John 11:45

The Response of the Jewish Leaders

11:45 Then many of the people, 1  who had come with Mary and had seen the things Jesus 2  did, believed in him.

John 16:27

16:27 For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God. 3 

John 20:8

20:8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, came in, and he saw and believed. 4 

1 tn Or “the Judeans”; Grk “the Jews.” Here the phrase refers to the friends, acquaintances, and relatives of Lazarus or his sisters who had come to mourn, since the Jewish religious authorities are specifically mentioned as a separate group in John 11:46-47. See also the notes on the phrase “the Jewish leaders” in v. 8 and “the Jewish people of the region” in v. 19, as well as the notes on the word “people” in vv. 31, 33 and the phrase “people who had come to mourn” in v. 36.

2 tn Grk “he”; the referent (Jesus) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

3 tc A number of early mss (א1 B C* D L pc co) read πατρός (patros, “Father”) here instead of θεοῦ (qeou, “God”; found in Ì5 א*,2 A C3 W Θ Ψ 33 Ë1,13 Ï). Although externally πατρός has relatively strong support, it is evidently an assimilation to “I came from the Father” at the beginning of v. 28, or more generally to the consistent mention of God as Father throughout this chapter (πατήρ [pathr, “Father”] occurs eleven times in this chapter, while θεός [qeos, “God”] occurs only two other times [16:2, 30]).

4 sn What was it that the beloved disciple believed (since v. 7 describes what he saw)? Sometimes it is suggested that what he believed was Mary Magdalene’s report that the body had been stolen. But this could hardly be the case; the way the entire scene is narrated such a trivial conclusion would amount to an anticlimax. It is true that the use of the plural “they” in the following verse applied to both Peter and the beloved disciple, and this appears to be a difficulty if one understands that the beloved disciple believed at this point in Jesus’ resurrection. But it is not an insuperable difficulty, since all it affirms is that at this time neither Peter nor the beloved disciple had understood the scripture concerning the resurrection. Thus it appears the author intends his reader to understand that when the beloved disciple entered the tomb after Peter and saw the state of the graveclothes, he believed in the resurrection, i.e., that Jesus had risen from the dead.