Comparative Theology · Additions & