John

¹ In the beginning was the Conversation, and the Conversation was with God, and the Conversation was God. ² It was with God in the beginning. ³ Everything came into being through it; not even one thing came into being without it. What has come into being ⁴ by it was life, and the life was humanity’s light. ⁵ The light shines in the darkness; the darkness did not overpower it.

⁶ A person came into being, sent by God, who was named John. ⁷ He came to tell what was happening, so he could tell about the light so that everyone would trust it because of him. ⁸ He was not the light himself, but he would tell about the light. ⁹ The true light that shines on every person was coming to the whole world. ¹⁰ It was throughout the world, and the whole world came into being through it, but the world did not recognize it. ¹¹ It came to its own people, but its own people did not accept it. ¹² But to those who accepted it, to those who have placed their trust in its name—it gave them the privilege of coming to be God’s children. ¹³ They were brought into being not from layers of blood or from bodily desire or from a man’s aspiration but from God.

¹⁴ The Conversation was embodied and set up a place to be present among us, and we saw its praiseworthiness—praiseworthiness as one-of-a-kind from the Father, filled with generosity and trustworthiness. ¹⁵ John tells people about him, having called out, “This is whom I was talking about when I said, ‘The one who comes after me has come to be ahead of me because he was first.’” ¹⁶ We all receive one instance of generosity after another because he was filled with generosity and trustworthiness. ¹⁷ Since the Torah was given through Moses, generosity and trustworthiness has come to be through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; the one-of-a-kind God who is close to the Father’s chest—that one depicted God.

¹⁹ So, this is what John reported when the Judean authorities from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites so they could ask him, “Who are you?”

²⁰ He acknowledged—and did not just disregard himself—he acknowledged, “I am not the Christ.”

²¹ Then they asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”

“I am not,” he said.

“Are you the Prophet?”

“No,” he answered.

²² Then they said to him, “Who are you? Give us an answer for the ones who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

²³ He stated, “I am the voice calling in the wilderness, ‘Straighten the way of the Lord,’ as Isaiah the prophet said.”

²⁴ Since they had been sent by the Pharisees, ²⁵ they asked him, “Then why do you submerse people if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?”

²⁶ “I submerse people in water,” John answered. “Someone stands among you whom you do not recognize, ²⁷ who is coming after me. I am not suited for untying the strap of his sandal for him.” ²⁸ These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan River, where John was submersing people.

²⁹ On the next day, he saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The lamb of God who lifts away the whole world's deviation. ³⁰ This is the one about whom I said, ‘A man is coming after me who has come to be ahead of me, because he was first.’ ³¹ Even I didn’t used to recognize him, but now I have come to submerse people in water so that he can be shown to Israel through it.”

³² John told them about him, saying, “I have seen the Life-breath descending like a dove from the heavens, and it stayed present on him. ³³ And I had not recognized him, but the one who sent me to submerse people in water said to me, ‘On whomever you see the Life-breath descending and staying present on him, that is the one who submerses people in the Sacred Life-breath.’ ³⁴ I have seen it, and I have affirmed that this is God’s Chosen One.”

³⁵ On the next day, John had been standing there again with two of his students with him, ³⁶ and as he watched Jesus walking by, he said, “Look! The lamb of God!” ³⁷ His two students heard him saying this and followed Jesus.

³⁸ Jesus turned around, and when he saw them following him, he asked them, “What are you looking for?”

They responded, “Rabbi,” (which means ‘teacher’), “Where are you staying?”

³⁹ He told them, “Come and you’ll see.” So, they went and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day. The time was about four o’clock in the afternoon.

⁴⁰ Andrew, Simeon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard about Jesus from John and followed him. ⁴¹ He found his own brother Simeon first and told him, “I’ve found the meshiah! (which translates as ‘christ’) ⁴² He led him to Jesus.

When Jesus looked at him, he said, “You are Simeon, the son of John; you will be called ‘Cephas’ (which translates as ‘Peter’).

⁴³ On the next day, Jesus wanted to leave for Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.” ⁴⁴ (Philip was from Bethsaida, from the same town as Andrew and Peter.)

⁴⁵ Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We’ve found the one whom Moses—in the Torah—and the prophets wrote about: Jesus, the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.”

⁴⁶ Nathanael said, “What can be useful from Nazareth?”

“Come and see,” Philip told him.

⁴⁷ Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said about him, “Look, a true Israelite ‘in whom there is no betrayal.’”

⁴⁸ Nathanael asked him, “How do you know me?”

“Before Philip called you,” Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were under the fig tree.”

⁴⁹ “Rabbi,” Nathanael responded, “You are the Son of God! You are the king of Israel!”

⁵⁰ Jesus answered him, “You give your trust because I told you I saw you under the fig tree? You’ll see more impressive things than these!” ⁵¹ Then he said, “Truly, truly, I’m telling you all: You will see the heavens opened and God’s messengers ascending and descending on the Son of Humanity.”

¹ On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and Jesus’ mother was there. ² Jesus and his students were also invited to the wedding. ³ When there was not enough wine, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no wine.”

⁴ “Ma’am,” Jesus said to her, “What does that have to do with you and me? My time isn’t here yet.”

⁵ His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you to do.”

⁶ Six stone water jars had been placed there for the cleansing requirements of the Jews, each with space for about 18 to 27 gallons.

⁷ “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them, and they filled them to the top.

⁸ “Now,” he told them, “Draw some out and bring it to the lead dining attendant,” so they brought it.

⁹ When the lead dining attendant tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it was from (but the servants who had drawn the water knew), the lead dining attendant called the groom ¹⁰ and said to him, “Everyone serves the fine wine first and when people get drunk they serve the lesser wine. You have reserved the fine wine until now!”

¹¹ Jesus did this in Cana of Galilee as the first of the signs and brought to light his praiseworthiness, and his students placed their trust in him.

¹² Afterward, he, along with his mother and siblings and students, went down to Capernaum and stayed there a few days.

¹³ It was almost time for the Jewish Passover festival, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the sacred grounds, he found people selling oxen, sheep, and doves and people sitting there to exchange currency. ¹⁵ He made a whip out of ropes and drove them out of the sacred grounds, as well as the sheep and oxen, and he dumped out the currency exchangers’ coins and flipped their tables.

¹⁶ “Take these away from here!” he told the dove sellers. “Don’t make my Father’s house a place of business!”

¹⁷ His students were reminded that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ Then the Judean authorities responded, “What sign can you give us since you are doing these things?”

¹⁹ “Destroy this temple,” Jesus answered, “And I will raise it up in three days.”

²⁰ Then the Judean authorities said, “This temple was under construction for 46 years—and you will raise it up in three days?”

²¹ But Jesus was talking about his body as the temple. ²² So, when he was raised from among the dead, his students were reminded that he had said this, and they trusted the scripture and what Jesus had said in conversation.

²³ While he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many people placed their trust in him since they saw the signs he was producing. ²⁴ However, Jesus did not trust their commitment to him since he understood them all. ²⁵ He did not need to have anyone explain about humanity because he understood what humanity was like.

¹ There was a man, one of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, who was a leader among the Judeans. ² He came to Jesus in the night.

“Rabbi,” he said, “We understand that you have come as a teacher from God; no one is able to produce the signs that you do unless God is with them.”

³ “Truly, truly I’m telling you,” Jesus answered, “Unless someone is brought into being from above, they are not able to understand God’s Reign.”

⁴ “How can a person be brought into being when they’re old?” Nicodemus said. “Can they go into their mother’s womb and come into being a second time?”

⁵ “Truly, truly I’m telling you,” Jesus answered, “Unless someone is brought into being from water and from the Life-breath, they aren’t able to start participating in God’s Reign. ⁶ Whatever has been brought into being from the body is a body, and whatever has been brought into being from the Life-breath is a life-breath. ⁷ Don’t be shocked that I told you it’s necessary for you to be brought into being from above. ⁸ The wind blows where it wants and you hear its sound, but you don’t see where it comes from or where it’s going. That’s how it is with everyone who has been brought into being by the Life-breath.”

⁹ “How can these things happen?” Nicodemus asked him.

¹⁰ “You are the teacher of Israel, but you don’t understand these things?” Jesus responded. ¹¹ “Truly, truly I’m telling you that we’re talking about what we have come to understand and we report what we’ve seen, but you don’t accept what we report. ¹² If you don’t trust what I’ve told you about things happening on the land, how will you trust it if I tell you about heavenly things?

¹³ “No one has ascended to the heavens except the one who descended from the heavens, the Son of Humanity. ¹⁴ Just like Moses raised up the snake in the wilderness, it’s necessary for the Son of Humanity to be raised up ¹⁵ so that everyone who trusts him will have agelong life. ¹⁶ You see, this is how God loved the whole world: God gave the One-of-a-kind Son so that everyone who places their trust in him would not be lost to death but would have agelong life. ¹⁷ God did not send the Son to the whole world in order to put the whole world on trial but so the whole world would be liberated through him. ¹⁸ The one who places their trust in him is not put on trial, but the one who does not trust has already been tried since they have not placed their trust in the name of God’s One-of-a-Kind Son. ¹⁹ But this is the verdict: that the light spoke to the whole world and the people loved the darkness more than the light. It was because their actions were corrupt. ²⁰ For everyone who practices rottenness hates the light and does not come near the light so that their actions won’t be exposed. ²¹ But the one who behaves with integrity comes near the light so that their actions can be displayed because they have done them with God.”

²² Afterward, Jesus and his students went to the land of Judea, and he spent time there with them and submersed people. ²³ John was also submersing people in Aenon near Salim because a lot of water was there, and people were coming and being submersed ²⁴ (This was when John had not yet been thrown in prison).

²⁵ Then, there came to be a debate between John’s students and a Judean about cleansing. ²⁶ So they came to John.

“Rabbi,” they said to him, “The one who was with you across the Jordan, the one you have vouched for—look! He is submersing people, and everyone is going to him!”

²⁷ “A person can’t receive anything,” John responded, “unless it has been given to them from the heavens. ²⁸ You can already confirm for me that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ and instead I said, ‘I’m the one who was sent ahead of the one who is.’ ²⁹ The groom is the one who has the bride, and the groom’s friend who stands by and listens for him celebrates joyfully at the sound of the groom’s voice. So, this same joy has been made real for me. ³⁰ It’s necessary for him to become more prominent and me to become less prominent. ³¹ The one who comes from above is higher than everything; the one from the land is from the land and speaks from the land. The one who comes from the heavens is higher than everything. ³² He has seen and heard what he reports about this, and no one accepts his report. ³³ Whoever has accepted his report has fully endorsed that God is trustworthy. ³⁴ You see, God sent him to speak what comes from the mouth of God because he doesn’t give the Life-breath from an attitude of moderation. ³⁵ The Father loves the Son and has handed him everything. ³⁶ The one who places their trust in the Son has agelong life, but the one who refuses to be persuaded by the Son will not see life; instead, God’s anger stays on them.”

¹ Later, when Jesus knew that the Pharisees had heard Jesus was training and submersing more students than John ² (though Jesus was not submersing people himself; his students were), ³ he left Judea behind and headed out again for Galilee. ⁴ But, he had to go through Samaria. ⁵ So, he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the place Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob’s well was there, so Jesus, who was tired from traveling, sat down at the well. The time was about noon.

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

“Give me something to drink,” Jesus requested ⁸ (His students had gone into the town to buy food).

⁹ So the Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you—as a Jew—are requesting something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews did not use anything that was used by Samaritans).

¹⁰ “If you had understood God’s gift,” Jesus answered, “and who is saying to you, ‘Give me something to drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “You don’t have a bucket, and the well is deep, so where are you getting the living water? ¹² You aren’t more impressive than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself along with his sons and his livestock, are you?”

¹³ “Everyone who drinks from this water will be thirsty again,” Jesus responded. ¹⁴ “But whoever drinks from the water I will give them won’t be thirsty throughout the Age; instead, the water I will give them will come to be a spring of water gushing up toward agelong life.

¹⁵ “Sir, give me this water” the woman said to him, “so that I may neither be thirsty nor travel here to draw water!”

¹⁶ “Go,” he said to her, “Call your husband, and come back here.”

¹⁷ The woman answered, “I don’t have a husband.”

“You’re right when you said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said, ¹⁸ “because you’ve had five husbands, and the one you have now isn’t your husband. What you said is true.”

¹⁹ “Sir,” the woman said to him, “I see that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our ancestors bowed down on this mountain, and you all say that the place where it’s necessary to bow down is in Jerusalem.”

²¹ “Trust me, ma’am,” Jesus told her, “A time is coming when you will not bow down to the Father on this mountain or in Jerusalem. ²² You bow down to someone you haven’t known. We bow down to someone we have seen since liberation is from the Jews. ²³ However, a time is coming—and it is now—when those who truly bow down will bow down to the Father with their life-breath and sincerity. The people who bow down to the Father like that are the ones the Father is looking for. ²⁴ God is Life-breath, and those who bow down to God have to bow down with their life-breath and sincerity.”

²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Meshiah is coming (the one called Christ). Whenever he comes, he will explain it all to us.”

²⁶ “The person speaking to you,” Jesus said, “I am the one.”

²⁷ At that moment, his students arrived and were shocked that he was speaking with a woman. However, no one said, “What do you want,” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”

²⁸ Then, the woman left her water jug behind and went off to the town and reported to the people, ²⁹ “Come and see someone who told me everything I’ve experienced. This isn’t the Christ, right?” ³⁰ They left the town and began coming to him.

³¹ In the meantime, the students were requesting, “Rabbi, eat!”

³² “I have food to eat that you haven’t seen,” he said to them.

³³ Then, the students began to say to each other, “No one brought him anything to eat, right?”

³⁴ Jesus said to them, “The food for me is that I can do what the Life-breath wants for me and that I can finish her work. ³⁵ Don’t you say that it’s still four months before the harvest comes? Look! I’m telling you, use your eyes and see that the fields are already ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Whoever harvests and gathers the crop for agelong life receives pay so that the one who plants and the one who harvests can celebrate together. ³⁷ For in this, the saying is true, that one plants and another harvests. ³⁸ I sent you to harvest what you didn’t tend. Others have tended it, and you have joined in their labor.”

³⁹ Many of the Samaritans from that town placed their trust in him because of what the woman discussed, who reported, “He told me about everything I’ve experienced.” ⁴⁰ So, when the Samaritans got to where he was, they began to ask him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ Many more trusted because of his conversation. ⁴² They said to the woman as well, “We don’t trust him just because of what you said anymore since we’ve heard for ourselves and we’ve seen that this is truly the whole world’s liberator.”

⁴³ After two days, he went from there to Galilee ⁴⁴ (Jesus himself insisted that a prophet does not hold value in the place where they’re from.) ⁴⁵ So, when he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him because they had seen everything he had done in Jerusalem during the festival (since they had gone to the festival too).

⁴⁶ Then he went to Cana in Galilee again, where he had made the water into wine. Someone who worked for the king was there whose son in Capernaum was listless. ⁴⁷ When this person heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Jerusalem, he traveled to him and pleaded that he go down and revive his son because he was about to die.

⁴⁸ “Unless you see signs and miracles, you won’t trust,” Jesus said to him.

⁴⁹ “Sir,” the royal official said to him, “Come down before my child dies.”

⁵⁰ “Go on,” Jesus told him, “Your son is alive.”

The person trusted what Jesus said to him and left. ⁵¹ While he was already on his way down, his enslaved workers met up with him to tell him that the child was alive. ⁵² Then, he asked them the time of when he had gotten better.

“The fever went away,” they told him, “Yesterday, at one o’clock in the afternoon.” ⁵³ Then the father realized that it was at the exact time that Jesus said to him, “Your son is alive,” and he and his whole household trusted.

⁵⁴ Jesus produced this second sign after coming back to Galilee from Judea.

¹ Later, there was a Jewish festival and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ² In Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate, there is a pool called Bethzatha in Aramaic that has five covered walkways. ³ Very many people who had chronic health conditions, were blind, had disfigured limbs, and had atrophied muscles were lying in the walkways. ⁵  Someone was there who had been debilitatingly ill for 38 years.

⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and realized how much time had already passed for him, he said to him, “Do you want to become healthy?”

⁷ “Lord,” the person who was sick responded, “I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool when the water is agitated. I try to go myself, but someone gets in before me.”

⁸ “Get up!” Jesus told him. “Pick up your mat and walk!” ⁹ Immediately, the person became healthy and picked up his mat and walked (It was Shabbat that day).

¹⁰ Then the Judean authorities started saying to the person who had been healed, “It’s Shabbat, and it’s not allowed for you to carry your mat.”

¹¹ “But the one who made me healthy,” he answered them, “he told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”

¹² “Who,” they asked, “is the person who told you to pick it up and walk?” ¹³ But the one who was restored to health didn’t know who he was. Jesus had left unnoticed since the place was crowded.

¹⁴ Later, Jesus found him in the sacred grounds and said, “Look. You’ve become healthy. Don’t deviate anymore so that something worse won’t happen to you.”

¹⁵ The person went away and announced to the Judean authorities that Jesus was the one who had made him healthy. ¹⁶ Based on that, the Judean authorities began to pursue Jesus because he was doing these things on Shabbat.

¹⁷ He responded to them, “My Father is still working now, so I am also working.”

¹⁸ Then because of that, the Judean authorities tried to kill him even more because not only was he letting go of Shabbat, but he was also calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.

¹⁹ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus then responded to them, “The Son can’t do anything by himself, only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son does the same things. ²⁰ You see, the Father cares about the Son and shows him everything the Father is doing and will show him more impressive things to work on than these, so you’re going to be shocked. ²¹ Just like the Father awakens the dead and makes them live, in the same way the Son also makes whomever he wants live. ²² The Father doesn’t assess anyone; instead, the Father has given all assessment to the Son ²³ so that everyone would honor the Son just like they would honor the Father who sent him.

²⁴ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you that whoever hears what I am saying and trusts the one who sent me has agelong life and is not going toward assessment but, instead, has moved across from death to life.

²⁵ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you that a time is coming—and is already here—when the dead will hear the voice of God’s Son, and those who hear will live. ²⁶ Exactly how the Father has life in themself, the Father has also given the Son life to have in himself. ²⁷ The Father also gave him authority to make an assessment because he is the Son of Humanity. ²⁸ Don’t be shocked at this because a time is coming in which everyone who is in a tomb will hear his voice, ²⁹ and the ones who have done beneficial things will come out into the rising up for life, but those who have practiced rottenness will come out into the rising up for assessment.

³⁰ “I can’t do anything by myself. I assess exactly what I hear, and the decision from my assessment is just because I don’t seek what I want but what the one who sent me wants. ³¹ If I vouch for myself, my assertion is not trustworthy. ³² Someone else vouches for me, and I have seen that the report which he tells about me is trustworthy. ³³ You sent an inquiry to John, and he has presented the truth ³⁴ (I do not accept human affirmation, but I say these things so that you can be liberated). ³⁵ That man was a burning and shining lamp, and you wanted to celebrate in his light at the time.

³⁶ “Now, I have a more significant reference than the one John gives. That’s because the actions which the Father has given to me to complete—the very actions I’m doing—vouch for me that the Father sent me. ³⁷ And the Father who sent me has personally affirmed me. Neither have you ever heard the Father's voice nor have you seen the Father's appearance, ³⁸ and you don’t have the Father's conversation present among you because you do not trust the very one whom the Father sent. ³⁹ You examine the scriptures because you think you can have agelong life through them, and those scriptures are the very things vouching for me. ⁴⁰ And you don’t want to come to me so that you can have life.

⁴¹ “I don’t accept flattery. ⁴² Besides, I’ve gotten to know you, that you do not have God’s love between yourselves. ⁴³ I have come as a representative of my Father, and you haven’t accepted me. If another were to come on their own authority, then you would accept that person. ⁴⁴ How can you trust me while accepting praise from each other and not seeking the praise that is from the only God? ⁴⁵ Don’t think that I will accuse you to God. The one who accuses you is Moses, the one you’ve placed your hope in. ⁴⁶ If you really trusted Moses, you would trust me, because he wrote about me. ⁴⁷ But, if you don’t trust his scriptures, how will you trust the things I say?”

¹ Afterward, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (also called Lake Tiberias). ² A large crowd was following him because they were watching the signs he was producing for those with chronic health conditions. ³ Jesus went to the hill and sat down there with his students ⁴ (it was almost the Jewish festival of Passover).

⁵ Then, when Jesus looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy bread so these people can eat?” ⁶ (he said this to see what he would say since he already knew what he was about to do).

⁷ “Two hundred denarii worth of bread,” Philip answered, “would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”

⁸ One of his students—Andrew, Simeon Peter’s brother—said to Jesus, ⁹ “A kid is here who has five loaves of barley bread and two fish, but what use are these for so many people?”

¹⁰ “Have the people sit,” Jesus said (There was a lot of grass in that place). So, they sat down, and about 5,000 men were there.

¹¹ Then Jesus picked up the bread, and after he gave thanks, he gave it out to the people who were sitting, and he did the same with the fish, as much as they wanted.

¹² When they were full, he said to his students, “Collect the leftover pieces, so none will go to waste.” ¹³ Then, they collected it all and filled 12 baskets with the pieces of the five loaves of barley bread that were left over by the people who had eaten.

¹⁴ Then after the people had seen the signs he produced, they began to say, “This truly is the Prophet who is coming to the whole world.” ¹⁵ Then Jesus withdrew again to the hillside alone because he knew they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.

¹⁶ As evening came, his disciples went down to the sea ¹⁷ and got into a boat and started going across the sea to Capernaum (it had already gotten dark, and Jesus hadn’t arrived with them yet). ¹⁸ Not only that, but the sea was also churning from a powerful windstorm. ¹⁹ Then, after rowing about three miles, they spotted Jesus walking on the sea and getting close to the boat, and they were afraid.

²⁰ “I am me!” he said to them, “Don’t be afraid!” ²¹ Then they wanted to receive him into the boat, and immediately the boat got to the land where they had been going.

²² In the morning, the people that had stayed on the other side of the sea had seen that only one boat had been there, that Jesus had not gotten into it with his students, and that his students had gone alone. ²³ Other boats arrived from Tiberias close to the place where they ate the bread after the Lord gave thanks. ²⁴ So when the people saw that neither Jesus nor his students were there, they boarded the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.

