John 7:25-36 Will He go to teach the Greeks?

John 7:25-36 The people of Jerusalem talk among themselves, discussing the evidence and arguments that Jesus may or may not be the Messiah. What have the rulers of the Jews decided? Does His origin line up with prophecy regarding the origin of the Messiah? Do His works and the signs He has performed provide evidence that He is the Messiah? While the people were talking among themselves at the feast, the Pharisees and the chief priests decided to act. This is early on in Jesus' ministry, probably a few years before He finally was arrested.  John says they sent officers to arrest Him but does not explain the conditions that kept them from executing their arrest warrant until verses 45-46. But what He did say was that He would be with them for a little while longer, and then be gone. He was of course referring to His death, resurrection, and ascension. The Jews had no concept of this. The only interpretation they could assign to His statement was that He was going into some kind of exile. Since He was a Jew, this would mean that He would be going into the dispersion among the Greeks.

          The dispersion had started much earlier, beginning with the conquest of the northern kingdom of Israel in about 722 BC by the Assyrians. Subsequently the southern kingdom of Israel was carried into captivity by the Babylonians in about 586 BC. Some were allowed to return to Palestine after Babylon was conquered by the Medo-Persian Empire, but some stayed. And then after Alexander the Great conquered the known world in 334-323 BC, the Jews lived in various places throughout the Greek empire. Even though the Greek empire was divided up by Alexander's generals after his death in 323 BC, the four pieces of his empire were still considered Greek, because of the dominance of Greek culture that persisted even after their political dominance had passed into history. To the Jews, Greek culture represented the enemy culture, even though the political enemy was Roman dominance. They might have thought that Jesus would exile Himself to some remote part of the Roman Empire but they still thought of it as Greek. And symbolically, with Rome representing the political aspect of the world-system, and Greece representing the cultural aspect of the world system, two interest parallels can be drawn. Firstly, the apostles (or at least Paul) carried the gospel to both Greece and Rome, as described in the book of Acts and Paul's epistles, but they went as missionaries, not as exiles. Secondly, the situation is not much different than today, in which Rome represents large governments that attempt to control all things, and Greece represents worldly culture, such as epitomized by Hollywood and New York (at least in the United States). And to the same extent, believers today go into these spheres of existence (government and culture) not as exiles but as missionaries.

          But Jesus had something else in mind in this passage, in talking about His own departure.