8:52 Then 5 the Judeans 6 responded, 7 “Now we know you’re possessed by a demon! 8 Both Abraham and the prophets died, and yet 9 you say, ‘If anyone obeys 10 my teaching, 11 he will never experience 12 death.’ 13
11:32 Now when Mary came to the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
1 tn Or “This one.”
2 tn Or “forefathers”; Grk “fathers.”
3 tn Grk “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not just like your ancestors ate and died.” The cryptic Greek expression has been filled out in the translation for clarity.
4 tn Or “who chews.” On the alternation between ἐσθίω (esqiw, “eat,” v. 53) and τρώγω (trwgw, “eats,” vv. 54, 56, 58; “consumes,” v. 57) see the note on “eats” in v. 54.
5 tc ‡ Important and early witnesses (Ì66 א B C W Θ 579 it) lack the conjunction here, while other witnesses read οὖν (oun, “therefore”; Ì75 D L Ψ 070 Ë1,13 33 Ï lat). This conjunction occurs in John some 200 times, far more than in any other NT book. Even though the most important Johannine papyrus (Ì75) has the conjunction, the combination of Ì66 א B for the omission is even stronger. Further, the reading seems to be a predictable scribal emendation. In particular, οὖν is frequently used with the plural of εἶπον (eipon, “they said”) in John (in this chapter alone, note vv. 13, 39, 48, 57, and possibly 41). On balance, it is probably best to consider the shorter reading as authentic, even though “Then” is virtually required in translation for English stylistic reasons. NA27 has the conjunction in brackets, indicating some doubt as to its authenticity.
6 tn Grk “the Jews.” See the note on this term in v. 31. Here, as in vv. 31 and 48, the phrase refers to the Jewish people in Jerusalem (“Judeans”; cf. BDAG 479 s.v. ᾿Ιουδαῖος 2.e) who had been listening to Jesus’ teaching in the temple courts (8:20) and had initially believed his claim to be the Messiah (cf. 8:31).
7 tn Grk “said to him.”
8 tn Grk “you have a demon.”
9 tn “Yet” has been supplied to show the contrastive element present in the context.
10 tn Grk “If anyone keeps.”
11 tn Grk “my word.”
12 tn Grk “will never taste.” Here the Greek verb does not mean “sample a small amount” (as a typical English reader might infer from the word “taste”), but “experience something cognitively or emotionally; come to know something” (cf. BDAG 195 s.v. γεύομαι 2).
13 tn Grk “he will never taste of death forever.” The Greek negative here is emphatic.
14 sn Many have wondered how Lazarus got out of the tomb if his hands and feet were still tied up with strips of cloth. The author does not tell, and with a miracle of this magnitude, this is not an important fact to know. If Lazarus’ decomposing body was brought back to life by the power of God, then it could certainly have been moved out of the tomb by that same power. Others have suggested that the legs were bound separately, which would remove the difficulty, but the account gives no indication of this. What may be of more significance for the author is the comparison which this picture naturally evokes with the resurrection of Jesus, where the graveclothes stayed in the tomb neatly folded (20:6-7). Jesus, unlike Lazarus, would never need graveclothes again.
15 tn Grk “and his face tied around with cloth.”
16 tn Grk “Loose him.”