²⁵ After they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”

²⁶ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus answered them, “You’re not looking for me because you saw signs but because you ate some of the bread and were satisfied. ²⁷ Don’t give effort for food that’s perishable but for the food that stays present for agelong life.”

²⁸ So they said to him, “What should we do so we can accomplish what God is working toward?”

²⁹ “This,” he answered, “is what God is working toward: for you to place your trust in the one God sent.”

³⁰ “Then what sign are you producing,” they said to him, “so we can see it and trust you? What are you accomplishing? ³¹ Our ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, just as it is written, ‘God gave them food from the heavens to eat.’”

³² “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus said to them, “Moses hasn’t given you food from the heavens; however, my Father is giving you the true food from the heavens. ³³ You see, God’s food is the one that comes down from the heavens and gives life to the whole world.”

³⁴ “Sir,” they said to him, “Always give us this food!”

³⁵ “I am the food of life,” Jesus said to them, “Whoever comes to me won’t be hungry at all, and whoever places their trust in me won’t ever be thirsty at all. ³⁶ However, I told you that you have already seen me, and you don’t trust me. ³⁷ The Father gives me everyone who will come to me, and I certainly wouldn’t throw anyone who comes to me outside ³⁸ since I haven’t come down from the heavens to do what I want but what the one who sent me wants. ³⁹ And this is what the one who sent me wants: that I would not miss out on anyone the Father has given me; instead, I will raise them up on the last day. ⁴⁰ This is what my Father wants: that everyone who sees the Son and places their trust in him will have agelong life, and I will raise them up on the last day.”

⁴¹ Then the Jews who were there began to whisper about him quietly because he said, “I am the food that came down from the heavens.”

⁴² “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?” they said. “How is he now saying, ‘I have come down from the heavens’?”

⁴³ “Don’t whisper to each other about me,” Jesus responded to them. ⁴⁴ “No one can come to me if the Father who sent me doesn’t draw them, and I will raise them up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the Prophets, ‘And everyone will be taught by God.’ Everyone who hears and learns from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶ (Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; that one has seen the Father.)

⁴⁷ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you, whoever trusts has agelong life. ⁴⁸ I am the food of life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate manna in the wilderness, and they still died. ⁵⁰ This is the food that comes down from the heavens, so that anyone can eat some of it and not die. ⁵¹ I am the food of life that came down from the heavens. If anyone eats some of this food, they will live throughout the Age. Now, to be exact, the food that I am going to give for the life of the whole world is my body.”

⁵² Then the Jews who were there began to fight with each other. “How can this person give us his body to eat?” they said.

⁵³ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus said back to them, “Unless you eat the body of the Son of Humanity and drink his blood, you have no life among you. ⁵⁴ Whoever chews on my body and drinks my blood has agelong life, and I will raise them up on the last day. ⁵⁵ You see, my body is true food, and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶ Whoever chews my body and drinks my blood is present with me, and I am present with them. ⁵⁷ Just like the Father who is alive sent me, and I am alive through the Father, whoever chews on me is who will also be alive through me. ⁵⁸ This is the food that came down from the heavens—not like what the ancestors ate and still died; whoever chews on this food will live throughout the Age.”

⁵⁹ He said these things while teaching at a synagogue in Capernaum.

⁶⁰ Then after hearing him, many of his students said, “This conversation is outrageous! Who can listen to it?”

⁶¹ When Jesus became aware that his students were whispering among themselves about this, he said to them, “Does this trip you up? ⁶² Then, what if you were to see the Son of Humanity going up where he was before? ⁶³ The Life-breath is what generates life; bodily impulses aren’t at all helpful for that. The statements I’ve spoken to you are Life-breath and are life. ⁶⁴ Nevertheless, there are some of you who don’t trust me” (Jesus had recognized from the beginning that there were some who did not trust him and that someone would hand him over). ⁶⁵ Then he said, “That’s why I told you that no one can come to me unless it’s given to them from the Father.”

⁶⁶ From that point on, many of his students gave up on following him and didn’t travel with him anymore.

⁶⁷ So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Don’t you want to leave too?”

⁶⁸ Simeon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom else would we go? You have things to say about agelong life, ⁶⁹ and we have trusted and come to understand that you are the one who is dedicated for sacred purpose by God!”

⁷⁰ “Didn’t I choose you twelve? Yet one of you is a False Accuser.” ⁷¹ (He was speaking about Judah son of Simeon, “the Man of Kerioth.” Judah, who was one of the Twelve, was about to hand him over.)

¹ Afterward, Jesus began traveling throughout Galilee since he didn’t want to travel in Judea because the Judean authorities were trying to kill him.

² It was almost the Jewish Festival of Tents, ³ so his brothers said to him, “Get out of this place and go over to Judea so your students can see the work you’re doing. ⁴ No one does things secretly when the same person is trying to be an authoritative speaker. If you’re doing these things, show yourself to the whole world” ⁵ (not even his brothers placed their trust in him).

⁶ “My moment hasn’t arrived yet,” Jesus said to them, “but it’s always an appropriate moment for you. ⁷ The world isn’t able to hate you, but it hates me because I assert about it that its actions are harmful. ⁸ You, go up to the festival. I’m not going up to this festival because my moment hasn’t been made ready yet.” ⁹ After he said these things, he stayed in Galilee.

¹⁰ After his brothers went up to the festival, then he also went up but secretly, not publicly.

¹¹ Then the Judean authorities looked for him at the festival. “Where is that man?” they were asking. ¹² There was a lot of criticism about him among the crowds. Some were saying, “He’s respectable,” but others were saying, “No, just the opposite! He’s deceiving the people!” ¹³ However, no one was publicly speaking out about him because of fear of the Judean authorities.

¹⁴ When the festival was halfway through, Jesus went up to the sacred grounds and started teaching. ¹⁵ The Judean authorities were shocked and said, “How has this man learned the writings without being educated?”

¹⁶ “My teaching,” Jesus responded, “is not mine; rather, it’s from the one who sent me. ¹⁷ If someone wants to do what the one who sent me wants, they will know whether the teaching is from God or I speak on my own. ¹⁸ Whoever speaks on their own is looking for their own praise; whoever looks for praise for the one who sent them—they are trustworthy and no corruption is in them. ¹⁹ Hasn’t Moses given you the Torah? Yet not one of you does what is instructed in the Torah. Why are you trying to kill me?”

²⁰ “You have a demon!” the people responded. “Who is trying to kill you?”

²¹ “I did one act of work, and you’re all shocked,” Jesus answered them. ²² “You circumcise a person on Shabbat because Moses has given you circumcision (not that it is from Moses but actually from the ancestors). ²³ If a person receives circumcision on Shabbat so that Moses’ Torah isn’t dismissed, how are you furious with me because I made an entire person healthy on Shabbat? ²⁴ Don’t assess based on appearance; instead, assess based on a just assessment.”

²⁵ Then some of the Jerusalemites said, “Isn’t this whom they are trying to kill? ²⁶ And look! He’s publicly speaking out, and they aren’t saying anything to him. Is it possible the leaders have really learned that this is the Christ? ²⁷ But no, we know where this man is from, but whenever the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”

²⁸ Then Jesus, who was still teaching at the sacred grounds, shouted out, “You know me, and you know where I came from! I haven’t come on my own, but the one who sent me is trustworthy—the one you don’t know! ²⁹ I know that one since that's who sent me!”

³⁰ Then they started trying to capture him, but no one put a hand on him because his time hadn’t come yet. ³¹ However, many of the people placed their trust in him and said, “Whenever the Christ comes, he won’t produce more signs than this man has produced, right?”

³² The Pharisees heard the people whispering these things about him, and the lead priests and the Pharisees sent assistants to capture him.

³³ Then Jesus said, “I’m still with you for a little while, and I’m going to the one who sent me. ³⁴ You’ll look for me, and you won’t find me, and you can’t come where I am.”

³⁵ Then the Judean authorities said to each other, “Where is this man about to go that we can’t find him? He isn’t about to go to the people scattered among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, is he? ³⁶ What is the meaning of what he said: ‘You’ll look for me, and you won’t find me, and you can’t come where I am’?”

³⁷ On the last day, the most important one of the festival, Jesus stood and shouted out, “If anyone is thirsty, come to me and drink! ³⁸ Whoever places their trust in me, just like the scripture says, ‘Rivers of living water will flow from her belly’” ³⁹ (He said this about the Life-breath which those who placed their trust in him were going to receive since the Life-breath was not yet there because Jesus still had not been publicly endorsed).

⁴⁰ Then after they heard these sayings, some of the people said, “This truly is the Prophet!”

⁴¹ Others said, “This is the Christ!”

⁴¹ Then, the first ones said, “No, because the Christ doesn’t come from Galilee, right? ⁴² Doesn’t the scripture say that the Christ is of the seed of David and is from Bethlehem, the village where David used to live?”

⁴³ So there came to be division between the people because of him. ⁴⁴ Some of them wanted to capture him, but no one put their hands on him.

⁴⁵ Then the assistants went to the lead priests and Pharisees, so they said to the assistants, “Why didn’t you bring him?”

⁴⁶ “No one has ever spoken like this person!” the assistants responded.

⁴⁷ “You haven’t been deceived too, have you?” the Pharisees answered. ⁴⁸ “None of the leaders or the Pharisees have placed their trust in him, have they? ⁴⁹ However, since this crowd doesn’t know the Torah, they have a pronouncement of hardship over them.”

⁵⁰ Nicodemus, who had gone to Jesus earlier and was one of them, said to them, ⁵¹ “The Torah we follow doesn’t assess someone without hearing from them first and knowing what they do, does it?”

⁵² “You aren’t from Galilee too, are you?” they responded. “Research carefully and see: no prophet arises from Galilee!”

[| ⁵³ Then everyone went home,

¹ but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

² At dawn, he went to be at the sacred grounds again, and all the people started coming to him, so he sat down and started teaching them. ³ Then the Bible scholars and Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the middle of a sexual affair, and they made her stand between them.

⁴ “Teacher,” they said to him, “This woman has been caught in the act of having a sexual affair. ⁵ In the Torah, Moses directed us to execute women like this with stones. So, what do you say about it?” ⁶ (They were saying this to test him, so they would have something to accuse him of).

⁷ Then Jesus, after bending down, wrote on the ground with a finger. When they continued asking him, he stood up.

⁸ “Whichever of you has no deviation,” he said to them, “be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then, bending down, he started writing on the ground again.

⁹ After they heard that, they started to leave one after another, beginning with the elders, and only the women who had been between them was left.

¹⁰ Then, Jesus stood up and said to her, “Ma’am, where are they? Didn’t anyone decide against you?”

¹¹ “No one, Sir,” she said.

¹¹ So Jesus said, “I’m not deciding against you either. Go on your way, and from now on, don’t deviate anymore.” |]

¹² Then Jesus spoke to the Bible scholars and Pharisees again.

“I am the light of the world,” he said. “Whoever follows me certainly won’t walk in darkness; instead, they will have the light of life.”

¹³ Then the Pharisees said to him, “You are vouching for yourself; your assertion isn’t trustworthy!”

