The Feast of St. Bartholomew, Friday, August 23, 2024

John 1, 45-51

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” But Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.” Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.” Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.” And he said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

The disciple named “Nathanael” in St. John’s Gospel here is not named in the other three Gospels, but by examining the lists of the Apostles in those Gospels we find the Apostle “Bartholomew” listed next to St. Philip.  A strong tendency exists in these lists to present the Apostles in the order in which Jesus called them, and since John makes a point of showing Philip and Nathanael together, the Fathers concluded that Nathanael and Bartholomew are the same person.  The Roman Canon, in its list of the Apostles, takes this for granted.  Bartholomew originated in Galilee, probably from Bethsaida, the city of Philip.  Some time after Pentecost, tradition tells us that he set off to preach the Gospel in India.  The historian Eusebius, writing in the early 300’s, records the tradition that Bartholomew brought a copy of the Gospel of St. Matthew to India and left it there after he departed.  The second century missionary St. Pantaenus, who traveled to India, discovered Christian communities in India using it.  Subsequently, Bartholomew is said to have made the journey to Armenia to preach there, where he was martyred.  The Armenian Apostolic Church, an Orthodox Church, considers both St. Jude and St. Bartholomew as its founders.  Given the prominence St. John lends to his call by the Lord Jesus, the details he provides of it, and the praise rendered him by the Lord, it seems likely that Bartholomew remained in the Holy Land for several years after Pentecost, and was known by John’s original audience. 

St. Philip’s gushing, “We have found the one about whom Moses wrote in the law, and also the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth”, is quite remarkable since up to then Jesus had not performed any miracles.  This testifies to a very child-like faith on Philip’s part and contrasts with Bartholomew’s more measured reaction: “Can anything good come from Nazareth?”  At that time, Bethsaida flourished with its fishing trade, located as it was at the spot where the Jordan flowed into the Sea of Galilee.  It was significant enough that a few years before Jesus went there, Philip the Tetrarch, ruling at that time, raised the status of the town to that of polis, which allowed for self-government.  Thus, civic pride might well have prompted Bartholomew to speak contemptuously of Nazareth.  Philip, full of enthusiasm, is not dismayed by his friend’s offhand dismissal, and is convinced that Bartholomew only needed to see and hear Jesus if but for a moment to fall under his spell.  To Bartholomew’s eternal credit, he did follow Philip, although reserving his own opinion until he met Jesus.

“Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, ‘Here is a true child of Israel. There is no duplicity in him.’ ”  Presumably Peter, Andrew, James, and John, were among those to whom the Lord would have spoken here.  Bartholomew also hears his words, and does not know how to take them: his guarded reply, “How do you know me?”, contains no salutation.  The words themselves are subject to interpretation. First, the Greek text does not say “a child of Israel”, but rather “an Israelite”: the former implies an actual son of the Patriarch, while the latter means a later descendent of him.  At the time Jesus used this word, it was a political anachronism, as the kingdom of Israel had ceased to exist centuries before.  More likely, Jesus referred to his zeal for his religion, his devotion to it.  A clearer way to translate the phrase is: “Behold, a true Israelite, in whom there is no trickiness!”  Now, the Patriarch Israel, whose original name “Jacob” God had changed, was known as a trickster in his youth, even goading his older brother Esau into trading his birthright for some food.  Considering this, a “true” Israelite would indeed be one in whom there was no deceit or trickiness.  And such was the case with Jacob when he became “Israel”, that is, “a man who contends with God”, which is to say, without subtlety.  Now, this must be coupled with the Lord’s further words, “Before Philip called you, I saw you under the fig tree.”  The fig tree had great significance for the Jews going back to the time when they could rightly be called “Israelites”.  It was their sign or emblem, just as the cedar tree was for the people in the region of Tyre and Sidon (it is today featured on Lebanon’s flag), and the olive tree was for Greece.  The fig tree represents Israel.  (Knowing this helps us to understand the cursing of the fig tree in Matthew 21, 18-22).  Thus, the true Israelite could only be found “under the fig tree”.  

Bartholomew’s perception of what the Lord was saying, coupled with the miracle of the Lord seeing him from a great distance, and hidden, as it were, “under the fig tree”, evince a wonderful statement of faith, as much an outburst as anything his friend Philip could have managed: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”  That what Jesus told him brought forth such an exclamation leads us to wonder what more the words of the Lord meant to Bartholomew, but we have no way of knowing what that might be.  Later commentators speculate the Bartholomew was himself a rabbi or even a philosopher, who was thinking about or praying to God for the Messiah at the time of the Lord’s seeing him.  Jesus responds with an outburst of his own: “ ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than this.’  And he said to him, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.’ ”  Jesus is revealing to his future Apostle that he is something more than a mere “rabbi”, and that the new Israel will not be a physical entity but a spiritual reality.