Textual Criticism
John 5:1-18
After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.…


This verse has undoubtedly no right to a place in the text. That fourth verse the most important Greek and Latin copies are without, and most of the early versions. In other MSS. which retain this verse, the obelus which hints suspicion, or the asterisk which marks rejection, is attached to it; while those in which it appears unquestioned belong mostly, as Griesbach shows, to a later recension of the text. And this fourth verse spreads the suspicion of its own spuriousness over the last clause of the verse pre- ceding, which, though it has not so great a body of evidence against it, has yet, in a less degree, the same notes of suspicion about it. Doubtless whatever here is addition, whether only the fourth verse, or the last clause also of the third, found very early its way into the text; we have it as early as , the first witness for its presence At first probably a marginal note, expressing the popular notion of the Jewish Christians concerning the origin of the healing power which from time to time these waters possessed, by degrees it assumed the shape in which now we have it: for there are marks of growth about it, betraying them- selves in a great variety of readings — some copies omitting one part, and some another, of the verse — all which is generally the sign of a later addition: thus, little by little, it procured admission into the text, probably at Alexandria at first, the birthplace of other similar additions The statement rests upon that religious view of the world, which in all nature sees something beyond nature, which does not believe that it has discovered causes, when, in fact, it has only traced the sequence of phenomena, and which everywhere recognizes a going forth of the immediate power of God, invisible agencies of His, whether personal or otherwise, accomplishing His will.

(Archbishop Trench.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

WEB: After these things, there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.




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