¹⁴ “Even if I vouch for myself, my assertion is trustworthy because I have understood where I came from and where I’m going, but you haven’t understood where I’m coming from or where I’m going. ¹⁵ You assess according to bodily impulses; I don’t assess anyone. ¹⁶ And if I do assess, my assessment is trustworthy because I am not alone; instead, I and my father who sent me both do it. ¹⁷ And in the Torah—which you follow—it is written that the testimony of two people is trustworthy. ¹⁸ I am testifying about myself, and the Father who sent me testifies about me.

¹⁹ So they said to him, “Where is your father?”

²⁰ “You don’t recognize either me or my Father,” Jesus answered. “If you had recognized me, you would have recognized my Father too” (Jesus made these statements at the donation box while teaching in the sacred grounds; no one captured him because his time had not come yet).

²¹ Then Jesus said to them again, “I am going, and you will look for me, and you will die because of your deviation. You can’t come where I’m going.”

²² Then the Judean authorities said, “Is it possible he’s going to kill himself since he said, ‘You can’t come where I’m going’?”

²³ “You are from down; I am from up. You are from this world system; I am not from this world system. ²⁴ So, I told you that you will die because of your deviations since if you don’t trust that I am, you will die because of your deviations.”

²⁵ “Who are you?” they said.

²⁶ “What have I been telling you from the beginning?” Jesus said. “I have a lot to say and assess about you, but the one who sent me is trustworthy, and I tell the world what I’ve heard from that one” ²⁷ (They didn’t realize he was telling them about the Father).

²⁸ Then Jesus said to them, “When you lift up the Son of Humanity, then you will know that I am. I don’t do anything by myself, but I say these things just as the Father taught me. ²⁹ The one who sent me is with me. The Father didn’t send me away alone since I always do the things that are pleasing to the Father.” ³⁰ While he was saying these things, many people placed their trust in him.

³¹ Then Jesus said to the Judeans who had trusted him, “If you stay present with my conversation, you truly are my students, ³² and you will understand the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

³³ “We are Abraham’s seed,” they responded, “and we’ve never been enslaved by anyone. What do you mean when you say, ‘you will become free’?”

³⁴ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus answered, “Everyone who produces deviation is an enslaved worker for the deviation. ³⁵ The enslaved worker does not stay present in the household indefinitely; the son stays present indefinitely. ³⁶ So if the son were to free you, you would actually be free. ³⁷ I know you are Abraham’s seed; however, you’re trying to kill me because what I’m saying doesn’t make accommodation for you. ³⁸ I am saying what I have seen from my Father, so you are also doing do what you’ve heard from your father.”

³⁹ “Our father is Abraham,” They answered him.

⁴⁰ “If you were Abraham’s children,” Jesus said to them, “then you would be doing what Abraham sought to accomplish. But right now, you’re trying to kill me, a person who has told you the truth that I heard from God; that’s not what Abraham did! ⁴¹ You are doing what your real father seeks to accomplish.”

“We haven’t come into being because of a sexual violation!” they said. “We have one father: God!”

⁴² “If God were your father, you would love me,” Jesus told them, “Since I came from God and am here. You see, I haven’t come on my own, and instead, that’s who sent me. ⁴³ Why don’t you understand what I’m saying? Because you aren’t able to hear what I mean. ⁴⁴ You are from your father the False Accuser, and you want to do what your father wants. That one was a murderer from the beginning and can’t stand the truth because truth has no connection with him. Whenever he speaks falseness, he speaks from himself, because he is a liar and the father of falseness. ⁴⁵ But because I am telling you the truth, you don’t trust me. ⁴⁶ Which of you has any evidence of deviation against me? Since I’m telling the truth, why don’t you trust me? ⁴⁷ Whoever is from God listens to the statements God makes. That’s why you don’t listen—because you are not from God!”

⁴⁸ “Aren’t we right to say that you are a Samaritan and you have a demon!” they answered.

⁴⁹ “I don’t have a demon,” Jesus responded. “However, I treat my Father with respect, and you treat me with disrespect. ⁵⁰ I’m not looking for my own praise. There is one who looks for it and does the assessment. ⁵¹ Truly, truly, I’m telling you, if anyone pays close attention to what I say, then they certainly won’t see death indefinitely.”

⁵² That’s when the Judeans told him, “We know you have a demon! Abraham and the prophets died, and you’re saying, ‘If anyone pays close attention to what I say, then they certainly won’t taste death indefinitely’! ⁵³ You’re not more important than our father Abraham, who died, are you? And the prophets died. Who are you making yourself out to be?”

⁵⁴ “If I were to praise myself,” Jesus answered, “then my praise would mean nothing. My Father—about whom you say, ‘He is our God’—is who praises me. ⁵⁵ You don’t know the Father, but I do. If I were to say that I don’t know the Father, then I would be a liar like you. But I do know the Father, and I pay close attention to what the Father says. ⁵⁶ Your father Abraham celebrated because he would see my day, and he saw it and was overjoyed.”

⁵⁷ Then the Judeans said to him, “You aren’t even fifty years old yet, and you’ve seen Abraham?”

⁵⁸ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you,” Jesus said, “I am before the existence of Abraham!” ⁵⁹ Then they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus was hidden and left the sacred grounds.

¹ As he passed by, he saw a person who had been blind from birth. ² His students asked him, “Rabbi, who deviated to cause him to be born blind: this person or his parents?”

³ “Neither this person nor his parents deviated,” Jesus answered. “Just the opposite, it has the result that what God seeks to accomplish can be clearly shown with him. ⁴ It is necessary for us to work toward what the one who sent me seeks to accomplish as long as it is daytime. Night is coming when no one can work. ⁵ While I’m in the world, I am the light of the world.”

⁶ After he said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud from the saliva. He spread the mud on the blind man’s eyes.

⁷ “Go,” Jesus said to him, “Wash in the pool of Siloam” (which is translated as ‘sent’). Then the blind man went away and washed, and he came back seeing.

⁸ Then neighbors and the people who saw him previously because he had needed to request people give him things to survive started saying, “Isn’t this the person who used to sit and ask for things?”

⁹ Some were saying, “This is him!”

Others were saying, “No, but he looks like him.”

The man kept saying, “It’s me!”

¹⁰ So they started asking him, “Then, how were your eyes opened?”

¹¹ “The man called Jesus,” he answered, “made mud and spread it on my eyes, and he told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So, I left, and after I washed, I could use my eyes.”

¹² “Where is that man?” they said to him.

“I don’t know,” he said.

¹³ They brought the man who used to be blind to the Pharisees ¹⁴ (It was Shabbat on the day Jesus made mud and opened his eyes). ¹⁵ Then the Pharisees were the ones who asked him again how had been able to use his eyes.

“He put mud on my eyes,” he told them, “And I washed, and I could see.”

¹⁶ Then some of the Pharisees started saying, “This person is not from God because he doesn’t carefully observe Shabbat,” but others were saying, “How can a person who is deviating produce signs like these?” and there was a split between them.

¹⁷ Then they said to the formerly blind man again, “What do you say about him, since he opened your eyes?”

“He is a prophet,” he said.

¹⁸ So the Judean authorities didn’t trust the claim about him that he had been blind and then able to use his eyes until they had called the parents of the one who had become able to use his eyes, ¹⁹ and they asked them.

“Is this your son,” they said, “About whom you say, ‘He was born blind’? Then, how is he seeing right now?”

²⁰ Then his parents answered. “We know that this is our son and that he was born blind,” they said. ²¹ “But we don’t know how he can see now. Ask him. He’s old enough. He’ll speak for himself.” ²² (His parents said this because they were afraid of the Judean authorities. You see, the Judean authorities had already agreed together that if anyone acknowledged him as Christ, they would become expelled from the synagogue. ²³ That’s why his parents said, “He’s old enough. Ask him.”)

²⁴ Then they called for the person who had been blind a second time.

“Contribute to God’s praise!” they said to him. “We know that this person is a deviator.”

²⁵ “I don’t know whether he is a deviator,” he answered. “I know one thing, that although I used to be blind, now I can see.”

²⁶ “What did he do to you?” they said. “How did he open your eyes?”

²⁷ “I already told you, and you didn’t listen!” he said. “You don’t want to become his students too, do you?”

²⁸ They verbally attacked him and said, “You are that man’s student, but we are Moses’ students! ²⁹ We know that God has spoken to Moses, but we don’t know where this man is from.”

³⁰ “Well, that’s what makes it amazing, that you don’t know where he’s from, yet he opened my eyes!” the man said to them. ³¹ “We know that God does not listen to deviators, but if someone is respectful of God so that they do what he wants, then God listens. ³² Since ages past, it has not been heard that anyone born blind has had their eyes opened. ³³ Unless this man were from God, he wouldn’t be able to do anything.”

³⁴ They responded to him, “You were born entirely covered with deviations, yet you’re teaching us!” and they expelled him from the community.

³⁵ Jesus heard that they expelled him from the community, and after going to find him, he said, “Have you placed your trust in the Son of Humanity?”

³⁶ “Who is he, sir?” he answered, “so I can place my trust in him?”

³⁷ “You have seen him,” Jesus said, “and he is the one who is speaking with you.”

[| ³⁸ So he said, “I trust, Lord,” and he bowed down to him.

³⁹ Jesus said, |] “I came to the world for justice, so those who can’t see would see and those who can see would become blind.”

⁴⁰ The Pharisees who were with him heard this and said, “We aren’t blind too, are we?”

⁴¹ “If you were blind,” Jesus told them, “You wouldn’t have deviation. But now that you say, ‘We can see,’ your deviation stays present.”

¹ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you, the one who doesn’t go into the sheepyard by the gate but instead climbs in somewhere else, that person is a thief and a robber. ² The one who goes in through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³ The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls the sheep that are his by name and brings them out. ⁴ When he gets out all the ones that are his, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice. ⁵ But they would certainly not follow a stranger and instead run away from them because they don’t recognize strangers’ voices.”

⁶ Jesus told them this proverb, but they didn’t understand what he was telling them.

⁷ So Jesus said again, “Truly, truly, I’m telling you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸ Everyone who came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. ⁹ I am the gate; if anyone comes in through me, they will be protected and will come in and find pasture. ¹⁰ The thief only comes so they can steal, slaughter, and destroy. I came so they could have life and have more than enough.

¹¹ “I am the selfless shepherd. The selfless shepherd sets aside his very being for the sake of the sheep. ¹² The hired staff who is not a shepherd, and the sheep don’t belong to them, they see the wolf coming and abandon the sheep and run away—and the wolf snatches them and causes them to scatter— ¹³ because they are hired staff and don’t care about the sheep.

¹⁴ “I am the selfless shepherd, and I know the ones that are mine, and the ones that are mine know me, ¹⁵ just like the Father knows me, and I know the Father, and I set aside my very being for the sheep. ¹⁶ I also have other sheep that are not from this sheepyard. It’s necessary for me to bring them, and they will listen to my voice, and it will become one flock and one shepherd. ¹⁷ This is why the Father loves me: I set aside my very being with the result that I can receive it again. ¹⁸ No one carries it away from me, but I set it aside myself. I have the right to set it aside, and I have the right to receive it again. I received this direction from my Father.”

¹⁹ Again, there was a split between the Judean authorities because of these conversations. ²⁰ Many of them were saying, “He has a demon and is deranged! Why do you listen to him?” ²¹ Others were saying, “These are not the statements of someone who is haunted by demons. A demon can’t open blind people’s eyes, can it?”

