Origen, COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL OF JOHN, Part II, Complete

Translated by Allan Menzies.

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Page 14

Our churchman, however, is still free to have recourse to the solution given before, and to insist that attention be paid to the meaning with which the question was put. For if, as I showed, the senders knew John to be the child of Zacharias and Elisabeth, and if the messengers still more, being men of priestly race, could not possibly be ignorant of the remarkable manner in which their kinsman Zacharias had received his son, then what could be the meaning of their question, "Art thou Elijah?" Had they not read that Elijah had been taken up into heaven, and did they not expect him to appear? Then, as they expect Elijah to come at the consummation before Christ, and Christ to follow him, perhaps their question was meant less in a literal than in a tropical sense: Are you he who announces beforehand the word which is to come before Christ, at the consummation? To this he very properly answers, "I am not." The adversary, however, tries to show that the priests could not be ignorant that the birth of John had taken place in so remarkable a manner, because "all these things had been much spoken of in the hill country of Judaea;" and the churchman has to meet this. He does so by showing that a similar mistake was widely current about the Saviour Himself; for "some said that He was John the Baptist, others Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." [4851] So the disciples told the Lord when He was in the parts of Caesarea Philippi, and questioned them on that subject. And Herod, too, said, [4852] "John whom I beheaded, he is risen from the dead;" so that he appears not to have known what was said about Christ, as reported in the Gospel, [4853] "Is not this the son of the carpenter, is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers James, and Joseph, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?"

[4851] Matt. xvi. 13, 14.

[4852] Mark vi. 16.

[4853] Matt. xiii. 55.

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