Matthew 5:11-12

5:11 “Blessed are you when people ¹  insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely ²  on account of me. 5:12 Rejoice and be glad because your reward is great in heaven, for they persecuted the prophets before you in the same way.

Matthew 24:9

Persecution of Disciples

24:9 “Then they will hand you over to be persecuted and will kill you. You will be hated by all the nations ³  because of my name. ⁴ 

Luke 6:22

6:22 “Blessed are you when people ⁵  hate you, and when they exclude you and insult you and reject you as evil ⁶  on account of the Son of Man!

Luke 21:17

21:17 You will be hated by everyone because of my name. ⁷ 

John 15:18-19

The World’s Hatred

15:18 “If the world hates you, be aware ⁸  that it hated me first. ⁹  15:19 If you belonged to the world, ¹⁰  the world would love you as its own. ¹¹  However, because you do not belong to the world, ¹²  but I chose you out of the world, for this reason ¹³  the world hates you. ¹⁴ 

John 17:14

17:14 I have given them your word, ¹⁵  and the world has hated them, because they do not belong to the world, ¹⁶  just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ 

John 17:1

Jesus Prays for the Father to Glorify Him

17:1 When Jesus had finished saying these things, he looked upward ¹⁸  to heaven ¹⁹  and said, “Father, the time ²⁰  has come. Glorify your Son, so that your ²¹  Son may glorify you –

John 3:13

3:13 No one ²²  has ascended ²³  into heaven except the one who descended from heaven – the Son of Man. ²⁴ 

[5:11]  ¹ tn Grk “when they insult you.” The third person pronoun (here implied in the verb ὀνειδίσωσιν [ojneidiswsin]) has no specific referent, but refers to people in general.

[5:11]  ² tc Although ψευδόμενοι (yeudomenoi, “bearing witness falsely”) could be a motivated reading, clarifying that the disciples are unjustly persecuted, its lack in only D it sy^s Tert does not help its case. Since the Western text is known for numerous free alterations, without corroborative evidence the shorter reading must be judged as secondary.

[24:9]  ³ tn Or “all the Gentiles” (the same Greek word may be translated “nations” or “Gentiles”).

[24:9]  ⁴ sn See Matt 5:10-12; 1 Cor 1:25-31.

[6:22]  ⁵ tn This is a generic use of ἄνθρωπος (anqrwpo"), referring to both males and females.

[6:22]  ⁶ tn Or “disdain you”; Grk “cast out your name as evil.” The word “name” is used here as a figure of speech to refer to the person as a whole.

[21:17]  ⁷ sn See Luke 6:22, 27; 1 Cor 1:25-31.

[15:18]  ⁸ tn Grk “know.”

[15:18]  ⁹ tn Grk “it hated me before you.”

[15:19]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “if you were of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹¹ tn The words “you as” are not in the original but are supplied for clarity.

[15:19]  ¹² tn Grk “because you are not of the world.”

[15:19]  ¹³ tn Or “world, therefore.”

[15:19]  ¹⁴ sn I chose you out of the world…the world hates you. Two themes are brought together here. In 8:23 Jesus had distinguished himself from the world in addressing his Jewish opponents: “You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world.” In 15:16 Jesus told the disciples “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.” Now Jesus has united these two ideas as he informs the disciples that he has chosen them out of the world. While the disciples will still be “in” the world after Jesus has departed, they will not belong to it, and Jesus prays later in John 17:15-16 to the Father, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The same theme also occurs in 1 John 4:5-6: “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.” Thus the basic reason why the world hates the disciples (as it hated Jesus before them) is because they are not of the world. They are born from above, and are not of the world. For this reason the world hates them.

[17:14]  ¹⁵ tn Or “your message.”

[17:14]  ¹⁶ tn Grk “because they are not of the world.”

[17:14]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “just as I am not of the world.”

[17:1]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “he raised his eyes” (an idiom).

[17:1]  ¹⁹ tn Or “to the sky.” The Greek word οὐρανός (ouranos) may be translated “sky” or “heaven” depending on the context.

[17:1]  ²⁰ tn Grk “the hour.”

[17:1]  ²¹ tc The better witnesses (א B C* W 0109 0301) have “the Son” (ὁ υἱός, Jo Juios) here, while the majority (C³ L Ψ Ë¹³ 33 Ï) read “your Son also” (καὶ ὁ υἱὸς σου, kai Jo Juio" sou), or “your Son” (ὁ υἱὸς σου; A D Θ 0250 1 579 pc lat sy); the second corrector of C has καὶ ὁ υἱός (“the Son also”). The longer readings appear to be predictable scribal expansions and as such should be considered secondary.