²² Then during the winter, Hanukkah arrived in Jerusalem, ²³ and Jesus was walking in the sacred grounds, in Solomon’s Walkway. ²⁴ Then, the Judean authorities surrounded him and started saying, “How long will you hold us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us openly.”

²⁵ “I told you and you don’t trust me,” Jesus answered them. “The actions I am doing as my Father’s representative vouch for me. ²⁶ However, you don’t trust me because you are not my sheep. ²⁷ My sheep listen to my voice. I know them, and they follow me. ²⁸ I give them agelong life, and they absolutely cannot be destroyed indefinitely, and there isn’t anyone who snatches them from my hand. ²⁹ My Father, who has given them to me, is more powerful than anything, and no one can snatch them from the Father’s hand. ³⁰ The Father and I are one.”

³¹ The Judean authorities picked up stones again, so they could stone him to death.

³² “I’ve shown you many selfless actions from the Father.” Jesus responded. “Which of these actions is why you are stoning me?”

³³ The Judean authorities answered him, “We aren’t stoning you because of selfless actions. Just the opposite, it’s about pretentiousness and because you—a human—are making yourself out to be God!”

³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Isn’t it written in the Torah, which you follow, ‘I said, “You are gods”’? ³⁵ While it calls those ones gods—the conversation of God emerged among them— (and scripture cannot be disregarded), ³⁶ you say about the one which the Father dedicated for sacred purpose and sent to the whole world, ‘You are being pretentious,’ because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? ³⁷ If I don’t do my Father’s work, don’t trust me. ³⁸ But if I do, and if you don’t trust me, then trust the work so that you can learn and know that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.”

³⁹ Then they tried to capture him again, but he got out from their grasp.

⁴⁰ He left again across the Jordan River to the place where, earlier, John was submersing people, and he stayed there. ⁴¹ Many people came to him and were saying, “John didn’t produce any sort of sign, but everything he said about this man was true!” ⁴² And many people trusted Jesus there.

¹ There was someone who was weak with illness, Eleazar from Bethany, which was the village where Miriam and her sister Martha were from ² (Miriam was the one who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet with her hair and whose brother Eleazar was weak with illness). ³ So, Miriam sent a message for Jesus: “Lord, the one you care about is weak with illness.”

⁴ When he heard it, Jesus replied to her, “This illness isn’t resulting in death, but for the sake of praise for God with the result that the Son of God would be praised because of it.” ⁵ (Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Eleazar). ⁶ So, after he heard he was weak with illness, he stayed where he was for two more days.

⁷ Then, after that, he said to his students, “We should go back to Judea.”

⁸ “Rabbi,” his students said to him, “just now, the Judean authorities were trying to stone you to death! And you want to go back there?”

⁹ “Aren’t there 12 hours during the day?” Jesus answered. “If someone walks during the day, they don’t run into anything since they see the light of this world. ¹⁰ But if someone walks during the night, they run into things since the light is not with them.”

¹¹ He said these things, and later he told them, “Our friend Eleazar has fallen asleep; however, I am traveling there so I can wake him up.”

¹² So his students said to him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he’ll be restored from his illness” ¹³ (Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he was talking about resting in sleep).

¹⁴ So then Jesus told them openly, “Eleazar died, ¹⁵ and I’m glad for your sake that I wasn’t there, so you can trust me, but we should go to him.”

¹⁶ Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to his fellow students, “We should go too, so we can die with him.”

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived, he found Eleazar already had been within the tomb for four days. ¹⁸ (Bethany was near Jerusalem, less than two miles away. ¹⁹ Many Judeans had come to Miriam to console her regarding her brother.) ²⁰ So, when Miriam heard Jesus was coming while sitting in her house, she went to go meet him.

²¹ Then Miriam said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. ²² However, I know even now whatever you ask God for, God will give it to you.”

²³ “Your brother will rise up,” Jesus told her.

²⁴ “I know he will rise up at the rising up on the last day,” Miriam said.

²⁵ “I am the rising up and life,” Jesus said to her. “Whoever places their trust in me will live even if they die, ²⁶ and everyone who is alive and places their trust in me certainly won’t die throughout the Age. Do you trust this?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she said, “I have trusted that you are the Christ, God’s Son who has come to the whole world.”

[| ²⁸ After she said this, she went and discretely called her sister Miriam. “The teacher has arrived and is calling for you,” she said. ²⁹ When Miriam heard, she got up quickly and went to him. ³⁰ (Jesus had not yet gone into the village but was still in the place where Martha met with him.) ³¹ Then, the Judeans who were with her in the house consoling her followed her after they saw Miriam get up quickly and leave because they thought she was going to the tomb to mourn there. ³² Then, when Miriam arrived at the place where Jesus was and saw him, she collapsed at his feet. “Lord,” she said to him, “If you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!” |]

³³ Then, as Jesus saw her mourning and the Judeans who had come with her mourning, he angrily confronted himself in the spirit and worked himself up ³⁴ and said, “Where have you laid him?”

“Lord,” they told him, “Come and see.”

³⁵ Jesus wept.

³⁶ Then the Judeans began saying, “Look how much he cared about him!”

³⁷ However, some of them said, “Wasn’t he—since he opened the eyes of the blind man—able to make it so that Eleazar wouldn’t die?”

³⁸ Then, Jesus—angrily confronting himself again—arrived at the tomb. (It was a cave, and a stone was laid over the opening.)

³⁹ “Lift the stone away,” Jesus said.

Martha, the sister of the deceased, told him, “Lord, he already smells since it’s the fourth day.”

⁴⁰ “Didn’t I tell you that if you trusted, you would see God’s praiseworthiness?” Jesus responded. ⁴¹ So they lifted away the stone.

Jesus looked up and said, “Father, I give thanks to you because you listened to me. ⁴² I had learned that you always listen to me, but for the sake of the people standing here I said it aloud so that they can trust that you sent me.”

⁴³ After he said these things, he shouted with a loud voice, “Eleazar, come out here!” ⁴⁴ The one who had died came out, still having his feet and hands bound with strips of cloth and a cloth wrapped around his face. “Remove the binding and let him go,” Jesus told them.

⁴⁵ Then many of the Judeans who had come with Miriam and seen the things he did placed their trust in him. ⁴⁶ But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus did. ⁴⁷ So the lead priests and Pharisees gathered the council together and began saying, “What do we do about this person producing so many signs? ⁴⁸ If we let him go on like this, everyone will place their trust in him, and the Romans will come and take away our place and our people!”

⁴⁹ Then one of them, Caiaphas who was the high priest that year, said to them, “You don’t know anything! ⁵⁰ You haven’t even figured out that it benefits you that one person would die for the sake of the whole population and not the whole people be destroyed. ⁵¹ (He didn’t say this by himself, but rather, as high priest for that year, he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the sake of the people, ⁵² and not for the sake of that people only but so that God’s children who were scattered would be gathered into one.) ⁵³ So, from that day on, they planned together that they would kill him.

⁵⁴ So, Jesus didn’t travel in Judea openly anymore; instead, he went from that region to the area near the Wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and he stayed there with the students.

⁵⁵ It was almost the Jewish festival, Passover, and many people went up to Jerusalem from the countryside before Passover so that they could prepare themselves for religious participation, ⁵⁶ so the lead priests and Pharisees were looking for Jesus.

As they stood in the sacred grounds, they were saying to each other, “What do you think? That it’s certain he won’t come to the festival?” ⁵⁷ (The lead priests and Pharisees had given directions that if someone learned where he was, they should report it, so they could capture him.)

¹ Then, six days before Passover, Jesus went to Bethany, where Eleazar whom Jesus had awakened from among the dead was living, ² so they made him dinner there. Martha was serving, and Eleazar was one of the people reclining at the table with him. ³ Then Miriam got three quarters of a pound of expensive oil perfumed with genuine nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.

⁴ But Judah “of Kerioth,” one of his students (the one about to hand him over) said, ⁵ “Why wasn’t this perfumed oil sold for 300 denarii and it given to the poor?” ⁶ (He didn’t say this because he cared about the poor but instead because he was a thief, and since he held the money box, he would take what was put in it.)

⁷ So Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She has saved it for the day of my burial. ⁸ You see, you always have the poor with you, but you don’t always have me.”

⁹ Then a large crowd of Judeans learned that he was there and came not only because of Jesus but also so they could see Eleazar who had awakened from among the dead. ¹⁰ The lead priests planned that they would kill Eleazar too ¹¹ because many of the Judeans were going, and they were placing their trust in Jesus.

¹² The next day the large crowd that had come for the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, ¹³ so they took branches from the palm trees and went out to go meet him, and they were shouting,

Hoshea na!

Praised be the one who comes representing the LORD

And the king of Israel!

¹⁴ After Jesus found a young donkey, he sat on it, just as it is written, ¹⁵ “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look! Your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt.” ¹⁶ (His students did not understand these things at first, but after Jesus was publicly endorsed, then they called to mind that it was about him these things were written and that they did these things with him.)

¹⁷ Then the crowd that was with him when he called Eleazar from the tomb and awakened him from among the dead was telling people about it. ¹⁸ That’s why the crowd went to go meet him, since they heard this about him having produced the sign. ¹⁹ So the Pharisees said to each other, “Realize that you can’t gain anything from this! Look, the whole world has followed after him!”

²⁰ Greeks were among those who went up to offer themselves to God during the festival. ²¹ They went up to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we want to see Jesus.” ²² Philip went and told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

²³ “The time has come for the Son of Humanity to be publicly endorsed,” Jesus responded. ²⁴ “Truly, Truly, I’m telling you, unless a kernel of wheat that fell to the ground dies, it stays alone, but if it dies, it produces much crop. ²⁵ Whoever is attached to their very being ruins it, and whoever hates their very being within this world system protects it for agelong life. ²⁶ If someone intends to serve me, they must follow me, and where I am, my servant will be there too. If anyone assists me, the Father will affirm their value.

²⁷ “Now my very being is agitated, but what should I say? ‘Father, rescue me from this hour’? Just the opposite, this hour is why I came. ²⁸ ‘Father, show your name to be praiseworthy.’”

Then a voice came from the heavens, “I am showing it to be praiseworthy and will show it to be praiseworthy.”

²⁹ Then the crowd that had stood there and heard it began to say that there had been thunder. Others were saying, “A messenger has spoken to him!”

³⁰ “This voice didn’t happen for my benefit but for yours,” Jesus responded. ³¹ Now is the assessment of this world system; now the leader of this world system will be thrown outside. ³² And if I am lifted up from the ground, I will draw all people to me. ³³ (He was saying this as a sign of the kind of death he was going to die.)

³⁴ Then the crowd responded, “We have heard from the Torah that the Christ stays present throughout the Age, so how can you say that it’s necessary for the Son of Humanity to be lifted up?”

³⁵ Then Jesus told them, “The light is still with you for a short time. Walk while you have the light, so the dark won’t overtake you. Whoever walks in the dark can’t see where they’re going. ³⁶ While you have the light, place your trust in the light so you can become heirs of light.”

