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John 6:35–51
6:35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. The one who comes to me will never go hungry, and the one who believes in me will never be thirsty.56 6:36 But I told you57 that you have seen me58 and still do not believe. 6:37 Everyone whom the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never send away.59 6:38 For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. 6:39 Now this is the will of the one who sent me—that I should not lose one person of every one he has given me, but raise them all up60 at the last day. 6:40 For this is the will of my Father—for everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him to have eternal life, and I will raise him up61 at the last day.”62
6:41 Then the Jews who were hostile to Jesus63 began complaining about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” 6:42 and they said, “Isn’t this Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” 6:43 Jesus replied,64 “Do not complain about me to one another.65 6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him,66 and I will raise him up at the last day. 6:45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’67 Everyone who hears and learns from the Father68 comes to me. 6:46 (Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God—he69 has seen the Father.)70 6:47 I tell you the solemn truth,71 the one who believes72 has eternal life.73 6:48 I am the bread of life.74 6:49 Your ancestors75 ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 6:50 This76 is the bread that has come down from heaven, so that a person77 may eat from it and not die. 6:51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats from this bread he will live forever. The bread78 that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
56 | tn Grk “the one who believes in me will not possibly thirst, ever.” sn The one who believes in me will never be thirsty. Note the parallelism between “coming to Jesus” in the first part of v. 35 and “believing in Jesus” in the second part of v. 35. For the author of the Gospel of John these terms are virtually equivalent, both referring to a positive response to Jesus (see John 3:17–21). |
57 | tn Grk “But I said to you.” |
58 | tc A few witnesses lack με (me, “me”; א A a b e q sys,c), while the rest of the tradition has the word (𝔓66, 75vid rell). It is possible that the mss that lack the pronoun preserve the original wording here, with the rest of the witnesses adding the pronoun for clarity’s sake. This likelihood increases since the object is not required in Greek. Without it, however, ambiguity increases: The referent could be “me” or it could be “signs,” reaching back to vv. 26 and 30. However, the oblique form of ἐγώ (egō, the first person personal pronoun) occurs some two dozen times in this chapter alone, yet it vacillates between the emphatic form and the unemphatic form. Although generally the unemphatic form is used with verbs, there are several exceptions to this in John (cf. 8:12; 12:26, 45, 48; 13:20; 14:9). If the pronoun is a later addition here, one wonders why it is so consistently the unemphatic form in the mss. Further, that two unrelated Greek witnesses lack this small word could easily be due to accidental deletion. Finally, the date and diversity of the witnesses for the pronoun are so weighty that it is likely to be authentic and should thus be retained in the text. |
59 | tn Or “drive away”; Grk “cast out.” |
60 | tn Or “resurrect them all,” or “make them all live again”; Grk “raise it up.” The word “all” is supplied to bring out the collective nature of the neuter singular pronoun αὐτό (auto) in Greek. The plural pronoun “them” is used rather than neuter singular “it” because this is clearer in English, which does not use neuter collective singulars in the same way Greek does. |
61 | tn Or “resurrect him,” or “make him live again.” |
62 | sn Notice that here the result (having eternal life and being raised up at the last day) is produced by looking on the Son and believing in him. Compare John 6:54 where the same result is produced by eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. This suggests that the phrase in 6:54 (eats my flesh and drinks my blood) is to be understood in terms of the phrase here (looks on the Son and believes in him). |
63 | tn Grk “Then the Jews.” In NT usage the term Ἰουδαῖοι (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 translation restricts the phrase to those Jews who were hostile to Jesus (cf. BDAG 479 s.v. Ἰουδαῖος 2.e.β), since the “crowd” mentioned in 6:22–24 was almost all Jewish (as suggested by their addressing Jesus as “Rabbi” (6:25). Likewise, the designation “Judeans” does not fit here because the location is Galilee rather than Judea. |
64 | tn Grk “answered and said to them.” |
65 | tn Or “Do not grumble among yourselves.” The words “about me” are supplied to clarify the translation “complain to one another” (otherwise the Jewish opponents could be understood to be complaining about one another, rather than complaining to one another about Jesus). |
66 | tn Or “attracts him,” or “pulls him.” The word is used of pulling or dragging, often by force. It is even used once of magnetic attraction (A. Oepke, TDNT 2:503). sn The Father who sent me draws him. The author never specifically explains what this “drawing” consists of. It is evidently some kind of attraction; whether it is binding and irresistible or not is not mentioned. But there does seem to be a parallel with 6:65, where Jesus says that no one is able to come to him unless the Father has allowed it. This apparently parallels the use of Isaiah by John to reflect the spiritual blindness of the Jewish leaders (see the quotations from Isaiah in John 9:41 and 12:39–40). |
67 | |
68 | tn Or “listens to the Father and learns.” |
69 | tn Grk “this one.” |
70 | |
71 | tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.” |
72 | tc Most witnesses (A C2 D Ψ f1, 13 33 𝔐 lat and other versions) have “in me” (εἰς ἐμέ, eis eme) here, while the Sinaitic and Curetonian Syriac versions read “in God.” These clarifying readings are predictable variants, being motivated by the scribal tendency toward greater explicitness. That the earliest and best witnesses (𝔓66, 75vid א B C* L T W Θ 892 pc) lack any object is solid testimony to the shorter text’s authenticity. |
73 | |
74 | tn That is, “the bread that produces (eternal) life.” |
75 | tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.” |
76 | tn Or “Here.” |
77 | tn Grk “someone” (τις, tis). |
78 | tn Grk “And the bread.” |
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