John 7:27

7:27 But we know where this man ¹  comes from. ²  Whenever the Christ ³  comes, no one will know where he comes from.” ⁴ 

John 10:15

10:15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life ⁵  for ⁶  the sheep.

John 14:17

14:17 the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot accept, ⁷  because it does not see him or know him. But you know him, because he resides ⁸  with you and will be ⁹  in you.

[7:27]  ¹ tn Grk “this one.”

[7:27]  ² sn We know where this man comes from. The author apparently did not consider this objection worth answering. The true facts about Jesus’ origins were readily available for any reader who didn’t know already. Here is an instance where the author assumes knowledge about Jesus that is independent from the material he records.

[7:27]  ³ tn Or “the Messiah” (Both Greek “Christ” and Hebrew and Aramaic “Messiah” mean “one who has been anointed”).

[7:27]  ⁴ sn The view of these people regarding the Messiah that no one will know where he comes from reflects the idea that the origin of the Messiah is a mystery. In the Talmud (b. Sanhedrin 97a) Rabbi Zera taught: “Three come unawares: Messiah, a found article, and a scorpion.” Apparently OT prophetic passages like Mal 3:1 and Dan 9:25 were interpreted by some as indicating a sudden appearance of Messiah. It appears that this was not a universal view: The scribes summoned by Herod at the coming of the Magi in Matt 2 knew that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. It is important to remember that Jewish messianic expectations in the early 1st century were not monolithic.

[10:15]  ⁵ tn Or “I die willingly.”

[10:15]  ⁶ tn Or “on behalf of” or “for the sake of.”

[14:17]  ⁹ tn Or “cannot receive.”

[14:17]  ¹⁰ tn Or “he remains.”

[14:17]  ¹¹ tc Some early and important witnesses (Ì^66* B D* W 1 565 it) have ἐστιν (estin, “he is”) instead of ἔσται (estai, “he will be”) here, while other weighty witnesses ({Ì^66c,75vid א A D¹ L Θ Ψ Ë¹³ 33^vid 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.