{N}1,{/}1 {N}THE WORD, IS IT GOD OR NOT?{/}
And {C}the Word was God.{/} That affirmation has been argued about not only because it demands a minimum of reflection, but over all because it hurts certain doctrinal prejudices. Such is the case of the Jehovah Witnesses who do not hesitate to translate: "the Word was a god". And in order to justify said translation they bring the text of John 10,34-36: the greek word {C}Theos{/}, they say, can mean equally a god as God, and when it means God, the article always appears in Greek:  O Theos, the God. Yet here there is no article, and therefore it deals with a god.
The reality is very different. When it deals with, not a subject but rather an attribute, as is the case here with: {C}was God,{/} the biblical greek puts the article if God is considered as a person, but it does not put one if {C}God{/} means the divine nature. Surely he who is God (or the persons who are God) constitute only one thing with the divine nature, but it is not the same thing as the nature. Then, the article is not used if it says {C}what is{/} God, and it is used if it designates {C}he who is{/} God.
We have an example of this in the Book of Kings. In 1 Kgs 8,60 Solomon declares: "In this way all the peoples of the earth may know that Yahweh is God and there is no other beside him." And {C}God{/} is without the article: Yahweh alone is a divine Being. On the other hand in 1 Kgs 18,21 Elijah says to the people: "If Yahweh is God, follow him; if Baal is God, follow him. And God is written with the article because the choice is between two persons. The same is in Dt 32,39 and Jos 2,11, where two examples of {C}God{/} without the article are seen, and each time to say that Yahweh is an all powerful and sovereign Being.
If we pass on to the New Testament, we find a new detail. We remember in the commentary of Jn 20,11 that from the days of the Resurrection and of Pentecost, the christian faith had acquired the certainty that Jesus was Son of God in the firmest sense of the term. Very early on they had begun to play with the words{C} God{/} and {C}Lord{/} in order to designate the Father and the Son without having the latter deprived of his divine rank. And it is easy to see how Paul always names them together: for him God is the Father and, in agreement with what we have said about the use of the article in Greek, Paul always writes: {C}the God{/}, because it is the person of the Father.
In these conditions, if John wanted to say that the Word was of a divine nature, meaning that it shared the divine nature of God-Father, but without being the same person as the Father, he could not do anything but express it just as he did: the Word was {C}God{/}, without the article. And immediately afterwards he says: He was from the beginning together with God: and here {C}the God{/} appears, with the article, because it says that the Word was close to the person God-Father.
It is true that from the beginnings of the Church, both for the Jews as for the Greeks, the christian faith in Jesus Son of God, born of God, and who shares the divine mystery of the Father, was a challenge to the philosophical reason and to the religions that had been taught. It is the same today for many people. Then to translate: the Word was a god, is absolutely absurd, since if they wanted to be consistent with their own argument, they would have to translate equally in 16,27: I came from a god. Because there is no article there either.

{N}1,{/}3 This phrase can be divided in a different way, leaving the translation like this: Nothing of what has existed has existed without him. Verse 4, In him was the life and the life is the light for humans.

{N}1,{/}5 Should this be translated: the darkness {C}did not capture him{/}, detain, suffocate, - or rather: the darkness {C}did not receive him{/}? The second translation will announce what John will say in 1,11. The first one sees the world, from its origins invaded by darkness that the light must overcome: it is then the announcement of 3,19.

{N}1,{/}12 {C}They believed in his Name{/}. See Jn 20,30. In the Bible the Name of God means his power that we can invoke. This verse means then: they believed in his divine power and they know they can invoke him.

{N}1,{/}17 More precisely: Through{C} Moses the Law has been given to us{/}. This gift preceded a coming.. 

{N}1,{/}18 John uses here a word that means: {C}Only-Son{/}. The ancient manuscripts are divided; the most probable text is: God{C} the Only Son{/}; others read the {C}Son Only Son{/}.

{N}1,{/}29 Some of the ancient manuscripts say: {C}Bethabara{/}, a place known in this area. The majority read Bethany, but no town named Bethany is known on the other side of the Jordan. 

{N}1,{/}38 {C}Where do you stay?{/} They begin to be the disciples of Wisdom: Prov 8,34; Si 6,36.

{N}1,{/}47 {N}JOHN AND THE SAMARITANS{/}
{C}Here comes an Israelite, a true one.{/} When the Gospel speaks of the Messiah, it usually resorts not to the vocabulary common to the Jews, but rather to the one of the Samaritans, distant heirs to the reign of Israel and of the tribes of the north. It speaks of Elijah, the great prophet of Israel, the Prophet mentioned in the Deuteronomy 18,15, one of the books that equally figured in the Bible of the Samaritans; in verse 45 the phrase is turned around and the whole accent is put on: {C}the one Moses spoke about in the Law{/}, because the Samaritans vindicated Moses, but not the prophets who were almost all Jewish; Jesus is the son of {C}Joseph{/}, a name loved by the people of the north because it was the territory of the tribes of Joseph; and Nathaniel responds: {C}You are the King of Israel{/}.. Jesus responds evoking the dream of Jacob in Bethel, a man and a place that are even more typically Samaritan.
All of this brings us to think that some parts at least of the gospel of John were written down for the Samaritans, or more precisely, for the christian communities from the other side of the Jordan where they felt closer to the Samaritans than to the Jews. In chapter 4 the exceptionally long conversation with the Samaritan woman will show the same characteristics, up until the reply in verse 42, because the expression {C}Savior of the world{/} seems to have been born during that time in the province of Samaria. In the following chapters John will write down many times: {C}the Jews{/}, as if he spoke of a foreign group.

{N}2,{/}3 We have followed some of the older manuscripts that give a version a bit longer of this verse, in such a way that the word {C}wine{/} appears three times.

{N}2,{/}11 {N}THE SYMBOLS OF THE GOSPEL OF JOHN{/}
It is true that John intends to discover the symbolism of many of the details of the events of which he was a witness; he found the key to these events in his knowledge of the Scriptures. Some people in present times will bring up the question: did God want all those symbols? Did Jesus have them present in his spirit when he acted? Are they not better seen as an interpretation of John, admirable possibly, but no less subjective?
It is impossible to give a simple response to these  questions. We have had the opportunity to recall that there has never been a "unique" interpretation of the Scripture. It is the bearer of the Spirit (2Tim 3,16) and it is the Spirit who teaches each one a part of the treasures that it encloses. We will point out here some of the symbols that seem to have been inscribed by John in his story of the wedding of Cana.
The evangelist has conserved in his memory that event in Cana, but he rereads it now in light of the Resurrection and the symbolic approximations are multiplied because now the happiness of the Wedding of God with humanity is revealed.
The first words of the story place the banquet in time: the third day. It is the last day of the "inaugural week" that follows from the Prologue of the Gospel of John, and it is then the seventh day from the beginning of the ministry in Galilee, according to the presentation that this fourth evangelist makes.
That third day brings the event back to the history of the salvation. With the occasion of the divine manifestation and the conclusion of the Covenant in the Sinai, God had said to Moses: "Go back to the people and have them sanctified today and tomorrow... and be ready for the third day. For on the third day Yahweh will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people " (Ex 19,10-11). Yet the third day also reminds the believer of the Resurrection of Christ and the promises of eternal life.
However, in Cana, his {C}hour had not yet come{/}, the hour of the passion and of the cross, but also the hour in which his Glory will shine as the Son of God together with his love for all men and women.
The mother of Jesus, the first person mentioned in the story, intervenes discreetly together with her son; she is attentive to the lack of wine without which the party would have been a fiasco. Mary, daughter of Israel, presents to her son the anguish of her people; together with him, she awaits the salvation that has been promised to her. 
The reference to the Hour insists on that distinction between the precise event and the messianic revelation of the event. Mary understands that the response from Jesus goes infinitely further beyond the event and orders the servants: {C}Do whatever he tells you{/}; in doing this she invites them to imitate the fundamental attitude that has made her live and act from the day of her Annunciation: I am the handmaiden of the Lord, let it be done according to your word (Lk 1,38).
Mary reveals herself under a double aspect: as the daughter of Israel she is seen as being solidary with her people, as the mother of Jesus, she is already the figure of the Church, the Israel of God.
Jesus has them serve the wine at the table of Cana, using the stone jugs that contained the water for the ritual purifications, a cultural symbol of Judaism. That wine provided profusely and conserved until that day proclaims the appearance of the new Covenant announced by the prophets and inaugurated in Jesus Christ.
In this way the history of humanity has only two periods of time: the time of the promise and the time of the fulfillment. By his paschal mystery Christ brings it to its fullness and transfigures that history: he invites humanity to participate in the eternal banquet of the Wedding of the Lamb (Rev 19,9).

{N}2,{/}13 It might surprise someone that John places the episode of the merchants in the Temple here. See the commentary on Mt 21,1 in this respect. It is probable enough that John articulated the last writing of his gospel around three Passovers, which leaves a small difficulty since with all probability the public ministry of Jesus did not last more than eighteen months. Consequently there was no more than two Passovers during that period, being the second the one of his Passion. It is known that the other evangelists did not want to mention more than one ascent of Jesus into Jerusalem and therefore they speak only of one Passover, the last one.

{N}2,{/}25 The text says: "He knew what there was in the man". This can be understood as "what there was in the person whom he had in front of him", or also: "what there is in human nature". John, without a doubt, prefers to leave both interpretations open.

{N}3,{/}5 There is no doubt that the mention of water in this place contains an allusion to the baptism: the Gospel of John always has the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist present. Yet this paragraph does not want to invite us to come to the baptism as much as to call us to search for the essential: a rebirth of the Spirit. At the beginning of Genesis everything is born of the water and of the Spirit; today through Jesus, a new birth and a New World is awaiting us.

{N}3,{/}11 Why that {C}we{/} ? Very probably because it is the beginning of one of the discourses that John constructed based on the words of Jesus and in which he tells his readers what the words of Jesus were going to mean for the Church. The {C}we{/} is the Church, or more accurately, the apostles who were witnesses just as in Jn 1,3.
What does this discourse come to do after the words about the new birth? Without a doubt John wants to show how serious the baptism is; it is not only one of those baptisms like those of John or of the other baptisms celebrated by different groups that only meant a personal commitment. With the christian baptism one embraces the faith in the Name of the Son of Man, meaning, in his divine character, and to welcome that faith is like having passed the judgement: one has entered into the eternal life.

{N}3,{/}33 The greek text says: "It is like recognizing that God is truthful"{C}..{/} Let us not forget that in the hebrew culture {C}true{/} and{C} faithful{/} are one and the same word. And it is known that God's two great qualities are Grace and Truth, or Grace and Faithfulness. {C}To receive the testimony of Jesus{/} means that one has acknowledged in him what was in the heart of the biblical revelation. One has acknowledged in Him and in his acts what the Bible left to wait for, the fulfillment of all the previous words and promises: the continuity of God's work is seen.

{N}3,{/}36 The text says exactly: "Whoever does not believe in the Son will never know the life, the wrath of God will remain on him" This is a very hard text. For John who writes these sentences, the one who does not believe is the jewish believer who does not recognize in Jesus the Messiah; from there then we can say: he who refuses to believe. {C}He will not know life{/}: he will not see that God's promise to his people is carried out for him, and that promise was the life in plenitude, fruit of the Spirit given to the believers.
"The wrath of God will remain on him": this wrath signifies a condemnation already pronounced by God and that sooner or later is going to be carried out. If he did not believe in the Son in spite of the signs that God has given him, he will never appease God through the sacrifices that he will offer him according to the Law. He will see how his failings are multiplied and then he will understand that it is the punishment for his sins. In this way then, when we write: {C}he always faces the justice of God{/}, this should be understood in the sense that we just mentioned: he will not receive God's peace and he will know only a God that condemns or judges.

{N}4,{/}6 It is in Sychar, at the foot of the Garizim, near Jacob's well, where Jesus' path crosses with the Samaritan woman. One brings the Good News to those who are seen in Jerusalem as heretics and impure, the other has come to fetch water. Jesus makes the light shine in the woman's heart, in which the thirst that is awakened is mixed with so many contradictions. How ambiguous is this dialogue initiated beside the well. But Jesus has come to call every being to the light. To each question of the woman, Jesus' responses are like so many other strokes of the mysterious excavator's pickaxe; stage by stage, Jesus takes the woman down to the deepest part of herself, and it is then, and only then, when the living water springs forth. And in this new light that floods her at that moment, everything in her takes on a new meaning: her very identity, her relation with the Law and her re-encounter with God.

{N}4,{/}10 Many ask what {C}the gift of God {/}is{C}. {/}However, a precise application need not be looked for; the {C}gift{/} is another word used to designate the benefits promised to David (Is 55,3) those that Peter summarizes in one word: the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2,33).

{N}4,{/}11 The greek text has the woman say: {C}Sir, you have no ....{/} It is good to know that in greek the word Sir can be used equally to address oneself to God as well as to politely address a stranger; what makes the difference is the use of the capital letter, just as for "Se\u00f1or" in the Spanish language. When someone in the gospel says to Jesus: Lord, generally it is the evangelist who has put down that word, because quite frankly, he made his speakers speak just as he himself and his readers would address Christ. In some discourses of his gospel John likes to put down the word {C}Lord{/} seven times, in order to remind us that such discourses point out the divine character of Jesus. Here on the other hand, it seems more natural that the woman calls him Sir, as with a stranger.

{N}4,{/}22 The greek text says: {C}You worship what you do not know{/}. Yet behind the text is the hebraic construction that would call the translation: you worship {C}where{/} you do not know. Jesus states then that Jerusalem is the place designated by God and that the choice of Mount Garizim by the Samaritans is due to their ignorance of the Bible.

{N}4,{/}24 {C}Worship in spirit and in truth. In spirit,{/} meaning, with the most elevated and innermost part of us: the gifts of prayer that come to us from the Spirit bestows on us a new capacity to be in communion with God. So our spirit lets itself be dominated and instructed by Him (Rom 8,26; 1Cor 2,11). But the Spirit can only act freely and continually in this way when we have discovered the deepest zones of our spirit, beyond the agitation and the noises of our superficial desires and emotions. {C}In truth,{/} because a good heart and generosity is not enough. We must cleanse our understanding as well, because all of us hold within ourselves very imperfect images and ideas of God and of his will, even if we are ferocious adversaries of the images. We must prune many certainties and systems of thought, including the field of faith, in order to open ourselves up to the mystery of God.

{N}4,{/}28 Some ancient manuscripts said that the woman {C}ran to the town{/}. Yet in those times the decent people did not run (see Lk 15,20) and the text was corrected in the others.

{N}5,{/}18 Few passages of the Bible state with so much force the divinity of Jesus as this one. Let us stop and notice the order of these statements: {C}he made himself equal with God, calling him his own Father{/}. It is not possible to say without error that Jesus is God if at the same time one does not say that He is the Son; being the Son, he can be equal to God (we understand to God {C}Father{/}). He is not as a rival but rather the one who in God is born of the Father, who dispossesses himself of his divine condition and who recuperates the Glory of the Father. See the note on Phil 2,6.

{N}5,{/}43 {C}I have come in the name of my Father{/}. In order to understand this paragraph well it is convenient to have in mind that in Hebrew (which is always behind the Greek of John) the same preposition can mean {C}in, with {/}and{C} through. In the name of {/}means then not only in representation of my Father but even with the Name (or the power) of my Father. And he who {C}comes in his own name{/} comes with no more than his human capacities; he can very well represent other people and have numerous recommendations.

{N}5,{/}44 John uses the word {C}glory{/} two times: the first time referring to that which is found among people, (and the phrase makes it understood that it supposes reciprocity: I speak very well of you so that later you do the same thing for me). The second time is for the Glory of God, the same that he shares with the Son in eternity. 

{N}5,{/}45 In the books of Moses there is none other than the passage of Dt 18,15-22 that can be interpreted as a clear announcement of the Messiah, and in that way it was commonly understood (see the Prophet in Jn 1,21; 6,14). But for John many more texts could be invoked. With a good knowledge of the Bible and the prophetic inspiration, it was easy to find in the Pentateuch numerous scenes and images that fit perfectly with the person of Jesus and with the situations that he affronted; we have an example of one in Jn 3,14.

{N}6,{/}1 As far as the site of the multiplication of the loaves there are contradictions among the evangelists and divergences within the manuscripts. John places the miracle near Tiberias. Later Jesus sent his disciples towards Capernaum (6,17) or Bethsaida (Mk 6,45), but in the same direction. Later, when he gets in the boat, they land in Gennesaret. Those who were looking for Jesus find him between Gennesaret and Capernaum, and Jesus pronounces his discourse on the Bread of Life in the synagogue of Capernaum (Jn 6,30-59).
Luke 9,10 seems to contradict Jn 6,1 but that text is not certain and Bethsaida is missing there in the ancient manuscripts.
In Jn 6,21 the last words are missing in several manuscripts and it reads: {C}was found on the shore{/}. Or meaning, near Gennesaret, halfway along the way to Capernaum to where they were going and where they do not arrive.
These details help us to distinguish that multiplication from the second one that will take place on the eastern shore.

{N}6,{/}25 {C}How did you arrive here?{/} It is very probable that John has given a double meaning to these words: How did you arrive to this world? Because the response from Jesus makes this understood: If you knew how to see through the signs I give you, you would know how and from where I came to this world.

{N}6,{/}33 {N}I HAVE COME DOWN FROM HEAVEN{/}
{C}The bread that God gives is the one that has come from heaven and that gives life to the world{/}. We find seven times in this chapter the words: {C}come down from heaven{/}. It is enough to make us understand that for John this affirmation is essential. Anyone who has a somewhat rationalistic training can hardly accept that the Son, being divine person, come down from heaven? In the fourth century the nestorians were accused of dividing Christ; they insisted in such a way on the human reality of Jesus, that he seemed to be a separate person from the Son of God. It was something like as if from the highest part of Heaven the eternal Son had become closely united to a man that he piloted, taking as his all of what that exceptional man did. It may be that the nestorians have committed that error since we ourselves commit it very frequently. There exists a very common manner of speaking of Jesus, that puts a great distance between him and the mystery of God where the eternal Son dwells.
Maybe some will say: the Son cannot lose his divine condition and exchange it for a human condition. Of course He does not lose his divine nature, but it is totally resent in his manner of being this man. This emptying himself of the Son-God (Jn 1:18) cannot but shock our reasoning just like it did with the conception of a divine being that existed among the greek philosophers. However this is found in all of the texts of the New Testament referring to the mystery of the Son; see Jn 3,32; 6,62; 8,14 and the note on Phil 2,6.

