John 5:19

5:19 So Jesus answered them, ¹  “I tell you the solemn truth, ²  the Son can do nothing on his own initiative, ³  but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father ⁴  does, the Son does likewise. ⁵ 

John 8:14

8:14 Jesus answered, ⁶  “Even if I testify about myself, my testimony is true, because I know where I came from and where I am going. But you people ⁷  do not know where I came from or where I am going. ⁸ 

John 9:16

9:16 Then some of the Pharisees began to say, ⁹  “This man is not from God, because he does not observe ¹⁰  the Sabbath.” ¹¹  But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform ¹²  such miraculous signs?” Thus there was a division ¹³  among them.

John 12:34-35

12:34 Then the crowd responded, ¹⁴  “We have heard from the law that the Christ ¹⁵  will remain forever. ¹⁶  How ¹⁷  can you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up’? Who is this Son of Man?” 12:35 Jesus replied, ¹⁸  “The light is with you for a little while longer. ¹⁹  Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. ²⁰  The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going.

John 14:10

14:10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me? ²¹  The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own initiative, ²²  but the Father residing in me performs ²³  his miraculous deeds. ²⁴ 

John 18:37

18:37 Then Pilate said, ²⁵  “So you are a king!” Jesus replied, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world – to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to ²⁶  my voice.”

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 ²⁷  (for that Sabbath was an especially important one), ²⁸  the Jewish leaders ²⁹  asked Pilate to have the victims’ legs ³⁰  broken ³¹  and the bodies taken down. ³² 

John 19:38

Jesus’ Burial

19:38 After this, Joseph of Arimathea, a disciple of Jesus (but secretly, because he feared the Jewish leaders ³³ ), ³⁴  asked Pilate if he could remove the body of Jesus. Pilate ³⁵  gave him permission, so he went and took the body away. ³⁶ 

John 20:19

Jesus’ Appearance to the Disciples

20:19 On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the disciples had gathered together ³⁷  and locked the doors ³⁸  of the place ³⁹  because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. ⁴⁰  Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”

[5:19]  ¹ tn Grk “answered and said to them.”

[5:19]  ² tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[5:19]  ³ tn Grk “nothing from himself.”

[5:19]  ⁴ tn Grk “that one”; the referent (the Father) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[5:19]  ⁵ sn What works does the Son do likewise? The same that the Father does – and the same that the rabbis recognized as legitimate works of God on the Sabbath (see note on working in v. 17). (1) Jesus grants life (just as the Father grants life) on the Sabbath. But as the Father gives physical life on the Sabbath, so the Son grants spiritual life (John 5:21; note the “greater things” mentioned in v. 20). (2) Jesus judges (determines the destiny of people) on the Sabbath, just as the Father judges those who die on the Sabbath, because the Father has granted authority to the Son to judge (John 5:22-23). But this is not all. Not only has this power been granted to Jesus in the present; it will be his in the future as well. In v. 28 there is a reference not to spiritually dead (only) but also physically dead. At their resurrection they respond to the Son as well.

[8:14]  ⁶ tn Grk “Jesus answered and said to them.”

[8:14]  ⁷ tn The word “people” is supplied in the translation to indicate that the pronoun (“you”) and verb (“do not know”) in Greek are plural.

[8:14]  ⁸ sn You people do not know where I came from or where I am going. The ignorance of the religious authorities regarding Jesus’ origin works on two levels at once: First, they thought Jesus came from Galilee (although he really came from Bethlehem in Judea) and second, they did not know that he came from heaven (from the Father), and this is where he would return. See further John 7:52.

[9:16]  ¹¹ tn As a response to the answers of the man who used to be blind, the use of the imperfect tense in the reply of the Pharisees is best translated as an ingressive imperfect (“began to say” or “started saying”).

[9:16]  ¹² tn Grk “he does not keep.”

[9:16]  ¹³ sn The Jewish religious leaders considered the work involved in making the mud to be a violation of the Sabbath.

[9:16]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “do.”

[9:16]  ¹⁵ tn Or “So there was discord.”

[12:34]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “Then the crowd answered him.”

[12:34]  ¹⁷ tn Or “the Messiah” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed”).