³⁷ Though he had produced so many of his signs in front of them, they didn’t place their trust in him, ³⁸ resulting in what Isaiah discussed being given a fuller meaning: It said, “Lord, who trusted in what we heard? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” ³⁹ This is why they couldn’t trust: Again, Isaiah said, ⁴⁰ “He has blinded their eyes and numbed their heart, so they wouldn’t see with their eyes and begin to perceive with their heart and turn around, and I would heal them.” ⁴¹ Isaiah said these things because he understood his praiseworthiness. ⁴² Nevertheless, even many of the leaders trusted him, but because of the Pharisees, they were not acknowledging him so they wouldn’t be expelled from the synagogue. ⁴³ You see, they loved praise from people more than praise from God.

⁴⁴ So Jesus shouted, “Whoever places their trust in me doesn’t place their trust in me but the one who sent me, ⁴⁵ and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. ⁴⁶ I have come as light for the whole world so that everyone who places their trust in me wouldn’t stay in the dark. ⁴⁷ If anyone hears the things I say and doesn’t pay close attention to them, I don’t assess them because I didn’t come so that I could put the whole world on trial but so that I could liberate the whole world. ⁴⁸ Whoever opposes me and doesn’t receive the things I say has someone assessing them. What I have said in conversation assesses them on the last day. ⁴⁹ That’s because I haven’t spoken by myself but the same Father who sent me has given direction for what I should say and how I should speak. ⁵⁰ I understand that his direction is agelong life. Therefore, I say what I say just as the Father has told me.”

¹ Since Jesus understood before the festival of Passover that the time had come for him to go over from this world to the Father and since he had loved those within the world who belonged with him, he loved them to the end. ² During dinner, the False Accuser had already poured into the heart of Judah “of Kerioth,” son of Simeon, that he would hand Jesus over, ³ and since Jesus knew that the Father had handed everything to him and that he came from God and was going to God, ⁴ he got up from dinner, took off his outer clothes, got a towel, and tied it around himself. ⁵ Then he poured water into a washbasin and began to wash the students’ feet and wipe them off with the towel that was wrapped around him.

⁶ Then Simeon Peter came to him. “Lord,” he said, “Are you going to wash my feet?”

⁷ “Right now, you don’t understand what I’m doing,” Jesus answered, “But this is how you will learn.”

⁸ “You must not wash my feet, even to the end of the Age!” Peter told him.

“If I don’t wash you,” Jesus responded, “You have no part with me.”

⁹ “Lord!” Simeon Peter said, “Don’t only wash my feet but also my hands and head!”

¹⁰ “Whoever has bathed,” Jesus told him, “Doesn’t need anything except to wash their feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all of you.” ¹¹ (You see, he had understood who would hand him over. That’s why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”)

¹² Then, after he washed their feet, he got his outer clothing, and he reclined at the table again.

“Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked. ¹³ “You call to me, ‘Teacher!’ and ‘Lord!’ and you saying so is appropriate because I am those things. ¹⁴ So, if I—the lord and teacher—washed your feet, then you owe washing feet to each other. ¹⁵ I gave you an example so that just like I washed you, you will do it too.

¹⁶ “Truly, truly, I’m telling you, an enslaved worker is not more important than their lord, nor is an emissary more important than the one who sent them. ¹⁷ If you have learned these things, then you would be gratified if you were to do them.

¹⁸ “I’m not talking about all of you. I know which ones I have called out, but the result is that the scripture is being lived out: ‘The one who eats my bread has raised his heel against me.’ ¹⁹ I’m telling you this now, before the event, so that when it happens, you will trust that I am the one. ²⁰ Truly, Truly, I’m telling you, whoever accepts whichever person I send accepts me, and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

²¹ After Jesus had said these things, he was deeply agitated and asserted, “Truly, truly, I’m telling you that one of you will hand me over.”

²² The students looked at each other, at a loss about what he was saying. ²³ One of his students reclining at the table was at Jesus’ chest, the one Jesus loved. ²⁴ Simeon Peter nodded to this one to ask whom he could be talking about.

²⁵ So leaning back against Jesus’ chest, they said to him, “Lord, who is it?”

²⁶ “It’s the one I will give a piece of bread after I dip it,” Jesus answered. Then he got a piece and, after dipping it, he gave it to Judah son of Simeon “of Kerioth.” ²⁷ Then, after the piece of bread, the Adversary went into him.

Then Jesus said to him, “Do what you’re going to do quickly.” ²⁸ (None of the people reclining at the table understood why he told him that. ²⁹ Some thought, since Judah held the money box, that Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the festival,” or, “Buy something to give to people experiencing poverty.”) ³⁰ After accepting the piece of bread, he left immediately (It was nighttime).

³¹ When Judah left, Jesus said, “The Son of Humanity has now had his praiseworthiness made known, and God has had God's own praiseworthiness made known in connection with him. ³² If God has been shown to be praiseworthy in connection with him, God will also show the Son of Humanity to be praiseworthy in connection with God, and God will show his praiseworthiness immediately.

³³ “Children, I am still with you for a short time. You will look for me, and just like I told the Judean authorities, ‘Where I am going you can’t come,’ I’m also saying to it you now.

³⁴ “I am giving you a new direction, that you would love each other, that you would also love each other just like I loved you. ³⁵ This is how everyone will know that you are my students: if you have love between each other.”

³⁶ “Lord,” Simeon Peter said to him, “Where are you going?”

Jesus answered, “Right now, you can’t follow where I’m going, but you will follow later.”

³⁷ “Lord,” said Peter, “Why can’t I follow you right now? I will set aside my very being for you!”

³⁸ “You will set aside your very being for me?” Jesus responded. “Truly, truly, I’m telling you, the rooster certainly won’t crow until you have disregarded me three times.

¹ “Don’t let your hearts be agitated. Place your trust in God, and place your trust in me. ² There are many places to stay in my Father’s house. If not, would I have told you that I am leaving to get a place ready for you? ³ And if I leave and get a place ready for you, I am coming again and will take you along with me, so you can also be where I am. ⁴ You know the path to where I’m going.”

⁵ “Lord,” said Thomas, “We don’t know where you’re going. How can we know the path?”

⁶ Jesus said, “I am the path, truth and life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷ If you have gotten to know me, you will also know my Father. And—from now on—you do know and have seen the Father.”

⁸ “Lord,” said Philip, “Show us the Father, and it will be enough for us.”

⁹ Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long, and you haven’t gotten to know me, Philip? Whoever sees me sees the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰ Don’t you trust that I am connected with the Father, and the Father is connected with me? I don’t say the statements I have said to you by myself, but the Father accomplishes these things while staying present with me. ¹¹ Trust me that I am connected with the Father and the Father is connected with me, but if you don’t, then trust these actions. ¹² Truly, truly, I’m telling you, whoever trusts me will do the actions that I do, and they will also do more impressive things than these. ¹³ Whatever you would ask for as my representatives, I will do it, resulting in the Father being praised in connection with the Son. ¹⁴ If you ask me for anything as my representatives, I will do it.

¹⁵ “If you love me, pay close attention to my directions. ¹⁶ I will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another Advocate to be with you throughout the Age, ¹⁷ the Life-Breath of truth which the world system is not able to accept because it doesn’t see her or understand her. You understand it because it stays present alongside you and it will be among you. ¹⁸ I won’t leave you all alone; I will come to you. ¹⁹ In a short time, the whole world won’t see me anymore, but you will continue to see me because I am alive and you’ll be alive. ²⁰ On that day, you will understand that I am connected with my Father, and you are connected with me, and I am connected with you. ²¹ Whoever has my directions and pays close attention to them is who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and will show myself to them.”

²² “Lord,” said Judah (not “of Kerioth”), “What has happened that you are going to show yourself to us and not to the whole world?”

²³ “If someone loves me,” answered Jesus, “they will pay close attention to my discussion, and my Father will love them, and I will come to them and make a place to stay alongside them. ²⁴ Whoever doesn’t love me doesn’t pay close attention to the things I discuss; the discussion you’re hearing is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.

²⁵ “I have said these things to you while present alongside you, ²⁶ but the Advocate, the Sacred Life-Breath, which the Father will send on my behalf, will teach you everything and remind you of everything I said to you. ²⁷ I am leaving peace with you. I am giving you my peace; how I give it to you is not like how the world system gives it. Don’t let your hearts be agitated or fearful. ²⁸ You heard me tell you, ‘I’m going away, and I’m coming back to you.’ If you had loved me, you would have celebrated that I am going to the Father because the Father is more significant than me. ²⁹ I’ve told you now, before it happens, so that when it happens you can trust me. ³⁰ I won’t speak with you much longer because the leader of the world system is coming. He doesn’t have any connection with me, ³¹ but so the whole world will know that I love the Father, I will do just as the Father directed me. Get up, let’s get going from here.”

¹ “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. ² The Father removes every branch connected with me that doesn’t produce a crop and cleanses each one that produces a crop so that it can produce a larger crop. ³ You are already clean because of what I’ve spoken about with you in conversation. ⁴ Stay present with me, and me present with you. Just like the branch can’t produce a crop by itself if it doesn’t stay connected with the vine, it’s the same with you if you don’t stay present with me.

⁵ “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever stays connected with me and me connected with them—they are who produce a large crop because you aren’t able to do anything separated from me. ⁶ If someone doesn’t stay connected with me, they are thrown outside like a branch and wither, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. ⁷ If you stay present with me and my statements stay present with you, then ask for whatever you want, and it will happen for you. ⁸ This is how my Father is shown to be praiseworthy: that you produce a large crop and become my students.

⁹ “Just like the Father loved me, I also loved you. Stay present with my love. ¹⁰ If you pay close attention to my directions, you will stay present with my love, just like I have paid close attention to my Father’s directions, and I stay present with my Father's love. ¹¹ I have spoken about these things to you so my joy would stay present among you and your joy could be filled up. ¹² This is my direction: that you would love each other like I loved you. ¹³ No one has a more impressive love than this: that someone sets aside their very life for their friends.

¹⁴ “You are my friends if you do what I am directing you to do. ¹⁵ I say you aren’t enslaved anymore since an enslaved worker doesn’t know what their lord does; however, I have said you are friends because I let you know everything I heard from my Father. ¹⁶ You didn’t pick me; instead, I picked you and set you aside so that you would go and produce a crop, and your crop would stay present, so that the Father would give you whatever you ask for as my representatives. ¹⁷ I am giving you these directions so that you would love each other.

¹⁸ “If the world system hates you, you’ll understand that it has hated me first. ¹⁹ If you were part of the world system, the world system would love its own. But since you are not part of the world system—just the opposite, I pulled you out of the world system—that’s why the world system hates you. ²⁰ Remember what I said in conversation with you: “The enslaved worker is not more respected than their lord.” If they pursued me, they will also pursue you. If they paid close attention to my discussion, then they will also pay close attention to yours. ²¹ But they will do all these things to you because you represent me, because they don’t know the one who sent me. ²² As long as I didn’t come and didn’t speak to them, they didn’t have deviation, but now they don’t have an excuse for their deviation. ²³ Whoever hates me hates my Father. ²⁴ As long as I did not do the actions among them that no one else did, then they did not have deviation. But now they have seen and have hated both me and my Father. ²⁵ Nevertheless, the result is that what was expressed with words written in the Hebrew Bible, which they follow, will be given a fuller meaning: ‘They hated me without cause.’ ²⁶ When the Advocate that I will send to you from the Father comes—the Life-breath of the truth that goes out from the Father—she will tell about me. ²⁷ You will also tell about me because you have been with me from the beginning.