{N}6,{/}48 Here we must have in mind more than ever what is said in the Introduction with respect to the Discourses in the Gospel of John. John takes care of expanding the authentic words of Jesus through a long discourse in which Jesus presents himself as the Messiah, bearer of the word of life and who has come to give life to those who believe in Him. There is not the slightest doubt that Jesus did not expressly speak of the Eucharist in that moment and to that public, not even to his apostles: what could they have done with such a revelation? But John builds a discourse and adapts the strong points of Jesus' teaching for his listeners' use, Christians who in the Church are mysteriously united to Christ through the sacraments and in this case, through the Eucharist.
It is evident that the words of Jesus in verses 48-58 provoke astonishment among his listeners. A catholic, accustomed to the very firm doctrine of the Church about the presence of the body and the blood of Christ in the Eucharist, easily sees a contradiction between this doctrine and what reason tells him. Many doubts arise over that real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, and when one reads this paragraph, one immediately thinks that that is the point that scandalized his listeners. In reality our doubts with respect to the faith are not the same as those of the Christians to whom John addressed his discourse. What was hardest to admit was that the eternal Son had had to become {C}flesh and blood{/}, or meaning, an ordinary and mortal man, in order to sanctify the believers. The difficulty that the Gospel points out here has no relationship with the sacrament but rather with the mystery of the Incarnation. See the commentary on 6,52. That is the central point of the discourse, as the previous note said and as we will see in verses 62-63.

{N}6,{/}66 {N}THE CRISIS OF THE DISCIPLES{/}
John is the only one who reports said crisis in Jesus' audience and the withdrawal of many disciples, although the synoptics also make it understood that now less people surrounded him. Mark tells us in 9,30 a little later that Jesus was going from one place to another and that he did not want it known where he was because he was occupied with instructing his disciples. It can be thought then that now the crowds did not come to him, and if we take into account what John says in this paragraph, one understands better how, in the other gospels, Jesus goes from teaching the crowds to the training of the true faithful ones.
But if there was a crisis and a serious one, what was the motive? John gives a double answer. The first is that the masses were disappointed by the messianism (others will say by the negativeness of messianism) of Jesus. Each one made in Israel his own idea of the Messiah, but there was however one point in common and that was the national restoration. Well then, when the popularity of Jesus arrives at its highest point, he wriggles out. Mark 6,45 confirms in its way the disillusion that John talks about in 6,14-17.
The second motive is more profound. To deny the messianism, as it was understood by the people did not discredit the teaching of Jesus. Here instead John wanted us to capture the incapacity of the sympathizers to place themselves on the same latitude as the revelation that Jesus was giving them. They held him in high esteem as a Master or Teacher, they were astonished by his powers as a healer, they believed that God acted through him, but when they began to perceive what Jesus brought with him they abandoned him. There are people who only swear by one or another great man and that accept as holy all that he says. This provokes around them annoyance or jokes; happily those persons are not numerous and the majority shows more sense. Well then, it was precisely that majority in the jewish people, alerted by the Law against any worship of a personality, which is scandalized because Jesus eludes any comparison and any effort to give him a place among the Masters and the Prophets.
John did not imagine the discourse of chapter 6 in a direct and immediate manner; he must have gathered here various sentences where Jesus went against the messianic hope as he found it in the people. Now then, Jesus says and repeats the words: {C}the bread that has come down from heaven{/}. And what is even more serious, all of his affirmations are taken from the Old Testament which he carefully quotes. How far he is from the religious writings of his time and even from the later books of the Old Testament! Jerusalem, ... the Temple..., the sighs of oppressed Israel..., the compassion of the Eternal One for his people ... Jesus instead seems only interested in that the Father be discovered in the Son: there is the kingdom. And if the hour is unique, it is because God has made himself present.
The disciples go into reverse because they are not willing to abandon all of their religious inheritance for the simple faith in one who exercises over them such an attraction: not only listen and believe him but believe in Him. Who would reproach them? {C}No one can come to me if my Father has not granted it to him{/} (verse 65).
Jesus never asked them to renounce their religious practices; these should rather be crowned by something totally distinct: the search and the experience of a communion with God through the Son, and thanks to the life in the Spirit. It is easy to see that that crisis of the disciples of Jesus is always latent in the christian world: the idea that the totality of God and of the universe is being offered to us even today in him and only in him is intolerable for the learned, and some of them would not rest until they have made of Jesus one of the greatest or the greatest among men, but without {C}believing in Him.{/}

{N}6,{/}71{C} Judas Iscariot, son of Simon{/}. Various manuscripts say: Judas, son of Simon, the iscariot. This divergence is of little importance. Anyway is-cariot means: the man from {C}Keriot{/}, a small town in Judea.

{N}7,{/}34 Still a notable affirmation. The words {C}sent me{/} appear many times in this gospel (see the detail pointed out in 9,7). If we observe closely, we will see that Jesus was not sent as a prophet could have been, but rather that he was sent from the Father's side. But even being, under a certain aspect, one who is sent and who returns to God, he is not in God an inferior being who would participate of God; it says so clearly: there{C} where I am{/}, because He is.

{N}8,{/}8{C} He started writing on the ground.{/} This short sentence often brings the following reflection: it is then that Jesus knew how to write. Actually, this paragraph is no proof of that, because in the greek language the verb {C}to write{/} has a very ample meaning. In the beginning it meant: to trace signs or marks. Yet it is impossible to think that, educated among a people in which the basic education was very developed, Jesus was not capable of reading. If we see him reading in the synagogue of Nazareth (Lk 4,16) it is because he had not remained at the level of those who spelled. And consequently, he must have known how to write, however little it was.
Jesus spoke Aramean; in the school of the synagogue they taught him something of Hebrew, the holy language. Having been brought up in Galilee, it is more than likely that he could make himself understood in Greek for the daily necessities, and it is in this language in which he answered Pilate.

