Obi-Wan who brought Ben to Tatooine to begin with. 

It is, inevitably, slightly more complicated than that. 

NOTE 1

Luke delays chasing Artoo Deetoo until the morning after he absconds, giving the droid about eight hours lead. Artoo travels at roughly a human's walking pace, so he can hardly have gone more than 30 miles. Thus, Luke in his vehicle is able to catch up with him in only an hour or two. The encounter with the Sand People must be relatively close to Obi-Wan's home, placing it within, say, 40 miles of the Lars homestead. 

NOTE 2

Foster thinks that Luke thinks that Owen thinks that Ben is literally a magician. "That wizard's just a crazy old man" is not merely an insult. That further implies that people in the Star Wars universe are not universally skeptical about the existence of the supernatural or mystical forces.

NOTE 3

When the comic and the novel agree with each other, but disagree with the movie, it is safe to assume that they share a common source: namely Lucas's penultimate screenplay or the un-edited ur-cut, which still exists in the Lucas vaults but has never been made public. For example:

MOVIE:

"You must do what you feel is right, of course."

COMIC:

"You must do what you feel, Luke"

"Right now, I don't feel too good."

NOVEL:

"Very well" said Ben Kenobi "That will do for a beginning. Then you must do what you feel is right."

Luke turned away, thoroughly confused "Okay. Right now I don't feel too good."

RADIO

"You must do what you feel is right, of course"

"What I feel is right? Ben, I'd like to help you, to help her, but is it right to run out on Uncle Own and Aunt Beru?" 

"Right now I don't feel too good" must come from Lucas's script, since it is highly unlikely that Foster and Thomas would invent the same embellishment independently. (c.f "You know only a part of the Force; you sense its reality as little as utensile perceives the taste of food".)

Conversely, when the Radio version and the Novel agree with each other and disagree with the movie, it is safe to assume that Brian Daley is using Alan Dean Foster as a source. It is highly unlikely that Foster and Daley would independently change "Dune Sea" to "Western Dune Sea" or "kind of a strange old hermit" to "a local character, a hermit". 

There is no example of the comic and the radio series, agreeing with each other against the film.

NOTE FOUR

This is consistent with the idea that Ben lives a relatively short distance from Luke's home. Daley says that Ben is unusal because he travels the Jundland wastes on foot.

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