Something struck me in the 18th chapter of John today that I had not really noticed before. It is here, as Simon Peter and the "other" disciple enter the courtyard of the high priest, that Peter's famous denials of Jesus take place. When asked if he is a disciple of Jesus (John 18:17, 25, 27), Peter's answer for the first two questioners is "I am not" (οὐκ εἰμί). What struck me here is how Peter's statement seems to by contrasted by the Evangelist with the early statements of Jesus. Elsewhere in the Gospel, the first singular form of the verb εἰμί had been used only in John the Baptist's denial that he was the Messiah (John 1:20, 21, 27; 3:28) and in Jesus' own confirmation of his Messianic identity and his relation to the Father (4:26; 6:20, 35, 41, 48, 51; 7:28, 29, 33, 34, 36; 8:12, 16, 18, 23, 24, 28, 58; 9:5, 9; 10:7, 9, 11, 14, 36; 11:25; 12:26; 13:13, 19, 33; 14:3, 6, 9; 15:1, 5; 16:32; 17:11, 14, 16, 24; 18:5, 6). Following Peter's denials, the form is used only by Pilate (18:35), and then applied to Jesus mockingly at his trial and crucifixion (18:37; 19:21). The large majority of uses, then, are connected to Messianic implications, with John denying that "I am" the Messiah, and Jesus or others saying that he is the Messiah or King of Israel. Peter's εἰμί's, then, stand out like a sore thumb among all of John's other uses. So O'Day recognizes “The words of Peter’s denial … are the antithesis of Jesus’ words of self-identification and revelation from 18:1–12, ‘I am’” (Cited in Köstenberger, John, 515; Malina also recognizes this contrast (Malina, Social-Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, 253)). Witherington likewise comments, "His "I am not" may be seen as the opposite of Jesus' "Ego eimi." Jesus affirms his own identity in defense of his disciples, while Peter denies his own identity in defense of himself" (Witherington, John's Wisdom, 288). While Peter's first two denials were technically a denial of being among the group of the disciples (or at least could be read that way - on this Bruner states, "We may not think that we are denying or disowning Christ when we deny or dissociate ourselves from his always problematic Church, but Peter's experience teaches us to think again" (Bruner, Gospel of John, 1053)), the final denial is directly a denial of association with Jesus himself and not just being among his followers. Peter's reasons for denial, of course, are understandable, given that he is in the presence of the associates of the high priest so soon after he had attacked one of them and cut off his ear (cf. John 18:26). John's verbal tactic here, though, seems to contrast Jesus' open confession of his identity to his imminent harm with Peter's open denial of his association with Jesus followers, and ultimately Jesus himself, for the sake of protecting himself. This is, of course, quite a different picture from the Peter seen in Acts 1-5. That Peter spoke openly of his commitment to Jesus with little fear of retaliation. The inevitable "take away," to me, seems, that, for Peter, the resurrection changed everything.
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