{N}8,{/}14 {C}The Jews{/}. (Verses 11, 15, 35). There is no lack of reasons to think that John wrote his gospel for the christian communities of the province beyond the Jordan (10,40; 11,54), a province that felt rather detached from the jewish world of Jerusalem and of Judea. This may possibly explain why John, identifying himself with his readers, says: {C}the Jews{/} as if he were not one of them. On the other hand John found in those communities an influential current which would be called later the "Jewish christians". These acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but did not want to do anything that went against the jewish community. They spoke of Jesus Son of God, but they did not give these terms all of the strength that it has for the christian faith. Due to this, when John speaks of the Jews who believed in Jesus but did not understand him (8,31), we suspect that he is actually thinking of those Jewish christians who would dominate certain churches of Palestine thirty years later.

{N}8,{/}46 Many in the past understood and translated: {C}Which of you will convince me of sin?{/} - as if Jesus said: You all know that I never commit sins. Yet we must bear in mind that the greek word has a more ample meaning: mistake, falsehood, incorrect action. Here Jesus refers to everything that, in his actions, could discredit him as a prophet.

{N}8,{/}48 {C}You are possessed by a demon.{/} In the greek language this means: you have an ill mind{C}. You are a Samaritan{/}: this is an insult, which we understand better if it turns out that this gospel was written for pro-Samaritan and anti-Jewish readers, which is most probable. In the following verses one will note how Jesus places himself on the opposite side of the Jews: {C}you{/} ... {C}the one you call:{/} {C}our God{/} ... There the opposition Jew - Samaritan is united with another more fundamental one: you are from below and I am from above (8,23).

{N}8,{/}51 In this paragraph Jesus affirms two times: {C}the one who keeps my word will never experience death{/}.. And we read in 11,26 something  similar: the one who believes in me will not die. Although Jesus adds each time: "for ever", these words are surprising: will there really be an eternal death from which the one who receives the words of the Son of God made man and acknowledges him as the Son of God is saved? It is worthy of mention that Jesus is repeating what was said in Deuteronomy, where it offers Israel death or life according to whether it observes or not the Word of God. It does not address all of humanity nor does it take away all value from the other religions, yet rather it warns a jewish public that does not dare to take side with him. Even more we could say that John makes Jesus speak for his own readers, meaning, for those communities already divided by the jewish christian current, those who will not take long to wither and die because they were afraid to place Christ in God himself.

{N}8,{/}56 The original text says: {C}His happiness consisted in awaiting my day; he saw and was gladdened.{/} Jesus does not speak of a vision that Abraham had had. More probably John sees the whole history of Isaac, beginning with his sacrifice, as a figure of Christ. And he attributes Jesus with that same interpretation of the Bible: Isaac, son of Abraham, makes only one whith the one which he represents and who will be "the descendant" of Abraham. That manner of interpreting the sacred texts is actually very far from our logic, but forms part of the resonance that we have a right to look for in the Old Testament. See the note on Lk 24,25.

{N}9,{/}22 Let us not forget that John is transmitting Jesus' words to the Christians of his communities and that he adapts them a little in order to update them. He wrote at the time when the jewish community, reorganized after the disasters of the roman war of the years 66-70, had just decided the expulsion of the Jews who had become Christians. It is for this reason that he forces somewhat the terminology, because it is difficult to think that the jewish community of the time of Jesus excluded those believing in Christ when there was not even a church. In the paragraph that follows (27-30) John continues adapting the words of Jesus to the situation of the Christians who were around him, and he evokes the discussions that were arising between the jewish {C}disciples of Moses{/} and the christian {C}disciples of Jesus{/} (28).

{N}9,{/}24 {C}Confess the truth{/}. The text says: {C}give glory to God{/}.. This was the biblical way of demanding from someone that they acknowledge their fault. Those who had been designated as guilty, by suspicion or by any other traditional means, were required to give glory to God, meaning, acknowledge that God had thrown light on their secret fault (Jos 7,19).
{C}We do not know where he is from{/}.. Because, surely, he came from God. John does not hesitate to repeat it until he tires us; because the whole Gospel depends on this affirmation. The only justification of the christian message with the unique and only salvation that he grants is that in Him dwells the fullness of God in bodily form (Col 2,9).

{N}9,{/}39 {C}I have come to carry out a judgement.{/} That judgement is not only the one that the coming of Jesus has brought forward to the jewish and greek world of his time. The Gospel does not stop provoking a series of judgements throughout history. On one side, the development of the liberating judgements provided by Jesus has not ceased to undermine human certainties in thousands of ways. On another side, the role of the Church in God's plan does not only consist of preaching the good news by which humankind will be saved. Church is also the continuation of a people of God whose experiences and errors the Bible speaks of, and it should rediscover at every moment that the ways of God are not those of human wisdom. {C}Those who see are going to remain blind{/}: it does not deal only with the Pharisees of Jesus' time. Those who see, even in the Church, are those who know and who are in charge.

{N}10,{/}1 The ancient manuscripts differ in several details of this text.
In 10,8 numerous manuscripts read: {C}those who came before me{/}.. The phrase becomes clearer in this way; Jesus would be making allusion to those who provoked the bloody rising against the Romans in previous years. But John is loath to say {C}before{/} or {C}after{/} when he is speaking of the Son who Is; and He did not come in the same way.
In verses 11 and 14 we have the expression {C}the good shepherd{/} three times, and that is a sign of the importance that John attributes to that title or that image. It is known that in the Bible only God is the Shepherd of Israel. In reality, we should say not {C}the good shepherd{/} but rather {C}the beautiful{/}, or{C} the noble {/}shepherd, because that is the first meaning of the word which in Greek expresses goodness and beauty at the same time.
In 10,16 many manuscripts say: {C}and in future there will be{/} no more than one flock.
In 10,18 some say: no one {C}took{/} my life. In this case John has the risen Christ speak in the past tense.

