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.
John 10:1-21, The good shepherd and the hired hand
Jesus contrasts the shepherd who enters by the gate, calls his sheep by name and lays down his life for them with thieves who climb in another way and a hired hand who runs from the wolf.
John 10:1-21, in every translation this tool compares.
Jesus uses a picture every listener knew: a sheepfold, a shepherd whose voice the flock recognizes, and outsiders who sneak in to steal. He calls himself both the gate and the good shepherd, who gives up his life for the flock where a hired man would run, and speaks of other sheep to be brought into one flock. His hearers are split over him once again.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/shepherd-and-sheep\/","n":"Shepherd and sheep","s":"Scripture pictured Israel without a leader as sheep without a shepherd, and promised that God himself would come to shepherd them.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/rebels-and-would-be-messiahs\/","n":"Rebels and would-be messiahs","s":"In the decades around Jesus, men rose up claiming to deliver Israel: tax rebels, leaders of armed bands, and prophets who promised signs in the wilderness. Rome treated them all as rebels.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/chief-priests-and-council\/","n":"Chief priests, elders and the council","s":"The Jerusalem aristocracy of priestly families and elders who ran the temple and the Sanhedrin and dealt with Rome.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/pharisees\/","n":"The Pharisees","s":"A mostly lay movement devoted to careful keeping of the law and of oral tradition, respected by the people and watchful of new teachers.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/messiah\/","n":"The Messiah, son of David","s":"The anointed king most Jews expected from David's line, who would free Israel from its enemies. Nobody expected him to be killed.","r":""}
Sheep were penned at night in the cool months behind a stone wall that might be topped with briers (Keener), and Bailey describes robbers who came in gangs with a ladder. Bailey, from the shepherding he knew, says sheep follow the shepherd's voice and not the tune, and that a few favorites have names; Keener's notes agree that sheep knew their shepherd's voice. In a wilderness enclosure the shepherd sleeps across the opening, and Bailey writes, "In such a scene the shepherd literally becomes the door"; Keener thinks Jesus simply moves between two images. Who the thieves and robbers are is disputed: Keener and his notes point to the leaders who had just expelled the blind man, while Bailey, following Chrysostom and Ibn al-Tayyib, thinks of messianic pretenders such as Judas the Galilean and Theudas. Bailey reads the hired hand as a coded reference to the high priestly establishment and the wolf as Rome; Keener takes the hired hands as religious leaders generally. The other sheep may be scattered Israel gathered again (Ezekiel 37; Micah 2:12) or Gentiles, which Bailey thinks the best reading (Keener and his notes; the CSB Study Bible).
- Kenneth E. Bailey, The Good Shepherd, ch. 8, The Good Shepherd Amid Thieves and Wolves in John 10:1-18, commentary on 10:1, 10:2-4, 10:7-10, 10:8, 10:12-13 and 10:16
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 10:1-2, 10:3-4, 10:5, 10:6-9, 10:10-11, 10:12-13 and 10:16-18
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 10:1-18, 10:3-4, 10:12 and 10:16
- CSB Study Bible, note on John 10:16
