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 9:1-41, A man born blind is put out
Jesus puts mud on a blind beggar's eyes and sends him to wash in Siloam. Because it is the Sabbath the man is questioned, his parents are afraid, and when he defends Jesus he is thrown out.
John 9:1-41, in every translation this tool compares.
The disciples assume a man's blindness from birth must be someone's fault, and Jesus rejects the idea. He heals the man with mud and sends him to wash at Siloam, but because it is the Sabbath the Pharisees open an inquiry, questioning the man and his frightened parents. The man grows bolder with each round and is expelled, and the story ends with him believing in Jesus while his questioners are shown to be the blind ones.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/put-out-of-the-synagogue\/","n":"Put out of the synagogue","s":"A Jewish community could punish a member by shutting him out of its life for a time or for good. Since the synagogue was the center of town life, expulsion cut a person off from neighbors and worship, and often from a living.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/witnesses-and-advocates\/","n":"Witnesses and advocates in court","s":"Jewish law convicted no one on a single witness: it demanded two or three, examined them closely and gave little weight to the word of women. Courts also had accusers and advocates, and Jewish pictures of God's heavenly court gave those roles to Satan and to defenders of Israel.","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\/feast-of-tabernacles\/","n":"The Festival of Tabernacles","s":"The autumn pilgrim feast, eight days long, when men lived in leafy shelters, priests poured water at the altar and torches lit the temple courts. It carried hopes of rain, of resurrection and of a coming king.","r":""}
Many held that suffering came from sin, even sin before birth or a parent's sin (Keener and his notes; the CSB Study Bible). Kneading, of dough and by analogy of clay, was among the thirty-nine kinds of labor banned on the Sabbath (Keener). Give glory to God was a solemn call to tell the truth (Joshua 7:19) (the cultural backgrounds notes; the CSB Study Bible). Which pool was Siloam is disputed. The cultural backgrounds article on the pool takes the Siloam of Jesus' day to be the upper pool, fed by Hezekiah's tunnel; Price and House call that a later Byzantine pool and identify the pool of John 9 with the great stepped pool found in 2004, built in the mid-first century BC and abandoned in AD 70. Carson, Moo and Morris note that many scholars read put out of the synagogue (9:22) as an anachronism from a ban on Christians agreed at Jamnia after AD 85, but that the thesis has been challenged at every point; the cultural backgrounds article on the Jews in John takes the expulsions as the experience of John's own readers.
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on John 9:1, 9:2, 9:6, 9:7, 9:14-16, 9:18-21, 9:22-23, 9:24 and 9:32-33
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on John 9:1, 9:2, 9:6, 9:7, 9:8, 9:18, 9:21 and 9:24
- CSB Study Bible, notes on John 9:2 and 9:24
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article The Pool of Siloam
- J. Randall Price and H. Wayne House, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology, ch. 12, John 9:7 The Pool of Siloam
- D. A. Carson, Douglas J. Moo and Leon Morris, An Introduction to the New Testament, ch. 5, John, Date
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, article The Jews and Jewish Leaders in John's Gospel