[3:13]  ²² tn Grk “And no one.”

[3:13]  ²³ sn The verb ascended is a perfect tense in Greek (ἀναβέβηκεν, anabebhken) which seems to look at a past, completed event. (This is not as much of a problem for those who take Jesus’ words to end at v. 12, and these words to be a comment by the author, looking back on Jesus’ ascension.) As a saying of Jesus, these words are a bit harder to explain. Note, however, the lexical similarities with 1:51: “ascending,” “descending,” and “son of man.” Here, though, the ascent and descent is accomplished by the Son himself, not the angels as in 1:51. There is no need to limit this saying to Jesus’ ascent following the resurrection, however; the point of the Jacob story (Gen 28), which seems to be the background for 1:51, is the freedom of communication and relationship between God and men (a major theme of John’s Gospel). This communication comes through the angels in Gen 28 (and John 1:51); but here (most appropriately) it comes directly through the Son of Man. Although Jesus could be referring to a prior ascent, after an appearance as the preincarnate Son of Man, more likely he is simply pointing out that no one from earth has ever gone up to heaven and come down again. The Son, who has come down from heaven, is the only one who has been ‘up’ there. In both Jewish intertestamental literature and later rabbinic accounts, Moses is portrayed as ascending to heaven to receive the Torah and descending to distribute it to men (e.g., Targum Ps 68:19.) In contrast to these Jewish legends, the Son is the only one who has ever made the ascent and descent.

[3:13]  ²⁴ tc Most witnesses, including a few important ones (A^[*^] Θ Ψ 050 Ë^1,13 Ï latt sy^c,p,h), have at the end of this verse “the one who is in heaven” (ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ, Jo wn en tw ouranw). A few others have variations on this phrase, such as “who was in heaven” (e sy^c), or “the one who is from heaven” (0141 pc sy^s). The witnesses normally considered the best, along with several others, lack the phrase in its entirety (Ì^66,75 א B L T W^s 083 086 33 1241 pc co). On the one hand, if the reading ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ is authentic it may suggest that while Jesus was speaking to Nicodemus he spoke of himself as in heaven even while he was on earth. If that is the case, one could see why variations from this hard saying arose: “who was in heaven,” “the one who is from heaven,” and omission of the clause. At the same time, such a saying could be interpreted (though with difficulty) as part of the narrator’s comments rather than Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, alleviating the problem. And if v. 13 was viewed in early times as the evangelist’s statement, “the one who is in heaven” could have crept into the text through a marginal note. Other internal evidence suggests that this saying may be authentic. The adjectival participle, ὁ ὤν, is used in the Fourth Gospel more than any other NT book (though the Apocalypse comes in a close second), and frequently with reference to Jesus (1:18; 6:46; 8:47). It may be looking back to the LXX of Exod 3:14 (ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν). Especially since this exact construction is not necessary to communicate the location of the Son of Man, its presence in many witnesses here may suggest authenticity. Further, John uses the singular of οὐρανός (ourano", “heaven”) in all 18 instances of the word in this Gospel, and all but twice with the article (only 1:32 and 6:58 are anarthrous, and even in the latter there is significant testimony to the article). At the same time, the witnesses that lack this clause are very weighty and must not be discounted. Generally speaking, if other factors are equal, the reading of such mss should be preferred. And internally, it could be argued that ὁ ὤν is the most concise way to speak of the Son of Man in heaven at that time (without the participle the point would be more ambiguous). Further, the articular singular οὐρανός is already used twice in this verse, thus sufficiently prompting scribes to add the same in the longer reading. This combination of factors suggests that ὁ ὢν ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ is not a genuine Johannism. Further intrinsic evidence against the longer reading relates to the evangelist’s purposes: If he intended v. 13 to be his own comments rather than Jesus’ statement, his switch back to Jesus’ words in v. 14 (for the lifting up of the Son of Man is still seen as in the future) seems inexplicable. The reading “who is in heaven” thus seems to be too hard. All things considered, as intriguing as the longer reading is, it seems almost surely to have been a marginal gloss added inadvertently to the text in the process of transmission. For an argument in favor of the longer reading, see David Alan Black, “The Text of John 3:13,” GTJ 6 (1985): 49-66.