[12:34]  ¹⁸ tn Probably an allusion to Ps 89:35-37. It is difficult to pinpoint the passage in the Mosaic law to which the crowd refers. The ones most often suggested are Ps 89:36-37, Ps 110:4, Isa 9:7, Ezek 37:25, and Dan 7:14. None of these passages are in the Pentateuch per se, but “law” could in common usage refer to the entire OT (compare Jesus’ use in John 10:34). Of the passages mentioned, Ps 89:36-37 is the most likely candidate. This verse speaks of David’s “seed” remaining forever. Later in the same psalm, v. 51 speaks of the “anointed” (Messiah), and the psalm was interpreted messianically in both the NT (Acts 13:22, Rev 1:5, 3:14) and in the rabbinic literature (Genesis Rabbah 97).

[12:34]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “And how”; the conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has been left untranslated here for improved English style.

[12:35]  ²¹ tn Grk “Then Jesus said to them.”

[12:35]  ²² tn Grk “Yet a little while the light is with you.”

[12:35]  ²³ sn The warning Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you operates on at least two different levels: (1) To the Jewish people in Jerusalem to whom Jesus spoke, the warning was a reminder that there was only a little time left for them to accept him as their Messiah. (2) To those later individuals to whom the Fourth Gospel was written, and to every person since, the words of Jesus are also a warning: There is a finite, limited time in which each individual has opportunity to respond to the Light of the world (i.e., Jesus); after that comes darkness. One’s response to the Light decisively determines one’s judgment for eternity.

[14:10]  ²⁶ tn The mutual interrelationship of the Father and the Son (ἐγὼ ἐν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί ἐστιν, egw en tw patri kai Jo pathr en emoi estin) is something that Jesus expected even his opponents to recognize (cf. John 10:38). The question Jesus asks of Philip (οὐ πιστεύεις, ou pisteuei") expects the answer “yes.” Note that the following statement is addressed to all the disciples, however, because the plural pronoun (ὑμῖν, Jumin) is used. Jesus says that his teaching (the words he spoke to them all) did not originate from himself, but the Father, who permanently remains (μένων, menwn) in relationship with Jesus, performs his works. One would have expected “speaks his words” here rather than “performs his works”; many of the church fathers (e.g., Augustine and Chrysostom) identified the two by saying that Jesus’ words were works. But there is an implicit contrast in the next verse between words and works, and v. 12 seems to demand that the works are real works, not just words. It is probably best to see the two terms as related but not identical; there is a progression in the idea here. Both Jesus’ words (recall the Samaritans’ response in John 4:42) and Jesus’ works are revelatory of who he is, but as the next verse indicates, works have greater confirmatory power than words.

[14:10]  ²⁷ tn Grk “I do not speak from myself.”

[14:10]  ²⁸ tn Or “does.”

[14:10]  ²⁹ tn Or “his mighty acts”; Grk “his works.”

[18:37]  ³¹ tn Grk “said to him.”

[18:37]  ³² tn Or “obeys”; Grk “hears.”

[19:31]  ³⁶ 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]  ³⁷ sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

[19:31]  ³⁸ 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]  ³⁹ 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]  ⁴⁰ 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]  ⁴¹ 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.

[19:38]  ⁴¹ tn Or “the Jewish authorities”; Grk “the Jews.” Here the phrase refers to the Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees (see John 12:42). See also the note on the phrase “Jewish leaders” in v. 7.

[19:38]  ⁴² sn This is a parenthetical note by the author.

[19:38]  ⁴³ tn Grk “And Pilate.” The conjunction καί (kai, “and”) has not been translated here in keeping with the tendency of contemporary English style to use shorter sentences.

[19:38]  ⁴⁴ tn Grk “took away his body.”

[20:19]  ⁴⁶ tn Although the words “had gathered together” are omitted in some of the earliest and best mss, they are nevertheless implied, and have thus been included in the translation.

[20:19]  ⁴⁷ tn Grk “the doors were shut”; “locked” conveys a more appropriate idea for the modern English reader.

[20:19]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “where they were.”

[20:19]  ⁴⁹ tn Or “the Jewish authorities”; Grk “the Jews.” In NT usage the term ᾿Ιουδαῖοι (Ioudaioi) may refer to the entire Jewish people, the residents of Jerusalem and surrounding territory, the authorities in Jerusalem, or merely those who were hostile to Jesus. (For further information see R. G. Bratcher, “‘The Jews’ in the Gospel of John,” BT 26 [1975]: 401-9.) Here the phrase refers to the Jewish leaders.