{N}10,{/}35 {C}The Scripture cannot be changed (One cannot change the Scripture{/}?). With this reply that leaves his listeners very surprised, Jesus invites us to look more closely at many biblical texts that we underrate and we do not know how to go deeper into because they do not fit into our way of thinking and with our own religious convictions. Jesus' listeners knew that the Name of the only God cannot be communicated to just any creature, but, was it necessary to exclude all communion of humankind with God in order to save this certainty and this faith? Would it not be possible to say that God makes himself present within humanity? And precisely the whole Gospel of John emphasizes, together with the divinity of the One Sent by God, God's will to make us divine. On the other hand the adversaries of Jesus remained on the plane of the precepts and the traditions that they should observe in order to be catalogued among those who were good.
Yet it is also a fact that Jesus' statement touches on the theme of the absence of errors in the Scripture. We know that since a century or two ago the character of divine truth that is attributed to the sacred books has been objected to with arguments coming from very diverse sides.
{N}THE ABSENCE OF ERRORS IN THE BIBLE{/}
For a believer the absence of error in the Word of God goes without saying, but even so it is necessary to state clearly what kind of truth we expect from that word. For example, if we compare two stories about the same event in the different gospels we observe numerous contradictions in the details. Compare, for example, Mt 20,30 and Mk 10,46; Mt 18,1-3 and Mk 9,33-35. We must therefore admit that God did not give an official record of what happened to the authors of the sacred books. The testimonies and the manner of transmitting them orally up until the time in which they were put down in writing obeyed one general rule: the best testimonies always depend in part on the person who sees and who unwillingly gives a certain interpretation of what he saw.
As the modern civilization was developing, even more important difficulties have been arising. In the first place the development of the sciences has taken place, and there has been a large amount of trouble because of the opposition that emerged between the vision of the world and the origins of humankind that science gave and the one that the authors of the Bible wrote. This referred especially to the first chapters of Genesis. Then the Christians have become divided. While the fundamentalists took the story literally, even as far as denying the most established scientific facts, the others had to acknowledge that the truth of the bible story was not in the description of our origins. It is in the place that those pages attributed to the creatures and to humankind in God's plan. See the note in this respect put down in Gen 1.
Later historic difficulties arose. It was necessary to acknowledge that the authors of the Bible did not have our means of research and investigation available in the past. On the other hand they saw in history an illustration of the action of God in history: the picture was true although not all of the events could be verified.
Right away the evolution of morals came. Many moral laws, inherited from the Bible and considered until then as obligatory ones for every person of good faith, were no longer evident for our contemporaries. Should we not forget the sexual prohibitions of the Bible? See the commentary on 1Cor 7 in this respect.
The movement for feminine emancipation provoked in its time a terrible objection: the Bible was written totally in the framework of a patriarchal culture. The religious experiences that it tells were in their majority lived, interpreted and told by men, in circumstances when women did not have the means to express themselves nor to manifest their own identity. What is the value of a God'image at the likeness of a dominating male warrior, as it appears in so many pages of the Bible? And does not the proclaimed inferiority of women (1Tim 2,11-15) throw a blanket of doubt over the whole human message of the Bible?
A last attack came from a more impartial look with respect to the rest of the religions. From the moment in which it was admitted that God effectively foresaw the salvation of all humankind and not only for those who believe and are baptized, what is the purpose of so many discourses, especially in the New Testament, that seem to say that there is no salvation without the Gospel, without the baptism, without the faith in Christ? See the notes put down in Mk 16,15 and Rev 22,3 in this respect.
Therefore we must say some words about the Absence of errors in the Scripture.
{N}THE SACRAMENT OF THE WORD{/}
The sacred book is totally a work of God and totally a work of a human author, just as was said in the note about the Inspiration, with regard to 2Tim 3,16. God did not dictate it. Neither did he place pressure on the author for him to say what he never thought about saying and for him to go against his own culture. The work of the Spirit has been very discreet because the Spirit knows how to make itself our own spirit. God and humans: human authors provided their religious experience and the one of their community, each with its limitations; God made it so that that book occupies its place within a collection where all of the necessary revelation should be inscribed for all those whom He wished to call, so that they know his Only Son. Only starting from that double project, God's and the author's, can one speak of errors or the absence of errors in the Scripture.
We must confess that the habitual use of the term {C}absence of errors{/} in order to refer to this subject is rather unfortunate, since at the starting point one is placed in a defensive position. The adversary attacks: Your Bible contains errors! And one responds as one can. The fundamentalist sticks to his guns; adapting the history told by Di Melo, the archaeologist says to him: they have just found some bones in a ground that is 30,000 years old; your creation of man from only 5,000 years ago is an invention! One moment, responds the fundamentalist, what happens is that God put those bones in that place in order to test our faith. The immense majority of the believers will respond simply that although the inspiration of the author guarantees the truth of the religious message, it does not free it from its human limits nor from the characteristics of his culture. But without a doubt it would be better to deepen into the fact that the Truth is God.
What God is always looking for is to put us in the truth, never to give us truths with which we could make a didactic book, one that would be sufficient enough to look at in order to have always the right response. More than defending the Bible and talking about the absence of errors in a general manner, abstractly, we should ask ourselves if at times the Bible might have induced us to error ourselves, or if it has brought us to make a bad decision. If we approach the text with the faith in sight, it will always let loose the certainty of having touched on the truth. The page, read with faith and placed within the collection of God's words in the Bible, will not lead us wrong. It will be discovered that the whole Old Testament is a long pedagogy of God, that many truths were emerging little by little and that some even were consolidated only with the coming of Jesus. But if we need a key to interpret that long journey of the people of God and to reintroduce some of the more absent and more ignored actors (such as women), it will be found in the person of the Son of God made human. Because God ordered the whole revelation in such a way that it would lead to Him and it is in Him where it ends.
In the text we have quoted from John, Jesus supports himself with a phrase and an exact word. The modern reader has then the right to ask himself if he can also support himself with the same certainty with the words that he finds. But we will never find simple criteria, with an easy application, that permit us to read the inspired words without error. History teaches us that the religious discussions among adversaries that made the same use of the Bible few times led to reconciliation. And when we have to make a decision, how many times have we wondered if we could trust in the biblical word? This was not our worry.
The use of the word of God is like a game that compromises the whole person; its rules remain hidden for the one who looks at the Bible from outside (as the devil does in the Temptation of Jesus). The believer who receives the Bible as a revelation of the divine Wisdom, the same that has been fully manifested in Jesus Christ, will know how to discern when it is necessary. But there will still be room for our own errors, because our culture and our religious experience are not any more certain than those of the past centuries.

