John 5
John 5 | |
---|---|
Book | Gospel of John |
Category | Gospel |
Christian Bible part | New Testament |
Order in the Christian part | 4 |
John 5 is the fifth chapter of the Gospel of John of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It relates Jesus' healing and teaching in Jerusalem, and begins to evidence the hostility shown him by the Jewish authorities.[1]
Text
The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 47 verses.
Textual witnesses
Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
- Papyrus 75 (AD 175–225)
- Papyrus 66 (c. 200)
- Papyrus 95 (3rd century; extant verses 26–29, 36–38)[2][3]
- Codex Vaticanus (325–350)
- Codex Sinaiticus (330–360)
- Codex Bezae (c. 400)
- Codex Alexandrinus (400–440)
- Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (c. 450; extant verses 1–16)
Some writers place this chapter after John 6.[4]
Old Testament references
- John 5:1: Leviticus 23:2; Deuteronomy 26[5]
- John 5:10: Jeremiah 17:22[5]
- John 5:37: Deuteronomy 4:12[5]
- John 5:46: Genesis 3:15; Deuteronomy 18:15[5]
A feast at Jerusalem (5:1)
As the chapter opens,
Healing at Bethesda (5:2–15)
At the Pool of Bethesda or Bethzatha,[9] Jesus heals a man who is both paralyzed and isolated. Jesus tells him to "Pick up your mat and walk!" This takes place on the Sabbath, and Jewish religious leaders see the man carrying his mat and tell him this is against the law. He tells them the man who healed him told him to do so, and they ask who that was. He tries to point out Jesus, but he has slipped away into the crowd. Jesus comes to him later and tells him "Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you". The man then tells the Jewish religious leaders that it was Jesus who healed him (John 5:15).
The ruins of the Pool of Bethesda are still standing in Jerusalem.
Verses 3b–4
Verses 3b–4 are not found in the most reliable manuscripts of John,[10] although they appear in the King James Version of the Bible (which is based on the Textus Receptus). Most modern textual critics believe that John 5:3b–4 is an interpolation, and not an original part of the text of John.[11]
In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had. And a certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years.[12]
The
Verses 9-10
- 9 And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed, and walked. And that day was the Sabbath. 10 The Jews therefore said to him who was cured, "It is the Sabbath; it is not lawful for you to carry your bed".[13]
Before Jesus is accused of
- Thus says the Lord: "Take heed to yourselves, and bear no burden on the Sabbath day, nor bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem.
Verse 11
- He answered them, "He who made me well said to me, 'Take up your bed and walk'."[14]
Plummer notes that the man carries his bed in obedience "to a higher authority",[1] not merely as a practical consequence of his having been cured.
Verse 14
- Afterward Jesus found him in the temple, and said to him, "See, you have been made well. Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you."[15]
- "Sin no more": spoken as a prohibition with a present imperative, involving a general condition.[16]
Jesus speaks of His Father and the Jews begin to persecute him (5:16–30)
The Jews begin to persecute Jesus (and in some texts, verse 16 adds that they "sought to kill him").[17] H. W. Watkins argues that "the words 'and sought to slay Him' should be omitted: in his view they have been inserted in some manuscripts to explain the first clause of John 5:18 (the Jews sought the more to kill him)",[18] the first of several Jewish threats against him (John 7:1, 7:19–25, 8:37, 8:40 and 10:39).[4]
Two reasons emerge:
- firstly, for "working on the Sabbath" (John 5:16);
- secondly, for calling God his "father" and thus making himself equal to God (John 5:18).
From Jesus' words, "My Father",
Jesus continues to speak of himself ("the Son") in relation to God ("the Father"): the Son can do nothing independently of (or in rivalry with) the Father; "the Son can have no separate interest or action from the Father".[21] the Son "acts with no individual self-assertion independent of God, because He is the Son.[1] The Son imitates the Father; the Father loves the Son and shows Him his ways; and the Son gives life in the way that the Father raises the dead. But the Father has delegated the exercise of judgment to the Son: all should honour the Son as they would honour the Father, and anyone who does not honour the Son does not honour the Father who sent Him. (John 5:19–23) The words in verse 19: the Son can do nothing on his own become, in verse 30, I can do nothing on my own; Jesus "identifies himself with the Son".[1]
Two sayings then follow each commencing with a double "amen" (Greek: αμην αμην, translated "Verily, verily" in the King James Version, "Truly, truly" in the English Standard Version, or "Very truly I tell you" in the New International Version):
- He who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life. (John 5:24)
- The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live. (John 5:25)
Reformed Evangelical theologian D. A. Carson sees John 5:24 as giving the "strongest affirmation of inaugurated eschatology in the Fourth Gospel" ... it is not necessary for the believer to "wait until the last day to experience something of resurrection life".[22] Lutheran theologian Heinrich Meyer refers to "the hour when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God" as the "resurrection summons". Meyer argues that this "hour" extends from its beginning at "Christ's entrance upon His life-giving ministry" until "the second advent – already had it begun to be present, but, viewed in its completeness, it still belonged to the future".[23]
The fourfold witness (5:31–47)
The final verses of this chapter, verses 31 to 47 refer to what the New King James Version calls the "fourfold witness". Jesus states that he does not bear witness (Greek: η μαρτυρια) to himself, for such witness would not be true or valid. Instead he calls on the testimony of four other witnesses:
- John the Baptist (John 5:33–35)
- Jesus' own works (John 5:36)
- The Father, speaking through the scriptures (John 5:37–40)
- Moses (John 5:45–47).