¹ “I have told you these things so that you won’t be tripped up. ² They will make you banned from the synagogue. Certainly, the time is coming that anyone who killed you would be intending to deliver a dutiful service to God, ³ and they will do these things because they don’t know the Father or me. ⁴ However, I have told you about these things so that when the time for them comes, you can call to mind that I told you about them.

“I didn’t tell you these things from the beginning because I was with you, ⁵ but now I am going to the one who sent me, and none of you is asking me anymore, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶ Certainly, sadness has filled your hearts because I have told you these things. ⁷ However, I’m telling you the truth: It’s helpful to you that I go away because if I didn’t go away, the Advocate wouldn’t come to you, but if I leave, I will send her to you.

⁸ “When that one comes, she will provide proof against the world system about deviation and living justly and assessment: ⁹ about deviation, certainly, because they don’t trust me; ¹⁰ but also, about living justly because I’m leaving to the Father, and you aren’t going to see me anymore; ¹¹ and also, about assessment because the leader of this world system has been assessed.

¹² “I still have a lot to tell you, but you can’t bear them right now. ¹³ But when that one—the Life-breath of truth—comes, she will guide you regarding every truth. You see, she will not speak by herself; instead, she will speak whatever she hears, and she will announce the things coming to you. ¹⁴ That one will announce my praiseworthiness because she will receive what is mine and announce it to you. ¹⁵ Anything the Father has is mine. That’s why I said, ‘She will receive what is mine and announce it to you.’ ¹⁶ After a short time, you won’t see me anymore, and after another short time, you will see me again.”

¹⁷ Then some of his students said to each other, “What does he mean when he says, ‘After a short time you won’t see me, and after another short time you will see me again’? and, ‘I’m leaving to the Father’?” ¹⁸ So they kept saying, “What does he mean when he says, ‘a short time’? We don’t understand what he is saying.”

¹⁹ Jesus perceived that they were wanting to ask him, so he said, “Are you trying to figure this out with each other when I said, ‘After a short time, you won’t see me, and after another short time you will see me again’? ²⁰ Truly, truly, I’m telling you, you will weep and mourn, but the world system will celebrate. You will experience grief, but your grief will become joy. ²¹ When a woman gives birth, she experiences grievous pain because her time has come, but when her child is born, she doesn’t call to mind the suffering anymore because of her joy that a person has been born into the world. ²² So even though you will certainly experience grief for now, also, I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. ²³ And on that day, you won’t ask me for anything. Truly, truly, I’m telling you, whatever you ask from the Father as my representatives will be given to you. ²⁴ Up to this point, you haven’t asked for anything as my representatives. Ask, and you’ll receive it, so that your joy can be made full.

²⁵ “I’ve been saying these things to you in figures of speech. A time is coming when I won’t talk to you in figures of speech anymore but will openly make an announcement to you about the Father. ²⁶ On that day, you will ask as my representatives—which is not me saying that I will ask the Father on your behalf. ²⁷ You see, the Father themself cares about you, since you have cared about me and have trusted that I came from God. ²⁸ I came from the Father, and I have spoken to the whole world. I’m leaving the world again, and I’m going to the Father.”

²⁹ His students said, “Look, you are speaking openly now and not talking in figures of speech anymore. ³⁰ Now we understand that you’ve understood everything and don’t need anyone to ask for anything for you.”

³¹ “Do you trust me now?” Jesus asked them. ³² “Look, a time is coming—and has arrived—when each of you will be scattered to your own, and you’ll leave me all alone. But I am not alone because the Father is with me. ³³ I’ve told you these things so that you’ll have peace connection with me; you’ll have suffering connected with the world system. However, be encouraged: I have triumphed over the world system.

¹ Jesus talked about these things, and after looking up to the heavens, he said, “Father, the time has come. Make the praiseworthiness of your Son known, so the Son would make your praiseworthiness known, ² just like you gave him responsibility for all the Family so that he would give agelong life to everyone you have given him. ³ And, this is agelong life: that they would know you, the only trustworthy God and the one you sent, Jesus Christ. ⁴ I praised you on the land, completing the actions you have given me for me to do. ⁵ Now, Father, praise me with the praise which I began to have beside you before the existence of the world.

⁶ “I represented you to the people of the world whom you gave to me. They were for you, and you gave them to me, and they have paid close attention to your conversation. ⁷ Now they have learned that everything you have given to me is from you. ⁸ Since I gave them the statements you gave me, they accepted and truly came to understand that I came from you, and they trusted that you sent me.

⁹ “I am asking regarding them; I’m not asking regarding the whole world but specifically about the ones you have given me, since they are yours. ¹⁰ Everything that’s mine is yours, and yours is mine, and I have been praised in connection with them. ¹¹ I’m not in the world anymore, and they are in the world, and I am coming to be with you. Sacred Father, as your representative, I say to watch over the ones you have given to me, so they can be one just like we are.

¹² “While I was with them, I watched over the ones you have given to me as your representative, and I kept an eye on them, and none of them was killed, except the one committed to killing, so that the scripture could be given a fuller meaning. ¹³ But now I’m coming to be with you and I’m speaking these things in the world so that they can have my joy filled up among themselves. ¹⁴ I have shared your conversation with them, and the world system hated them because they are not part of the world system just like I am not part of the world system.

¹⁵ “I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but that you would watch and protect them from hardship. ¹⁶ They are not part of the world system just like I am not part of the world system. ¹⁷ Dedicate them for sacred purposes connected with your truth; your conversation is truth. ¹⁸ Just like you sent me to the whole world, I also sent them to the whole world. ¹⁹ I dedicate myself for sacred purposes for their sake so they can also be dedicated for sacred purposes connected with truth.

²⁰ “I’m not asking only on behalf of these ones but also on behalf of those who have placed their trust in me because of their conversation, ²¹ so that everyone would be one, just like you, Father, are connected with me and I am connected with you, so that they can also be connected with us, so that the whole world would trust that you commissioned me. ²² The praiseworthiness you gave me, I have given to them too so that they would be one just like we are one. ²³ I am connected with them, and you are connected with me, so they can be completely made into one, so that the whole world would know that you commissioned me and that you loved them just like you loved me.

²⁴ “Father, I want the ones you have given to me to be with me where I am so that they can see my praiseworthiness, which you have given to me because you loved me before the conception of the whole world. ²⁵ Just Father, the whole world hasn’t come to know you, but I have known you, and these ones have come to know that you sent me. ²⁶ I made and will make your name known to them, so that the love with which you loved me may be among them and I may be among them.”

¹ After saying these things, Jesus went out with his students across the Wadi Kidron. He and his students went into a garden that was there. ² Judah, who handed him over, had also known the place because Jesus often gathered there with his students. ³ Then Judah—after getting the squad of soldiers and some attendants of the lead priests and Pharisees—came there with lanterns and torches and weapons.

⁴ Then Jesus, perceiving everything that was about to happen to him, went out and said to them, “Who are you looking for?”

⁵ “Jesus the Nazarene,” they answered.

“I am he,” he said. (Judah, who handed him over, was standing with them).

⁶ When he said to them, “I am he,” they backed away and fell to the ground.

⁷ Then, again, he demanded of them, “Who are you looking for!”

So they told him, “Jesus the Nazarene.”

⁸ “I told you, ‘I am he,’” answered Jesus. “So, if you’re looking for me, let these people go.” ⁹ Him saying so was living out what he said in conversation: “I haven’t lost any of those you have given to me to death.”

¹⁰ Then Simeon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the worker enslaved by high priest and cut off his right ear. The name of the enslaved worker was Melech.

¹¹ Then Jesus told Peter, “Drop the sword in its sheath! Shouldn’t I certainly drink the cup the Father has given me?”

¹² Then the squad of soldiers and the commander and the attendants of the Judean authorities took Jesus prisoner and bound him. ¹³ They brought him to Annas first. He was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year. ¹⁴ It was Caiaphas who advised the Judean authorities that it would be beneficial for one person to die for the sake of the whole population.

¹⁵ Simeon Peter and another student were following Jesus. That student was someone who knew the high priest, and he went in with Jesus to the high priest’s courtyard. ¹⁶ Peter had stood outside near the entrance. Then the other student who knew the high priest came out and spoke to the girl watching the entrance and brought Peter inside.

¹⁷ Then the girl who was watching the door said to Peter, “Aren’t you also one of this person’s students?”

“I am not,” he said.

¹⁸ The enslaved workers and attendants had been standing around a charcoal fire they had made and warming themselves because it was cold. Peter, who was also standing and warming himself, was with them.

¹⁹ Then the high priest questioned Jesus about his students and about his teaching.

²⁰ “I have spoken openly to the whole world,” answered Jesus. “I always taught in a synagogue and in the sacred grounds where all the Judeans got together, and I didn’t say anything secretly. ²¹ Why are you asking me? Ask the people who have heard what I said to them. Look, they know what I said.”

²² While Jesus was saying these things, one of the attendants standing nearby hit Jesus in the face and said, “Is this how you answer the high priest!”

²³ “If I said something wrong,” answered Jesus, “then tell me about what was wrong, but if I said what is right, why are you beating me?”

²⁴ Then Annas sent him, still bound, to Caiaphas the high priest.

²⁵ Simeon Peter was still standing and warming himself. Then people said to him, “Aren’t you also one of his students?”

Peter denied it. “I am not,” he said.

²⁶ One of the workers enslaved by the high priest, who was a relative of the one whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?”

²⁷ Then Peter denied it again, and immediately a rooster crowed.

²⁸ Before dawn, they brought Jesus from Caiaphas to the Roman headquarters. They did not go inside the Roman headquarters so they would not be contaminated but could eat the Passover meal.

²⁹ Pilate came outside with them and demanded, “What accusation are you loading on this man?”

³⁰ “We would not hand him over to you if he were not making trouble,” they answered.

³¹ Then, Pilate told them, “Take him and put him on trial based on your law yourselves.”

The Judean authorities answered, “It’s not allowed for us to kill anyone.”

³² It resulted in what Jesus had discussed, when he spoke signaling what kind of death he was going to die, being brought to reality.

³³ Pilate went back inside the Roman headquarters and called for Jesus.

“Are you the king of the Judeans?” he asked.

³⁴ “Are you saying this by yourself, or did others tell you about me?” replied Jesus.

³⁵ “I’m not a Judean, am I?” answered Pilate. “The lead priests—your own people—handed you over to me. What did you do?”

³⁶ “My reign is not part of this world system,” replied Jesus. “If my reign were part of this world system, my attendants would be fighting so that I wouldn’t be handed over to the Judean authorities. The reality is that my reign is not of that origin.”

³⁷ “So, aren’t you a king then?” said Pilate.

“You’re saying I’m a king,” replied Jesus. “I was born for this—I’ve come to the world for this: so I could present the truth. Everyone who is from the truth listens to my voice.”

³⁸ Pilate said to him, “What is truth?”

After saying this, he went out again to the Judean authorities and said, “I find nothing incriminating in connection with him. ³⁹ But it’s customary to you that I set someone free for you at the Passover. Are you intending, then, for me to set free the king of the Judeans for you?”