{N}11,{/}23 The text says: {C}will rise again{/}. Yet the Gospel and the other texts of the New Testament do not use a special word to talk about the resurrection; they say either: {C}to rise again{/}, or {C}to wake up{/}. We can then conserve the original meaning.

{N}11,{/}25 The text is doubtful. Several manuscripts say only: {C}I{/} {C}am the resurrection.{/}

{N}11,{/}32 It can be thought that Mary left the group of the disciples to go to where her relative Lazarus, Martha's brother, was. From Bethany she called Jesus convinced that for her he would not doubt in embarking on the trip; but he did not come.

{N}11,{/}41 Verse 42 is difficult to translate in a way so that the text has an acceptable meaning. It can be understood as: I give you thanks, not because you are going to do the miracle (because I already knew) but rather because these people will be able to believe.

{N}11,{/}44 This resurrection of Lazarus creates a problem: how is it that the other gospels do not speak of it? This did not happen in a village of Galilee, as it did to the daughter of Jairo and the boy from Naim. This took place at the doors of Jerusalem and everything makes it understood that Lazarus was a man in a good situation. If he were present in the first community, would they not speak of him? Or did he die shortly afterwards? This would explain that John had mentioned that in that first occasion he was dead and very dead.
It is necessary to point out however that that miracle is linked to the paragraphs that follow it, which are ones in which John gives details which have never been put in doubt; and it looks like he had access to the small world that surrounded the high priests (Jn 18,15). It is necessary to remember over all that the gospels do not mean to make a collection of the miracles, but rather they only conserved those that helped to discover what the gospel is and who Jesus is.

{N}11,{/}46 It is fitting to wonder where John obtained so much information from about what happened in the Sanhedrin Council. Or did he learn them from Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea who were members of the council and who seem to have remained rather close to the first community in later times. But again it should not be ignored that the {C}disciple whom Jesus loved{/} had access to the house of the high priest (Jn 18,15).

{N}12,{/}1{C} Six days before the Passover.{/} Mark speaks of two days. A mistake by one or the other is possible, although less probable in John. But we should not forget that the story of the gospels leaves it understood that Jesus celebrated the Passover following a different calendar than the official one. And there are strong reasons to think that he celebrated the Last Supper on Tuesday, while the official date for the Passover was Friday.

{N}12,{/}28 {C}I have glorified it and I will glorify it again{/}. Apparently this refers to the Name of God, but the continuation of the paragraph shows that John maintains an ambiguity: the glorification of the Name will be at the same time that of Jesus who, after rising from the earth, will attract all to him (13,31).

{N}12,{/}34 {C}We have heard that the Son of Man remains forever{/}: this is what the prophecy of Daniel says in Dn 7,14.

{N}12,{/}41 Once again the gospel transfers to Jesus everything that the Old Testament said of the Lord God: it was the glory of the Son Lord that the prophet saw! And immediately John points out sin or our own craziness by not taking the step of faith: we did not see more than human glory when we could have gained the Glory of God!

{N}14,{/}2 A number of manuscripts use a somewhat different text: "in the house of my Father there are many rooms: if it were not so I would have said so. Now I am going to prepare a place for you".

{N}14,{/}5 We said in the commentary that those interventions of persons who do not understand Jesus' words are here no more than a procedure of style in order to make Jesus state more exactly what he had just said (as in 4,11; 6,52...). However the choice of his interlocutors is not by chance. Thomas intervenes for the second time and after the resurrection he will be mentioned again. Likewise Philip is mentioned in 6,5 and 12,22. It is likely that Thomas and Philip were well known of the addressees of this gospel. If, as there are motives to think, John was at this time on the other side of the Jordan, it would not be surprising to see Thomas close to him. Because according to the ancient traditions this would have left from there to go east and whose communities brought the Gospel to India.

{N}14,{/}7 In some of the ancient texts the following is read: {C}If you know me, you will know{/}. And the same in verse 17: because he will be with you and he will remain with you. Actually that does not change anything because we know that in the gospel of John that discourse to the apostles was addressed in reality to the Christians of his time. If Jesus had spoken to the apostles, it would have had to be in the future tense, because they had still not received the Spirit, but if it is John who is addressing the Christians, then he puts it down in the present tense.

{N}14,{/}22 Those verses from 22-27 tell in a very simple manner what the christian experience is after the illumination. There exists an illumination linked to the baptism when it is the term of a discovery of the faith and of a process of conversion (Ga 3,2). But commonly this manifestation of the Spirit to whom Paul refers in several places disappears while a life in faith and perseverance is developing without a notable manifestation of the divine presence. However God has his hour, He has all the freedom to make it so we reach a state of spiritual maturity in which is established in a stable manner that awareness of the presence of God and, in the profound zone of the spirit, the peace (Rom 8,16).

{N}16,{/}10 Should we understand {C}justice{/} or {C}way of justification{/}? In the first case, the Spirit reveals to the believer the glorification of the crucified Christ. In the second, it teaches the believer the path of justification, because Christ went to the Father and now we cannot see him and follow him.

{N}16,{/}12 It was said in 15,26 that the Spirit would bear witness. Here, in 16,13 the Spirit {C}guides {/}into the whole truth ....{C}he will speak {/}of what he hears and{C} he will announce {/}you the things to come.
{C}The Spirit will speak{/} is a way to express the intuitions and the inspiration that come from the Spirit of God and that guide the individual believers as well as the whole Church. We must however acknowledge that John is thinking here in the first place of the christian prophetism.
Because the Spirit does not {C}speak{/}, and just as Jesus reminds us, he does not have his own message, but rather he becomes the spirit of the prophets and they are the ones who give the messages which are called the {C}testimony{/} of Jesus in the Book of Revelation.
The Old Testament does not say that the Spirit speaks, (the word is only found in 2 Sam 23,2 and Ez 3,24). On the other hand in the New Testament the expression is used frequently: Mt 10,20; Acts 8,29; 10,19; 1Tim 4,1 and Rev chapters 2-3 and 22,17. It will also speak of {C}the spirits{/} to designate that prophetic activity (1Co 14,32; 1 Jn 4,1; Rev 22,6) which is a way of acknowledging that each revelation takes the color of the one who receives it.
The prophetic charismas are therefore for John an important aspect of the life of the Church. We record in the commentary on Heb 7,1 that the prophets held a decisive role in the formulation of the faith. They introduced a new interpretation of the texts of the Old Testament that at times upsets us but which marked the creed. The Revelation is an exemplary testimony of that form of prophecy, equally in the messages to the churches as well as in its visions of the history.

