Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
1 John 2:28-3:24, Children of God, Cain, and love in deed
Those who do right are born of God, whose love makes them his children, and when he appears they will be like him. Whoever keeps on sinning belongs to the devil, who has sinned from the beginning, and the Son came to undo his work. The readers are not to be like Cain, who murdered his brother, but to love in deed and in truth, as Christ laid down his life.
1 John 2:28-3:24, in every translation this tool compares.
The writer marvels at God's love in making believers his children and promises that when Christ appears they will be like him. Children of God show their parentage by doing right and do not go on in sin, while habitual sin marks those who belong to the devil, whose work the Son came to destroy. Cain, who killed his brother, is the opposite pattern; believers are to love as Jesus did, with practical help for those in need rather than words alone. How no one born of God sins fits the earlier warning that everyone sins is read in more than one way.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/day-of-the-lord\/","n":"The day of the Lord","s":"The prophets spoke of a coming day when God would judge the world and rescue his people. Paul calls it the day of Christ, giving Jesus the place the prophets gave to God.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/sages-and-philosophers\/","n":"Philosophers and their schools","s":"Stoics, Epicureans and other schools taught a whole way of life in lecture halls and marketplaces. A traveling teacher with a message about God would be heard, and judged, as one more philosopher.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/the-satan\/","n":"The satan, the tempter","s":"The accuser, tempter and deceiver of Jewish belief, seen as the power behind human and political evil. In the Gospels he tests Jesus and is the strong man Jesus binds, and John calls him the ruler of this world.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/martyrs\/","n":"Martyrs","s":"Jews remembered those who died rather than break God's law, above all the Maccabean martyrs tortured under Antiochus, and the prophets said to have been stoned or sawn in two. Their hope was the resurrection.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/almsgiving\/","n":"Gifts to the poor","s":"Giving to the needy was one of the three pillars of Jewish piety, with prayer and fasting. Greeks and Romans had nothing quite like it.","r":""}
Keener writes, "It was an ancient commonplace that children inherited the natures of their fathers", and some thinkers spoke of a divine seed in humans (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes). How no one born of God sins fits 1:8-10 is read several ways: a settled life of sin set against occasional failure (Wright and Bird; the CSB Study Bible), an ideal type, or John turning the opponents' claim to sinlessness against them, which Keener favors. What God's seed is also varies: the Holy Spirit (Heiser), the gospel message (the CSB Study Bible), or the Spirit working through the word (the ESV Study Bible). Jewish tradition often read the serpent of Genesis 3 as the devil (Keener; the cultural backgrounds notes), and Arnold calls this "the unanimous early Christian (and Jewish) interpretation"; he reads the devil's works destroyed in 3:8 as "a definite loss of authority by Satan over the world". Cain was a stock figure of wickedness, and Josephus makes him a man who "was wholly intent upon getting" (Antiquities 1.2.1); Heiser reads him as the serpent's spiritual offspring. Keener notes that "Murder of a brother was considered one of the most hideous crimes" in antiquity.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, introduction to 1 John 3:4-24, and on 1 John 2:28, 2:29, 3:1, 3:2-3, 3:4, 3:6-7, 3:8, 3:9-10, 3:11-13, 3:14-15, 3:16-17 and 3:18
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on 1 John 2:28, 3:2, 3:6, 3:8, 3:9-10, 3:12, 3:15, 3:16, 3:17, 3:18 and 3:19
- ESV Study Bible, study notes on 1 John 3:9-10 and 3:11-24
- CSB Study Bible, note on 1 John 3:9-10
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 12, Divine Transgression
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 1.2.1, trans. William Whiston
- N. T. Wright and Michael F. Bird, The New Testament in Its World, ch. 33, The Argument of 1 John, section 6
- Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness, ch. 4, Judaism, section The Serpent of Old, and ch. 5, The Teaching of Jesus, section Victory on the Cross
