Legal eagles and the case of the missing text (John 5:8-13)

What was so special about the Pool of Bethesda that a bunch of disabled people were tanning poolside? If you're reading from the King James Version, you're probably thinking, “Well, duh! They talk about the angel right there in verse 4.” Those of you reading from the New International Version may now be asking yourselves, “Wait, did I miss that?” Go ahead NIVers and check out verse 4 again. Did you even notice it wasn't there your first time through? So why did the NIV skip a verse? (This is not the only instance.) Without getting into the whole KJV-NIV war, the reasoning I have read that NIV scholars omit this specific verse is because it did not appear in the oldest manuscripts which were discovered after the KJV was written. NIV authorities believe it was originally written in the margins by ancient scholars as a study aid, but it accidentally found it's way into the official text through copying errors. There's a lot more that can be said on this subject, but I'll save that for another time.

MISCONCEPTION CORRECTION: When you read a passage like this it's easy to blow off the Jewish authorities as nut jobs who were way too strict about their laws. How could they possibly be so cold about such a small thing as carrying a mat? Students, if you would kindly open your Bibles to Numbers 15:32-36. Based on this passage that these guys would have used as legal source material, now do you think they were overreacting? There is no recorded punishment for mat-guy so it would seem they were actually being relatively level headed about the whole thing. As for poor stick-man, just like above, there's more that can be said, but that will have to wait for another day.

Well it seems I've left you with more questions than answers, and you thought this story was a simple open and shut case (and I barely even got to talk about the passage itself). Just so you leave with some kind of closure, the overall theme I've talked about today is research before judgment.


If you caught the 3+ applications of research before judgment: