John 5:12

5:12 They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Pick up your mat ¹  and walk’?” ² 

John 1:21

1:21 So they asked him, “Then who are you? ³  Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not!” ⁴  “Are you the Prophet?” ⁵  He answered, “No!”

John 1:25

1:25 So they asked John, ⁶  “Why then are you baptizing if you are not the Christ, ⁷  nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

John 9:2

9:2 His disciples asked him, ⁸  “Rabbi, who committed the sin that caused him to be born blind, this man ⁹  or his parents?” ¹⁰ 

John 9:19

9:19 They asked the parents, ¹¹  “Is this your son, whom you say ¹²  was born blind? Then how does he now see?”

John 19:31

19:31 Then, because it was the day of preparation, so that the bodies should not stay on the crosses on the Sabbath ¹³  (for that Sabbath was an especially important one), ¹⁴  the Jewish leaders ¹⁵  asked Pilate to have the victims’ legs ¹⁶  broken ¹⁷  and the bodies taken down. ¹⁸ 

[5:12]  ¹ tc While a number of mss, especially the later ones (A^c C³ D Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 33 Ï latt sy), include the words τον κραβ(β)ατ(τ)ον σου (ton krab(b)at(t)on sou, “your mat”) here, the earliest and best (Ì^66,75 א B C* L) do not. Nevertheless, in the translation, it is necessary to supply the words due to the demands of English style, which does not typically allow for understood or implied direct objects as Greek does.

[5:12]  ² tn Grk “Pick up and walk”; the object (the mat) is implied but not repeated.

[1:21]  ³ tn Grk “What then?” (an idiom).

[1:21]  ⁴ sn According to the 1st century rabbinic interpretation of 2 Kgs 2:11, Elijah was still alive. In Mal 4:5 it is said that Elijah would be the precursor of Messiah. How does one reconcile John the Baptist’s denial here (“I am not”) with Jesus’ statements in Matt 11:14 (see also Mark 9:13 and Matt 17:12) that John the Baptist was Elijah? Some have attempted to remove the difficulty by a reconstruction of the text in the Gospel of John which makes the Baptist say that he was Elijah. However, external support for such emendations is lacking. According to Gregory the Great, John was not Elijah, but exercised toward Jesus the function of Elijah by preparing his way. But this avoids the real difficulty, since in John’s Gospel the question of the Jewish authorities to the Baptist concerns precisely his function. It has also been suggested that the author of the Gospel here preserves a historically correct reminiscence – that John the Baptist did not think of himself as Elijah, although Jesus said otherwise. Mark 6:14-16 and Mark 8:28 indicate the people and Herod both distinguished between John and Elijah – probably because he did not see himself as Elijah. But Jesus’ remarks in Matt 11:14, Mark 9:13, and Matt 17:12 indicate that John did perform the function of Elijah – John did for Jesus what Elijah was to have done for the coming of the Lord. C. F. D. Moule pointed out that it is too simple to see a straight contradiction between John’s account and that of the synoptic gospels: “We have to ask by whom the identification is made, and by whom refused. The synoptic gospels represent Jesus as identifying, or comparing, the Baptist with Elijah, while John represents the Baptist as rejecting the identification when it is offered him by his interviewers. Now these two, so far from being incompatible, are psychologically complementary. The Baptist humbly rejects the exalted title, but Jesus, on the contrary, bestows it on him. Why should not the two both be correct?” (The Phenomenon of the New Testament [SBT], 70).

[1:21]  ⁵ sn The Prophet is a reference to the “prophet like Moses” of Deut 18:15, by this time an eschatological figure in popular belief. Acts 3:22 identifies Jesus as this prophet.

[1:25]  ⁵ tn Grk “And they asked him, and said to him”; the referent (John) has been specified in the translation for clarity, and the phrase has been simplified in the translation to “So they asked John.”

[1:25]  ⁶ tn Or “the Messiah” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed”).

[9:2]  ⁷ tn Grk “asked him, saying.”

[9:2]  ⁸ tn Grk “this one.”

[9:2]  ⁹ tn Grk “in order that he should be born blind.”

[9:19]  ⁹ tn Grk “and they asked them, saying”; the referent (the parents) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[9:19]  ¹⁰ tn The Greek pronoun and verb are both plural (both parents are addressed).

[19:31]  ¹¹ sn The Jewish authorities, because this was the day of preparation for the Sabbath and the Passover (cf. 19:14), requested Pilate to order the legs of the three who had been crucified to be broken. This would hasten their deaths, so that the bodies could be removed before the beginning of the Sabbath at 6 p.m. This was based on the law of Deut 21:22-23 and Josh 8:29 that specified the bodies of executed criminals who had been hanged on a tree should not remain there overnight. According to Josephus this law was interpreted in the 1st century to cover the bodies of those who had been crucified (J. W. 4.5.2 [4.317]). Philo of Alexandria also mentions that on occasion, especially at festivals, the bodies were taken down and given to relatives to bury (Flaccus 10 [83]). The normal Roman practice would have been to leave the bodies on the crosses, to serve as a warning to other would-be offenders.

[19:31]  ¹² sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

[19:31]  ¹³ tn Or “the Jewish authorities”; Grk “the Jews.” Here the phrase refers to the Jewish leaders. See also the note on the phrase “Jewish leaders” in v. 7.

[19:31]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “asked Pilate that the legs of them might be broken.” The referent of “them” (the three individuals who were crucified, collectively referred to as “the victims”) has been supplied in the translation for clarity.

[19:31]  ¹⁵ sn To have the legs…broken. Breaking the legs of a crucified person was a way of speeding up his death, since the victim could no longer use his legs to push upward in order to be able to draw a breath. This breaking of the legs was called in Latin crurifragium, and was done with a heavy mallet.

[19:31]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and they might be taken down.” Here because of the numerous ambiguous third person references it is necessary to clarify that it was the crucified men whose legs were to be broken and whose corpses were to be removed from the crosses.