{N}16,{/}24 The prayer {C}in the name of Jesus{/} is not given here as a special form of christian prayer{C}. So far you have not asked{/} for anything {C}in my Name{/}: the apostles who lived alongside Jesus did not address him in their prayer; in that period of his human limitations he still did not have the divine Name that corresponded to him (Phil 2,6). The prayer in the name of Jesus means that he has been fully recognized as the Son. Though the believers know that all prayer must reach the Father, they are so much impressed by the coming and the human life of the Son, and by his return to Glory, that in some way they would like not to know but him.
When he is finishing, in verse 32, Jesus reminds us that until the last instant of his sacrifice He continues being the Son that nothing separates from the Father.

{N}16,{/}27 Take note of those two statements that oppose each other and complement each other: {C}I came from God {/}and {C}I came from the Father.{/} The first one is written without the article (see the note on Jn 1,1), meaning, that it refers to the divine nature, and the second is without any doubt the person of the Father.

{N}17,{/}2{C}To all you have entrusted to him. {/}This {C}all {/}must be understood as {C}everything. This was read in{/} 6,34 and we will meet it again in 17,24. John possibly wants remind us that Jesus saves not only to individuals; rather he takes them as united in only one humankind and one creation which will be one with him. 

{N}17,{/}6 {C}I speak of those you gave me separating them from the world.{/} One might think that Jesus speaks as in 6,43 of those of his listeners who were touched by the Father so that they could escape from an evil world and be saved. But, if we read verse 9 correctly: {C}I do not pray for the world but for those you gave me,{/} another interpretation presents itself. There might be a recognition there of the mysterious plan of the Father that reserves the right of calling whom he wants in order to constitute his particular people without discrediting none the less the others. Even when God chose Israel, it was not to leave the rest abandoned. We have then on one side those who are called and on the other the world. This does not identify this world with a mass to perdition (as Saint Augustine said, who so easily sent people to hell), but rather means that those people are out of the reach of the biblical revelation. That world is three fourths of humanity, to whom God did not want to tell how he saves them, but who were remembered in passing when John speaks of the Word-light in Jn 1,9. They are the world that God loves so much that he gave them his only Son (Jn 3,16). 
It could be deduced from Jn 3,16 and from Jn 17,6 that only those who believe will be saved, but the other meaning is more obvious: those who see Christ and believe in him will have, from now on, the christian salvation and eternal life. It does not say in any way that the rest will be condemned. And that world will believe when the Christians are one in God.

{N}17,{/}21 Some manuscripts read for this verse the following: {C}that they also be one in us{/}.
Frequently this prayer of Jesus is denominated {C}the priestly prayer{/}.. It is in a certain sense with respect to Jesus, who sacrifices himself in order to sanctify his own (see the notes in Mk 10,45 and 14,22). But, in another sense, Jesus also prays for the people who will carry out a priestly role in the world, the people who know God according to the truth, those to whom God made himself known, and who fulfill a unique function in the salvation of the world.

{N}18,{/}28 John shows Pilate receiving the High Priests in the inner patio and returning to the courtroom, a room in the palace where they brought Jesus. The crowd intervenes later and will not enter, but rather Pilate will address them from a balcony.

{N}19,{/}35 It might be surprising that John gives so much importance to his testimony about that point that seems so insignificant to us; but, it may be that the reason is in the symbolic use that John will make of that expression: {C}the water and the blood{/} (1 Jn 5,6). Yet it is also possible that John proclaims the truthfulness of his whole testimony about the death of Jesus here, when he understood that Jesus was the lamb of God. He was an eye witness of everything that he just wrote about, something that did not occur with the other evangelists.
{C}He knows that he speaks the truth{/}. Commonly John reserves this greek form of the pronoun He for Christ, very close to us although invisible, as in 1 Jn 2,6; 3,6...

{N}19,{/}38 That {C}fear of the Jews{/} seems surprising in such an important person like Nicodemus. It may be that John does not make a difference between the fears of the small one when there is a risk of jail, and the fear of the wealthy people when they are asked for a gesture that is considered unworthy of their class.

{N}20,{/}8 Various commentators to whom the faith has not been given speak of the faith in the resurrection as the revenge of the frustrated hope. According to them the evil had been stronger and the disciples did not have the strength to vindicate the right. Some magic recourse should contradict the evidence that the events released, and it was then when the myth of the risen Christ flourished. Here, however, John's testimony sounds more authentic: from the first moment the sign of the empty tomb gave him access to the faith and he was given the understanding of the entire biblical revelation. Because the revelation was there, for whomever could understand it nor time nor a myth were needed.

{N}21,{/}3 With respect to this fishing read the end of the commentary of Lk 5,1. The verb {C}reveal oneself {/}that we read in 21,1 is not applied in any other part of the appearances of the risen Jesus (except for the paragraphs that were added to Mark's Gospel in 16, 9-12). It is read on the other hand in Jn 2,11 and it seems like it is the third time in 21,14, as referring to the first manifestation in Cana ({C}he revealed his Glory{/}) and the second miraculous sign told in 4,54. It is very probable that in the first draft of this gospel it was the third miracle performed by Jesus in Galilee. In this last editing John wanted to remember that miracle together with the appearance of Jesus in the same shore of Lake Galilee: the first two events shed light on each other. The fishing had been the occasion for a first call; here, after the Resurrection, the response had a deeper meaning.

{N}21,{/}15 There are three questions: two times, {C}sheep{/}, and the third, {C}lambs{/}.. With the lambs and the sheep Jesus is possibly meaning the responsibility of the shepherd who must not forget those who are weakest.
The first two times Jesus interrogates with a verb that means {C}to love{/}, and Peter responds with another verb {C}to love{/}, that is almost equivalent, but even more so in terms of direct and personal affection; that verb is never used in the New Testament when we are asked to love our neighbor. The third time, Jesus retakes that verb of more intimate love that Peter has declared and Peter responds as he did the two previous times. It is possible to see here a psychological progression.

