Peter McKenzie

Cheryl, I am not really interested in pursuing the side bar comments about my “issues”. I feel that you have made a number of judgements about me – and I have made none toward you. In any case, I find it to be a distraction and I am happy to focus on the passage. Comments over the internet are often misconstrued and I am happy to leave some things that I have discerned about you alone – as they may or may not be accurate. If I tell you that I am not hurt nor sensitive can you trust me when I say that? I appreciate your diligence to do the Greek word studies – as well as the time invested. For what its worth, I don’t have any Greek background (not sure if you do). I do know how to read and that is what i focus on. I trust the translators for the most part and look to lexicons when necessary. Having said that, I think you are missing my point. When you say: So, in your context that you presented, most of the terms are not the words that Jesus used. my point was not that the words were the same words that Jesus used in verse 37. I merely was pointing out that the different action words DESCRIBED what the people present were doing. The narrative and the group of words used are DESCRIPTIVE of the movements of actual, physical people – who were moving about the land. The type of words were all used in a LITERAL sense – and not symbolically. I mentioned this before, but you are wanting to insert a 21st Century “come to Jesus” notion into the text. I am simply saying that that is not there. In your point about “coming” being connected with believing, I don’t dispute that at all. In the passage there are 2 types of “coming” – those who were coming with good intentions (they believed) and those with wrong ones – but you are missing the point there. The point is, the proper way to read the passage is to understand that both types of “coming” were descriptive of existing people PHYSICALLY coming. The passage is all about THEM. FIRST. There is no getting away from this. It is indisputable that people WENT AWAY from him. It matters not that they did not want to listen to Him (they didn’t). The fact of the matter was that they went away – physically. They “turned back” (physically) and they “no longer went about with him” (physically). You cannot ignore this fact. In verse 67, Jesus asks if the 12 want to “go away” also. Did Jesus’ disciples interpret this as physically going away? Or did the disciples interpret this to mean are they also going to turn away and not listen to Jesus? The disciples’ answer shows that this is all about whom will they listen to not about a physical walking away. Again, this is not the issue. I would simply answer your question by saying that it is BOTH. If they physically went away it would have been because they didn’t want to listen to him. If that was the case it seems obvious that they wouldn’t continue to follow him. I disagree with your conclusion here. It is obfuscating the situation. It is a trivial point that if they went away it was for the sole reason that they didn’t want to heed his words. In any case, I continue to maintain that the narrative is FIRSTLY, COMPLETELY about the people present – as they were the ones who were the subjects of the narrative. We must first determine what the words of Jesus meant to them. The flow of the narrative is about their coming to Him – with or without proper motivation. The context is all about belief and unbelief, willingness to listen and unwillingness to listen. AGREED. The question of paramount importance is WHO are the recipients or subjects of the narrative? I maintain that it is the Jews present who were unwilling to listen. It is THEM that Jesus is addressing. You are going down a wrong path by dissecting other avenues and not taking a close look at the narrative as a whole. I keep thinking I am doing a poor job of explaining this – especially when you continue to talk about how “coming” is connected to “believing”. You seem to think that I disagree with that somehow. I can only say in the strongest of terms that I am NOT stuck at that point. My entire case rests on the fact that the passage is FIRSTLY about the people present. To prove your case you bring up words that you believe limit the term “coming” to a physical presence of real people alive at that time that must be able to actually see Jesus. You said this at the beginning of your comment, but I wanted to speak to it. I would simply say that it is the narrative that sets any limit. If the flow of the narrative stays intact by listening to words and accepting that those words apply to the setting and the context, pressing for anything BEYOND the limit is an exercise that is premature and unnecessary – at least until it is established what the passage is about. It seems awfully wiggly to me when someone wants to move on quickly to get to the interpretation and application levels. My point, as always, is that if we are mistaken as to the basic reading comprehension level – we risk being mistaken at the next levels. So, to your comment here, as I read the passage I am not thinking about limitations. I am merely thinking about the narrative and trying to understand what it meant to the first hearers. If I let a “limit” enter my thinking, it shows that I am in too much of a hurry to prove a doctrine. I like doctrine by the way.