(Hunter, “Contextual and Genre Implications,” 70) In the historical context that the evangelist gives it, the prayer seems authentically real and quite uniquely appropriate. Yet such sensitivities do not seem to have characterized either Christians or Jews in the first century, and a correct approach to exegesis requires that determinations of whether Jesus’ thanksgiving is a real prayer be based on first-century Jewish, not modern, criteria. Interpreters may legitimately feel that the way Jesus is said to have prayed in John 11 offends their religious sensitivities. Thanksgivings of this sort are characteristically prayers that both God and spectators are meant to hear. The cited article lists many examples (including in the Pauline and Qumran literature) indicating that this sort of prayer was not only common enough in the first century, but expected in a religious context such as the one Jesus finds himself in John 11.īecause of its form the prayer seems to be genetically related to and a part of a tradition of piety exemplified by the Jewish personal thanksgiving psalm. As a Jewish Hodayoth, the prayer is intended to be heard by the audience for which it is prayed. Robinson, Bingham Hunter argued there are formal parallels to a Jewish thanksgiving prayer. Rather than an “irritating prayer”, this is actually a Prayer of Thanksgiving as prayed by Jews commonly in the context of first century Palestine. Jesus knows he need not pray, but apparently stages a prayer to impress the bystanders. The whole thing looks like a put-up show, anything but genuine prayer. To the modern reader this prayer is irritating, if not offensive. Fuller, ( Interpreting the Miracles) wrote that: Is it the type of prayer that Jesus might have prayed in this context? Some scholars dispense with the historicity of the prayer as an addition by the writer of the Gospel. This prayer has been discussed with respect to the possibility of historicity. Jesus prays a “prayer of thanksgiving” before commanding Lazarus to come out of the tomb.
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