John 4:18

4:18 for you have had five husbands, and the man you are living with ¹  now is not your husband. This you said truthfully!”

John 5:2

5:2 Now there is ²  in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate ³  a pool called Bethzatha ⁴  in Aramaic, ⁵  which has five covered walkways. ⁶ 

John 6:9

6:9 “Here is a boy who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what good ⁷  are these for so many people?”

John 6:13

6:13 So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with broken pieces from the five barley loaves ⁸  left over by the people who had eaten.

John 6:10

6:10 Jesus said, “Have ⁹  the people sit down.” (Now there was a lot of grass in that place.) ¹⁰  So the men ¹¹  sat down, about five thousand in number.

John 19:39

19:39 Nicodemus, the man who had previously come to Jesus ¹²  at night, ¹³  accompanied Joseph, ¹⁴  carrying a mixture of myrrh and aloes ¹⁵  weighing about seventy-five pounds. ¹⁶ 

John 6:19

6:19 Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, ¹⁷  they caught sight of Jesus walking on the lake, ¹⁸  approaching the boat, and they were frightened.

[4:18]  ¹ tn Grk “the one you have.”

[5:2]  ² tn Regarding the use of the present tense ἐστιν (estin) and its implications for the dating of the Gospel of John, see the article by D. B. Wallace, “John 5,2 and the Date of the Fourth Gospel,” Bib 71 (1990): 177-205.

[5:2]  ³ tn The site of the miracle is also something of a problem: προβατικῇ (probatikh) is usually taken as a reference to the Sheep Gate near the temple. Some (R. E. Brown and others) would place the word κολυμβήθρα (kolumbhqra) with προβατικῇ to read “in Jerusalem, by the Sheep Pool, there is (another pool) with the Hebrew name.” This would imply that there is reference to two pools in the context rather than only one. This does not seem necessary (although it is a grammatical possibility). The gender of the words does not help since both are feminine (as is the participle ἐπιλεγομένη [epilegomenh]). Note however that Brown’s suggestion would require a feminine word to be supplied (for the participle ἐπιλεγομένη to modify). The traditional understanding of the phrase as a reference to the Sheep Gate near the temple appears more probably correct.

[5:2]  ⁴ tc Some mss (א [L] 33 it) read Bethzatha, while others read Bethsaida (Ì^[66],75 B T W^s [Ψ] pc vg); codex D has Belzetha. A lot of controversy has surrounded the name of the pool itself: The reading of the Byzantine (or majority) text (A C Θ 078 Ë^1,13 Ï), Bethesda, has been virtually discarded by scholars in favor of what is thought to be the more primitive Bethzatha, even though many recent translations continue to employ Bethesda, the traditional reading. The latter is attested by Josephus as the name of a quarter of the city near the northeast corner of the temple area. He reports that the Syrian Legate Cestius burned this suburb in his attack on Jerusalem in October a.d. 68 (J. W. 2.19.4 [2.530]). However, there is some new archaeological evidence for this problem. 3Q15 (Copper Scroll) from Qumran seems to indicate that in the general area of the temple, on the eastern hill of Jerusalem, a treasure was buried in Bet áEsdatayin, in the pool at the entrance to the smaller basin. The name of the region or pool itself seems then to have been Bet ᾿Esda, “house of the flowing.” It appears with the dual ending in the scroll because there were two basins. Bethesda seems to be an accurate Greek rendition of the name, while J. T. Milik suggests Bethzatha is a rendition of the Aramaic intensive plural Bet áEsdata (DJDJ 3, 271). As for the text of John 5:2, the fundamental problems with the Bethesda reading are that it looks motivated (with an edifying Semitic etymology, meaning “House of Mercy” [TCGNT 178]), and is minimally attested. Apart from the Copper Scroll, the evidence for Bethesda is almost entirely shut up to the Byzantine text (C being the most notable exception, but it often has Byzantine encroachments). On the one hand, this argues the Byzantine reading here had ancient, semitic roots; on the other hand, since both readings are attested as historically accurate, a decision has to be based on the better witnesses. The fact that there are multiple readings here suggests that the original was not well understood. Which reading best explains the rise of the others? It seems that Bethzatha is the best choice.

[5:2]  ⁵ tn Grk “in Hebrew.”

[5:2]  ⁶ tn Or “porticoes,” or “colonnades”; Grk “stoas.”

[6:9]  ³ tn Grk “but what are these”; the word “good” is not in the Greek text, but is implied.

[6:13]  ⁴ sn Note that the fish mentioned previously (in John 6:9) are not emphasized here, only the five barley loaves. This is easy to understand, however, because the bread is of primary importance for the author in view of Jesus’ upcoming discourse on the Bread of Life.

[6:10]  ⁵ tn Grk “Make.”

[6:10]  ⁶ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author (suggesting an eyewitness recollection).

[6:10]  ⁷ tn Here “men” has been used in the translation because the following number, 5,000, probably included only adult males (see the parallel in Matt 14:21).

[19:39]  ⁶ tn Grk “him”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[19:39]  ⁷ sn See John 3:1-21.

[19:39]  ⁸ tn Grk “came”; the words “accompanied Joseph” are not in the Greek text but are supplied for clarity.

[19:39]  ⁹ sn Aloes refers to an aromatic resin from a plant similar to a lily, used for embalming a corpse.

[19:39]  ¹⁰ sn The Roman pound (λίτρα, litra) weighed twelve ounces or 325 grams. Thus 100 Roman pounds would be about 32.5 kilograms or 75 pounds.

[6:19]  ⁷ tn Grk “about twenty-five or thirty stades” (a stade as a unit of linear measure is about 607 feet or 187 meters).

[6:19]  ⁸ tn Or “sea.” See the note on “lake” in v. 16. John uses the phrase ἐπί (epi, “on”) followed by the genitive (as in Mark, instead of Matthew’s ἐπί followed by the accusative) to describe Jesus walking “on the lake.”