No True Scotsman!

             Finally the temple guards went back to the chief priests and the Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?”

 “No one ever spoke the way this man does,” the guards replied.

 “You mean he has deceived you also?” the Pharisees retorted. “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them.”

Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and who was one of their own number, asked, “Does our law condemn a man without first hearing him to find out what he has been doing?”

 They replied, “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” (John 7:45-52)

           

            Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan— (Isaiah 9:1)

 

            Something I encounter often is the notion that all members of some group are the same. Before he was elected president, Mr. Biden told a Black media personality that if he was having any problem deciding for whom to vote, “You ain’t Black.” If you mention the names of scientists who suggest that Evolutionary Theory is flawed, you’re likely to be told that they aren’t real scientists. Think back to the COVID panic - and how anyone who disagreed with Dr. Fauci was dismissed as a quack. These all go back to a logic fallacy known as “No True Scotsman.” The idea is that a generalization is made about some group. When an exception is mentioned, the response is that no “true” member of that group would violate the generalization.

            This is close to what’s going on in the passage in John. They held that no Pharisee would question their denunciation of Jesus. Period. And when Nicodemus questions their violation of Jewish jurisprudence, they turn on him, asking a question that really has nothing to do with the matter at hand. It may be true that no prophet came out of Galilee, but if the Galilee mentioned in Isaiah 9:1 is the same area where Jesus grew up, they should have been ready for God to bless Galilee in some unusual way. Instead, they defined a Pharisee as someone who agreed with them. But the reality is that they weren’t doing their job, which was to investigate to find the Messiah among the many who merely claimed to be.

            This is not to say that just because someone says they are something, they are. The reverse of an error can also be an error. If you claim to be a football player, and you’ve never held a football, you’re not a football player. If you claim to be a Republican, or a Democrat but don’t agree with anything the party in question includes in its platform, you probably aren’t really what you’re claiming. And this brings us back to the problem the Pharisees were having with Jesus. They scoffed that no prophet comes from Galilee, but Jesus never claimed to be a prophet.