John 19:25-27

“ Now there stood near the cross of Jesus his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26. Jesus, therefore, seeing his mother and beside her the disciple whom he loved, says to his mother, Woman, behold thy son. 27. Then he says to the disciple, Behold thy mother. And from that hour that disciple took her to his home. ”

This incident has been preserved for us by John alone. Matthew and Mark say, indeed, that a certain number of Galilean women were present, but “ beholding from afar. ” It follows from John's narrative either that some of them, particularly the mother of Jesus, were standing nearer the cross this detail may easily have been omitted in the Synoptic tradition or that, at the moment of Jesus' death, they had withdrawn out of the way, in order to observe what was about to take place; for it is then only that the presence of these women is mentioned in the Synoptics. Παρά does not mean at the foot, but beside; the cross was not very high (John 19:29).

We have already stated, in the Introduction (Vol. I., pp. 29, 30), that Wieseler, holding to the reading of the Peshito (see critical note 1), finds in this verse the mention, not of three women, but of four. He thus escapes the difficulty that two sisters should bear the same name, Mary the mother of Jesus and the wife of Clopas. The sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus, according to him, is not named; and she is consequently no other than Salome, the mother of John, indicated by Matthew 27:56 and Mark 15:40 as also present at the crucifixion. Wieseler's opinion has been adopted by Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Westcott, etc. The incident here related becomes, it is said, much more intelligible; for if the mother of the apostle John was the sister of Mary, and this apostle the first cousin of Jesus, we can explain more easily how Jesus could entrust His mother to him, notwithstanding the presence of her sons. This interpretation seems to me inadmissible.

By omitting a καί, and, before the words: Mary, the wife of Clopas (at least, if the text of all our MSS. without exception is correct), the evangelist would have expressed himself in a quite equivocal way. And if this so close relationship between Jesus and the sons of Zebedee had existed, how should there not have been the slightest trace of it in the entire Gospel history? Is it not more simple to hold that John abstained from mentioning his mother, as he does in the rest of the Gospel? Undoubtedly it is scarcely possible that two sisters should bear the same name. But the Greek term γαλόως, which means sister-in-law, was so little used that John might prefer to avail himself of the simpler term ἀδελφή (sister) to express this idea. These words of Jesus, thus understood, contain nothing unkindly either to His own brothers, who did not even yet believe on Him, or to the mother of John himself, who was by no means separated thereby from her son. Hegesippus declares positively that Joseph's brother, whom he also calls the uncle of Jesus (or of James), was named Clopas (Vol. I., p. 358f.). This name must in this case be regarded as the Greek form of the Aramaic חלפי, Alphaeus. Reuss sees herein “one of the grossest mistakes of modern exegesis,” and thinks that Clopas is a Jewish corruption of the Greek name Kleopatros. But in speaking thus Reuss himself confounds Clopas with Cleopas, a name which is also known in the New Testament (Luke 24:18).

Respecting Mary, the wife of Clopas, see Vol. I., p. 358f. The Synoptics do not mention the presence of Jesus' mother, perhaps because she left the cross immediately after the fact reported by John, and because they do not speak of the presence of the friends of Jesus and of the women except at the end of the whole story.

Stripped of everything, Jesus seemed to have nothing more to give. Nevertheless, from the midst of this deep poverty, He had already made precious gifts; to His executioners He had bequeathed the pardon of God, to His companion in punishment, Paradise. Could He find nothing to leave to His mother and His friend? These two beloved persons, who had been His most precious treasures on earth, He bequeathed to one another, giving thus at once a son to His mother, and a mother to His friend. This word full of tenderness must have completely broken Mary's heart. Not being able to endure this sight, she undoubtedly at this moment left the sorrowful spot. The word to his home does not imply that John possessed a house in Jerusalem, but simply that he had a lodging there; comp. the same εἰς τὰ ἴδια applied to all the apostles, John 16:32. From this time, Mary lived with Salome and John, first at Jerusalem and then in Galilee (Introduction, Vol. I., p. 35). According to the historian Nicephorus Kallistus (died in 1350), she lived eleven years with John at Jerusalem, and died there at the age of fifty-nine. Her tomb is shown in a grotto a few paces from the garden of Gethsemane. According to others, she accompanied John to Asia Minor and died at Ephesus.

On the word: Woman, which has nothing but respect in it, see on John 2:4.

Keim, after the example of Baur, regards this incident as an invention of pseudo-John, intended to exalt the apostle whose name he assumes, and to make him the head of the Church, superior even to James and Peter. Renan attributes this same fiction to the school of John, which yielded to the desire of making its patron the vicar of Christ. For every one who has the sense of truth, this scene and these words do not admit of an explanation of this kind. Besides, is it not Peter whom our evangelist presents as the great and bold confessor of Jesus (John 6:68-69)? Is it not to the same apostle that the direction of the Church is ascribed in ch. 21 and this by a grand thrice repeated promise (John 19:15-17)? Finally, this supposition would imply that the mother of Jesus is here the type of the Church, a thing of which there is no trace either in this text or in the whole Gospel.

The death: