D.A. Carson (The Gospel According to John): "Jesus is not dangerous; he may also be getting under Pilate’s skin. Either way, Pilate abruptly terminates the interrogation with a curt and cynical question: What is truth?– and just as abruptly turns away, either because he is convinced there is no answer, or, more likely, because he does not want to hear it. He thus proves he is not amongst those whom the Father has given to the Son (cf. Haenchen, 2. 180).
Edward W. Klink III (John ZECNT): "The brief response of Pilate in the form of a question is almost certainly a rebuking rejoinder to Jesus; it is a potentially violent and abrupt statement that concludes the interrogation.39 It is difficult to know the exact intention of Pilate, and in this situation it is almost unnecessary, for in this interrogation the meanings of Pilate’s statements have been explained by being contrasted to Jesus and his statements. Pilate’s question is itself his answer to the issue surrounding the person and work of Jesus. But Pilate asks the wrong question, for truth is not a 'what' (Τί) but a 'who'—the person of Jesus Christ.40 Pilate addressed this question to the very one who was the answer. By concluding the interrogation in this abrupt manner, the narrator wants the question to do more than offer insight into the person of Pilate; it is intended to echo in the mind of the readers. In this way the third section of the pericope (vv. 33–38a) comes to a conclusion."
Gerald L. Borchert (John 12-21): "For politically motivated people, truth is frequently sacrificed on the altar of expediency. Many politically oriented people pretend they are interested in truth. But Pilate summarizes his politically oriented life pattern with the haunting question: 'What is truth?' The implications of that question are exceedingly far reaching for any person. For Pilate that question was an attempt to resist taking Jesus' statement seriously in his own life,69 but it did make an initial impact on his view of Jesus during this first interrogation session."
Murray J. Harris (EGGNT): "Interestingly, the fourteen letters of the Latin rendering of Pilate’s question 'What is truth?' or 'Truth? What is that?' (Beasley-Murray 314), viz. Quid est veritas, can be rearranged (viz. Vir est qui adest) to form what would be
John’s answer (cf. 14:6), 'The man who stands before you is!' Pilate’s question
is 'neither philosophical scepticism nor cold irony, and certainly not a serious
search for truth; for the evangelist it is an avoidance and so a rejection of Jesus’
witness' (Schnackenburg 3:251)."
Harris also suggests this article: see A. J. Köstenberger, “‘What Is Truth?’ Pilate’s Question to Jesus in Its Johannine and Larger Biblical Context,” and “Epilogue,” in Whatever Happened to Truth?, ed. A. J. Köstenberger (Wheaton: Crossway, 2005), 19–51.
G.R. Beasley-Murray (John): "Jesus the prisoner sets his judge in the dock! Pilate’s answer indicates that he has no intention of occupying that position: 'Truth, what is that?' His turning on his heel without waiting for an answer shows that he doesn’t believe that
Jesus, or anyone else for that matter, could give one. And that means that he foreclosed the possibility of his coming under the Kingdom of truth and life."
Sunday, November 21, 2021
Scholarly Remarks on John 18:38 ("What is truth?")
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2 comments:
Let me add David Hart's comments from a popular level article:
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/human-dignity-was-a-rarity-before-christianity/
othing makes us more insensible to the utter oddity of this story in its own time and place, and to the metaphysical and moral implications of that oddity, than our own habitual sympathies. To many of its earliest readers, the entire episode would have seemed perversely out of joint. On one side of the tableau (so to speak) there stands a man of noble birth, one moreover invested with the full authority of the Roman Empire, endowed with the sacred duty of imposing the pax Romana on a barbarous people far too prone to religious fanaticism. On the other side there stands a poor and quite probably demented colonial of obscure origins, professing unintelligible beliefs and answering the charge that he thinks himself “King of the Jews” with only enigmatic invocations of some “kingdom not of this world” and of some mysterious “truth” to which he feels called to bear witness. No sane and educated person of late antiquity could have failed to grasp the ridiculous imbalance in this scene, or to recognize which side of the picture represented the “truth” of all things. In the great cosmic hierarchy of rational powers—descending from the Highest Divinity down to the lowliest of slaves—Pilate’s is a particularly exalted place, a little nearer to heaven than to earth, and illumined with something of the splendor of the gods. Christ, by contrast, is no one at all; he has no natural claim on Pilate’s clemency, and certainly no rights; simply said, he has no “person” before the law. The one figure, then, commands total sway over life and death, while the other no longer belongs even to himself. And this wild asymmetry becomes even starker (and perhaps even more absurd) when Jesus is brought before Pilate for the second time, having been scourged, wrapped in a soldier’s cloak, and crowned with thorns. To the ears of any educated person of the late antique world, Pilate’s question to his prisoner now—“Where do you come from?”—would probably have sounded like a sardonic reminder to Christ of his lack of pedigree and of Pilate’s patrician origins; and this difference in status would only have been confirmed by Pilate’s still harsher reminder to Christ that “I have the power to crucify you.” Christ’s riposte, however, that Pilate possesses no powers not given him from above would have sounded, at most, like comical impudence on the part of a lunatic. Could any ancient witness to this scene, seeing how fate had apportioned to its principals their respective places in the order of things, have doubted on which side the full “truth” of things was to be found? After all, what greater measure of reality is there, in a world sustained by immutable hierarchies of social privilege, than the power to judge and kill another person? This may, as it happens, have been the deepest import in Pilate’s earlier, tersely rhetorical question to Christ: “What is truth?”
Thanks, Roman. It's amazing what commentary that a few ancient words can spawn. See also https://fosterheologicalreflections.blogspot.com/2015/12/book-recommendation-concerning.html
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