⁴⁰ They shouted back, “Not this one! Barabbas instead!” (Barabbas was a criminal.)

¹ So, Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged severely. ² After weaving a crown from thorns, the soldiers put it on his head and wrapped him in a purple cloak. ³ They began to come up to him repeatedly and say, “Hello, King of the Judeans!” and hit him in the face.

⁴ Pilate went outside again and said to them, “Look, I’m bringing him outside to you so you can understand I find nothing incriminating in connection with him.” ⁵ Then Jesus came outside, wearing the thorny crown and the purple cloak. “Here’s the person!” Pilate said to them.

⁶ When the lead priests and attendants saw him, they shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

“Take him,” said Pilate, “And crucify him yourselves! I find nothing incriminating in connection with him.”

⁷ “We have a law,” the Judean authorities responded, “And based on the law, he should die because he made himself out to be the Son of God!”

⁸ When Pilate heard what they were saying, he became even more afraid, ⁹ and he went back into the Roman headquarters and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” Jesus didn’t give him an answer. ¹⁰ Then Pilate said to him, “Are you not speaking to me? Don’t you understand that I have the authority to set you free and the authority to crucify you!”

¹¹ “You wouldn’t have authority over me at all if it weren’t given to you from higher up,” replied Jesus.

¹² From then on, Pilate tried to set him free, but the Judean authorities shouted, “If you set this person free, you are no friend of Caesar! Everyone who makes themselves out to be a king contradicts Caesar!”

¹³ Having heard the things they were saying, Pilate brought Jesus outside and sat on the judgment seat at the place called “The Stone Pavement” (Gabbatha in Aramaic). ¹⁴ It was the day of preparation for Passover, and it was about midday.

“Here is your king!” he said to the Judean authorities.

¹⁵ Then they shouted, “Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!”

“Should I crucify your king?” Pilate said to them.

“We have no king except Caesar,” answered the lead priests.

¹⁶ So then, he handed him over to them so he could be crucified. They received Jesus, ¹⁷ and while carrying his own cross, he went out to the place called “The Place of the Skull” (which, in Aramaic, is said, Golgotha). ¹⁸ They crucified him there, along with two others, one on each side with Jesus in the middle. ¹⁹ Pilate also had a title written and attached on the cross, which read, “Jesus the Nazarene, the king of the Judeans,” ²⁰ so many Judeans read that title since the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek.

²¹ “Don’t write, ‘The king of the Judeans,’” the lead priests of the Judeans said to Pilate, “But that he said, ‘I am king of the Judeans.’”

²² “I have written what I have written,” replied Pilate.

²³ When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and made four parts, a part for each soldier, plus the tunic. The tunic was seamless, woven from the top down through the whole thing. ²⁴ So, they said to each other, “Let’s not tear it apart. Instead, let’s cast lots for whose it will be. The result was that the scripture was lived out that says, “They divided my clothes among themselves, and they cast lots for my clothing.” Then the soldiers actually did these things.

²⁵ Standing near Jesus’ cross were his mother, his mother’s sister, Miriam the wife of Clopas, and Miriam the Tower. ²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the student whom he loved standing there, he said to his mother, “Ma’am, here is your son.” ²⁷ Next, he said to the student, “Here is your mother.” And from that time on, the student received her into their own family.

²⁸ With this, Jesus, who understood that everything had now been completed, said, “I’m thirsty,” which completed the scripture. ²⁹ A jar full of sour wine was there, so after putting a sponge soaked with the sour wine on a length of hyssop, they lifted it to his mouth.

³⁰ After he received the sour wine, Jesus said, “It has been completed,” and lowering his head, he gave over the Life-breath.

³¹ Then, because it was the day of preparation, which meant the bodies should not stay on the crosses on Shabbat—that Shabbat was an especially important day—the Judean authorities asked Pilate for their legs to be broken and the bodies to be removed. ³² So the soldiers came and did so, breaking the legs first of the one and then of the other person who had been crucified with him. ³³ But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, so they did not break his legs. ³⁴ Instead, one of the soldiers stabbed the side of his body with his spear, and immediately, blood and water came out.

³⁵ The one who saw it has told about it so that you could trust too. He knows that what he says is true, and his report is trustworthy. ³⁶ You see, these things happened which gave a fuller meaning to the scriptures: “Not a bone of it will be broken.” ³⁷ Additionally, a different scripture says, “They will look at the one whom they have stabbed.”

³⁸ After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a student of Jesus but had hidden it because of fear of the Judean authorities, asked Pilate to be able to remove Jesus’ body. Pilate gave him permission, so he came and removed his body. ³⁹ Nicodemus came too, the one who first came to Jesus at night, carrying about 75 pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloe. ⁴⁰ They took Jesus’ body and wrapped it in strips of linen with the perfumes, as is the burial custom for Jews. ⁴¹ At the place where he was crucified was a garden, and a new tomb was in the garden where no one had been buried. ⁴² So, because it was the day of preparation for the Jews, they buried Jesus there since the tomb was nearby.

¹ On the first day of the week, Miriam the Tower came to the tomb before dawn while it was still dark, and she saw the stone had been removed from the tomb. ² So she ran, and she went to Simeon Peter and the other student whom Jesus was close with.

“They took the Lord from the tomb,” she told them, “And I don’t know where they put him!”

³ So Peter and the other student went out and began to go to the tomb. ⁴ The two were began to run together, but the other student ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first. ⁵ Bending down, they saw the strips of linen lying there; however, they didn’t go inside. ⁶ Then Simeon Peter, who was behind them, arrived and went inside the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, ⁷ and the face cloth, which had been over Jesus’ head, was not lying with the strips of linen, but was rolled up in a spot by itself instead. ⁸ So, then the other student who arrived first also went inside the tomb and saw it, and they trusted. ⁹ (You see, the students didn’t yet understand the scripture about it being necessary for him to rise up from among the dead.) ¹⁰ Then the students went away again to their families.

¹¹ Miriam had stayed and stood at the tomb, weeping outside. Then, while she was weeping, she bent down to look into the tomb, ¹² and she saw two messengers in white sitting where Jesus’ body had been lying, one by the head and one by the feet.

¹³ “Ma’am,” they said to her, “Why are you weeping?”

“Because,” she said, “They took away my Lord, and I don’t know where they put him.” ¹⁴ After she said this, she turned around, and she saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t realize it was Jesus.

¹⁵ “Ma’am,” said Jesus, “Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”

Because she thought he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you carried him away, tell me where you put him, and I will take him.”

¹⁶ “Miriam,” Jesus said to her.

She turned around and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni (which means, ‘Teacher’)!”

¹⁷ Jesus told her, “Do not touch me because I haven’t gone up to the Father yet, but go to my Family and tell them I said, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸ Miriam the Tower went to bring the message to the students: “I have seen the Lord!” and she told them what he said.

¹⁹ Then, when it was the evening of that day, the first day of the week, and the students had gathered and locked the doors for fear of the Judean authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. “Peace be with you!” he said to them. ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the students celebrated having seen the Lord.

²¹ The Jesus said again, “Peace be with you! Just like the Father has sent me, I am sending you too.” ²² After saying this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Sacred Life-breath! ²³ Whenever you dismiss anyone’s deviations, they are dismissed for them. Whenever you hold on to them, they are held onto.”

²⁴ Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So, the other students told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he said to them, “Unless I see the wounds from the nails in his hands and poke my finger in the wounds from the nails and my hand into his side, I absolutely will not trust it!”

²⁶ After 8 days, his students were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came through the locked doors and stood among them.

“Peace be with you!” he said. ²⁷ Then, he said to Thomas, “Move your finger here, and look at my hands, and move your hand and poke it into my side. Don’t become distrustful, but be a trustful person.”

²⁸ “My Lord and my God!” Thomas responded.

²⁹ “Have you trusted because you have seen me?” Jesus said to him. “Those who don’t see me yet have trusted are truly gratified!”

³⁰ Then Jesus also produced many other signs in the presence of students that are not written in this book. ³¹ These ones have been written so that you can trust that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and so that since you trust, you can have life as his representatives.

¹ Later, Jesus showed himself to the students again at Lake Tiberias. Here’s how he showed himself:

² Simeon Peter, Thomas (called Didymus), Nathanael (the one from Cana in Galilee), the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his students were together. ³ Simeon Peter said to them, “I’m going fishing.”

“We’re coming with you too,” they said.

They went out and got into the boat, and they didn’t catch anything that night. ⁴ When it had reached early morning, Jesus stood on the beach; however, the students did not realize it was Jesus. ⁵ So Jesus said to them, “Children, you don’t have any fish, do you?”

“No,” they replied.

⁶ “Cast your net on the right side of the boat,” he told them, “And you’ll find some.” So, they cast it, and they weren’t strong enough to pull it in anymore from how many fish there were.

⁷ So, the student whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It’s the Lord!”

When Simeon Peter heard “It’s the Lord!” he tied his clothing around himself (because he was naked) and threw himself into the lake. ⁸ Then the other students came in the boat, dragging the net of fish, since they were not a long way from land, only about 100 yards. ⁹ When they got out onto the land, they saw a charcoal fire set up and fish placed over it and bread.

¹⁰ “Bring some of the fish you’ve now caught,” Jesus said to them. ¹¹ So, Simeon Peter went aboard and dragged the net onto the land. It was filled with 153 large fish. Though there were so many, the net wasn’t torn.

¹² “Come here, have breakfast,” said Jesus.

None of the students dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. ¹³ Jesus came, picked up the bread and gave it to them, and he did the same with the fish. ¹⁴ This was now the third time Jesus was shown to the students after he was awakened from among the dead.

¹⁵ After they had breakfast, Jesus said to Simeon Peter, “Simeon, son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord. You know that I care about you,” he said.

“Feed my lambs,” said Jesus.

¹⁶ Again, Jesus said to him a second time, “Simeon, son of John, do you love me?”

“Yes, Lord. You know that I care about you,” he said.

“Take care of my sheep,” said Jesus.

¹⁷ The third time, Jesus said to him, “Simeon, son of John, do you care about me?” Peter was heartbroken that, the third time, Jesus said to him, “Do you care about me?”

“Lord,” he said, “You understand everything. You know that I care about you.”

“Feed my sheep,” said Jesus. ¹⁸ “Truly, Truly, I’m telling you, when you were young, you used to strap a belt around yourself and walk around wherever you wanted, but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and others will strap you up and take you where you don’t want to go.” ¹⁹ (He said this to be a sign of with what type of death he would praise God.)

After saying this, Jesus said to Peter, “Follow me.”

²⁰ Turning around, Peter saw the student whom Jesus loved following (this was the one who leaned back against his chest at the dinner and said, “Lord, who is the one who’s handing you over?”).

²¹ At seeing them, Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, what about them?”

²² “If I want them to stay present until I come,” said Jesus, “What is it to you? Follow me!”

²³ So discussion of the idea went out to the Family that this student would not die. However, Jesus didn’t say that they wouldn’t die; instead, he said, “If I want them to stay present until I come, what is it to you?”

²⁴ This is the student who is telling about these things and writing these things, and we have seen that their report is trustworthy. ²⁵ There is a lot of other things that Jesus did. If each of them was written down, then I think not even the whole world would have room for the books that would be written.