Jesus says that the Jews who seek to kill him study the scriptures hoping for eternal life, but that the scriptures speak of him, and people still refuse to come to him for life. People accept people who preach in their own name but not in one who comes in the name of the Father. "How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?" He then speaks of Moses as their accuser:
- "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me:
- I will raise up for them a Prophet like you from among their brethren, and will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him" (John 5:45, linked to Deuteronomy 18:18).
But, says Jesus, since you do not believe what Moses wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?" (John 5:47)
Theologian Albert Barnes notes that "the ancient fathers of the Church and the generality of modern commentators have regarded our Lord as the prophet promised in these verses [of Deuteronomy]".[24] Commentators have also explored whether the contrast to be emphasized is a contrast between the person of Moses and the person of Jesus, or between Moses understood as the author of scriptural writings and Jesus, who did not write but whose testimony was his 'sayings'. Bengel's Gnomen argues that in John 5:47, Moses' writings (Greek: Γράμμασιν) are placed in antithesis to Jesus' words (Greek: ῥήμασι): "Often more readily is belief attached to a letter previously received, than to a discourse heard for the first time".[7] However, the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges is critical of this approach:
- "The emphatic words are 'his' and 'My.' Most readers erroneously emphasize 'writings' and 'words'. The comparison is between Moses and Christ. It was a simple matter of fact [25] that Moses had written and Christ had not: the contrast between writings and words is no part of the argument". The same comparison is seen in Luke 16:31: "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead".[1]
These teachings of Jesus are almost only found in John. In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus only speaks of himself as the Messiah in such a straightforward way at the very end, shortly before his death. All this occurs in Jerusalem, while the Synoptic Gospels have very little of Jesus's teachings occurring in Jerusalem and then only shortly before his death.
References
- ^ a b c d e f Plummer, A. (1902), Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges on John 5, accessed 11 March 2016
- ^ J. Lenaerts, Un papyrus de l'Évangile de Jean : PL II/31, Chronique d' Egypte 60 (1985), pp. 117–120
- ^ Philip W. Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts. An Introduction to New Testament Paleography & Textual Criticism, Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005, p. 75.
- ^ a b c Kieffer, R., John, in Barton, J. and Muddiman, J. (2001), The Oxford Bible Commentary Archived 2 May 2019 at the Wayback Machine, p. 969
- ^ a b c d "Biblical concordances of John 5 in the 1611 King James Bible".
- ^ See also Exodus 23:14
- ^ a b Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament on John 5, accessed 6 March 2016
- ^ Pulpit Commentary on John 5, accessed 4 March 2016
- ^ Vincent, M., Vincent's Word Studies on John 5: "Tischendorf and Westcott and Hort give βηθζαθά, Bethzatha, House of the Olive".
- 821
- ^ Craig Blomberg (1997), Jesus and the Gospels, Apollos, pp. 74–75
- ^ John 5:3–5: King James Version (interpolated text bolded)
- ^ John 5:10: NKJV
- ^ John 5:10: NKJV
- ^ John 5:14 NKJV
- ^ Note on John 5:14 in NET Bible.
- critical text (John 5:16) does not include these words.
- ^ Watkins, H. W. (1905), Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers on John 5, accessed 5 March 2016
- ^ Wesley's Notes on John 5, accessed 5 March 2016
- ^ Schaff, P. (ed.), Homilies or Tractates of St. Augustin on the Gospel of John, Tractate XVIII, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers in the Christian Classics Ethereal Library
- ^ Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary on John 5, accessed 6 March 2016
- ^ D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (Apollos, 1991), p. 256.
- ^ Meyer's NT Commentary on John 5, accessed 8 March 2016
- ^ Barnes' Notes on the Bible on Deuteronomy 18, accessed 10 March 2016
- ^ According to traditional attribution of the writing of the Torah to Moses
External links
- John 5 King James Bible – Wikisource
- English Translation with Parallel Latin Vulgate
- Online Bible at GospelHall.org (ESV, KJV, Darby, American Standard Version, Bible in Basic English)
- Multiple bible versions at Bible Gateway (NKJV, NIV, NRSV etc.)
Preceded by John 4 |
Chapters of the Bible Gospel of John |
Succeeded by John 6 |