An Israelite Without Guile

The Lord’s first word over Nathanael — “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47) — is the apostle’s enduring spiritual portrait. This file reads that saying as the Fathers received it: the guileless, true Israelite who, unlike Jacob the supplanter, has no deceit in him, and who therefore recognizes his King at the first sign. The “guilelessness” of Nathanael is the moral key to the whole episode and to the apostle’s veneration.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The Saying

As Nathanael comes toward Him, before a word has passed between them, Jesus says, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!” (John 1:47). The Greek is ide alēthōs Israēlitēs en hō dolos ouk estin — literally, “behold truly an Israelite, in whom there is no guile (dolos).” It is at once a greeting, a commendation, and a disclosure: a greeting, for it welcomes Nathanael; a commendation, for it praises his character; and a disclosure, for it shows that the Lord already knows the inward man of one He has never met. Nathanael’s startled “Whence knowest thou me?” (John 1:48) is the natural response to being read so completely by a stranger, and it sets up the still greater disclosure of the fig tree that follows (treated in Under the Fig Tree).

“Israelite Indeed” — and Jacob Without Guile

The Fathers heard a deliberate resonance in the phrase. To be called “an Israelite indeed” (alēthōs Israēlitēs) is to be named a true son of Israel — that is, of Jacob, who was renamed Israel (Gen. 32:28). But Jacob in the Genesis narrative is precisely the man of guile: he supplanted his brother and deceived his father (Gen. 27:35, where Isaac says, “Thy brother came with subtilty”). The Lord’s word over Nathanael thus draws a pointed contrast: here is a true Israelite who, unlike the patriarch from whom Israel is named, has in him no dolos, no guile or cunning. St. John Chrysostom and the patristic tradition take the saying as praise of Nathanael’s candor and uprightness — a man whose religion is without pretense, whose doubt about Nazareth (John 1:46) was itself honest rather than cynical, and who therefore was fit to receive the truth when it was shown him (Chrysostom, Homilies on John 20; trans. NPNF I/14).

The connection between the guileless Israelite and the vision promised in the next breath — “ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51) — is itself drawn from the Jacob story, for the ladder of the angels is Jacob’s dream at Bethel (Gen. 28:12). The Lord is saying, in effect: you are a true son of Jacob, without Jacob’s deceit, and to you shall be shown the reality of which Jacob’s ladder was the shadow (Brown 1966, on John 1:47–51). The whole greeting is thus woven from the Jacob narrative, and “without guile” is its moral center.

Guilelessness as the Mark of the Apostle

In the Orthodox reading, “in whom is no guile” is not an incidental compliment but the spiritual signature of the apostle Bartholomew-Nathanael. Guilelessness — aplotēs, simplicity; akakia, innocence; the absence of dolos — is throughout Scripture the mark of the one whom God can teach. “Blessed is the man… in whose spirit there is no guile,” sings the Psalmist (Ps. 32:2, LXX 31:2). The Lord sets a little child in the midst as the pattern of the kingdom (Matt. 18:3), and the First Epistle of Peter exhorts the faithful to lay aside “all guile” (dolos) as newborn babes (1 Pet. 2:1–2). To be “without guile” is to be transparent before God, hiding nothing, scheming nothing — and it is exactly this transparency that allows Nathanael, alone among those present, to leap at once from skeptical question to full confession: “Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel” (John 1:49).

The Fathers note that the same candor shows in Nathanael’s earlier doubt. “Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) is not the sneer of a closed mind but the honest hesitation of a man who knows the Scriptures — who knows that the prophets pointed to Bethlehem, not Nazareth — and who will not pretend to a faith he has not yet been given grounds for. When the grounds are given, in the Lord’s knowledge of him under the fig tree, he yields without reserve. His doubt and his confession spring from the same root: a soul without guile, which neither feigns belief nor refuses evidence (Chrysostom, Homilies on John 20; Theophylact of Ohrid, Explanation of John, ad loc.).

The Liturgical Echo

The Byzantine hymnography for the apostle takes up the theme. The Church honors Bartholomew-Nathanael as the disciple whose guilelessness the Lord Himself proclaimed, and the troparion and kontakion of the apostles celebrate the Twelve as those who, having been emptied of worldly cunning, were filled with the wisdom of the Spirit (Menaion, June 11; cf. the common office of an apostle). The portrait is consistent across the tradition: where other apostles are remembered for a dramatic deed — Peter’s confession, Thomas’s doubt, Paul’s conversion — Bartholomew-Nathanael is remembered for a quality of soul, the guilelessness that the Searcher of hearts saw in him at a glance.

This is why “an Israelite without guile” has become, in Orthodox usage, almost a title of the apostle. It captures what the New Testament gives us of the man: not his words, of which we have but two sentences, nor his deeds, of which we have none, but the verdict of his Lord upon his character. The mission traditions, the apocrypha, and the martyrdom that fill out the later biography all hang, finally, upon this one secure thing — that the Lord looked upon him and found in him no guile (John 1:47).

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible, King James Version. (John 1:46–51; Gen. 27:35; 28:12; 32:28; Ps. 32:2 [LXX 31:2]; Matt. 18:3; 1 Pet. 2:1–2.)
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Gospel of St. John 20–21. Trans. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 14. Buffalo: Christian Literature Company, 1889.
  • Theophylact of Ohrid. The Explanation of the Holy Gospel According to John. Trans. House Springs: Chrysostom Press. (Ad John 1:47–51.)
  • Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John I–XII. Anchor Bible 29. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966. (On the Jacob allusions in John 1:47–51.)
  • The Menaion for June 11. (The office of the Holy Apostle Bartholomew.)