15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware 4 that it hated me first. 5
13:12 So when Jesus 6 had washed their feet and put his outer clothing back on, he took his place at the table 7 again and said to them, “Do you understand 8 what I have done for you?
1 tn Grk “you cannot hear,” but this is not a reference to deafness, but rather hearing in the sense of listening to something and responding to it.
2 tn Grk “my word.”
3 tc There is a difficult textual problem here: The statement reads either “If you have known (ἐγνώκατε, egnwkate) me, you will know (γνώσεσθε, gnwsesqe) my Father” or “If you had really known (ἐγνώκειτε, egnwkeite) me, you would have known (ἐγνώκειτε ἄν or ἂν ἤδειτε [egnwkeite an or an hdeite]) my Father.” The division of the external evidence is difficult, but can be laid out as follows: The
5 tn Grk “know.”
6 tn Grk “it hated me before you.”
7 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
8 tn Grk “he reclined at the table.” The phrase reflects the normal 1st century Near Eastern practice of eating a meal in a semi-reclining position.
9 tn Grk “Do you know.”
9 tn Or “cannot receive.”
10 tn Or “he remains.”
11 tc Some early and important witnesses (Ì66* B D* W 1 565 it) have ἐστιν (estin, “he is”) instead of ἔσται (estai, “he will be”) here, while other weighty witnesses ({Ì66c,75vid א A D1 L Θ Ψ Ë13 33vid Ï as well as several versions and fathers}), read the future tense. When one considers transcriptional evidence, ἐστιν is the more difficult reading and better explains the rise of the future tense reading, but it must be noted that both Ì66 and D were corrected from the present tense to the future. If ἐστιν were the original reading, one would expect a few manuscripts to be corrected to read the present when they originally read the future, but that is not the case. When one considers what the author would have written, the future is on much stronger ground. The immediate context (both in 14:16 and in the chapter as a whole) points to the future, and the theology of the book regards the advent of the Spirit as a decidedly future event (see, e.g., 7:39 and 16:7). The present tense could have arisen from an error of sight on the part of some scribes or more likely from an error of thought as scribes reflected upon the present role of the Spirit. Although a decision is difficult, the future tense is most likely authentic. For further discussion on this textual problem, see James M. Hamilton, Jr., “He Is with You and He Will Be in You” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2003), 213-20.