Mark

Hi Cheryl,

I’m a bit concerned about your 7 points. None of your references mention at all that the Jews did not fear God. You are bringing that into the text. Although alot of your points are correct (seek their own glory, not of God etc), none of them describe the Pharisees or scribes as not ‘fearing God’.
I am especially concerned about point 7.
You conclude that your points 1-6, therefore show that Romans 3:10-18 applies to them. On the contrary Paul is writing to
the Roman Church, a group of Christians. I cannot agree with you on that point. You cannot take Jesus words applied to
the Pharisees and scribes and interpolate that into Romans 3.

Now i do not believe the pharisees were ‘God fearers’ in the sense that we generally associate the word. I was simply
disagreeing with your discription of them as non God fearers. We agree they were pious. They sought to uphold the sabbath

5:16 “And this was why the Jews ?were persecuting Jesus, ?because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.”

They were zealous for the supremacy of God

5:18 “This was why the Jews ?were seeking all the more to kill him, ?because not only was he ?breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God ?his own Father, ?making himself equal with God.”

They followed in the light of John the Baptist

5:35 ” He was a burning and ?shining lamp, and ?you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. ”

They also searched the scriptures for eternal life (5:39). I do not think we can rightly label these men as those who “have no fear of God”. Also since we are looking at John 6 can we stay with that text and keep to it’s context.

What i mean by the ‘passover’ being theological is that the context of the passage parallels with Moses. Jesus is the bread of life parallel to the bread in the desert. Moses rescued the Jews (under God) from the bondage of Egypt. Parallel that to the ‘crowd’ wanting to make Jesus their king. Jesus went up on a mountain as did Moses. Basically what i mean is that there is deep theology behind the narrative, so the passover is theological not only primarily chronological. The passover represented the escape from Egypt, and so too the ‘crowd’ want Jesus to rescue them from the Romans.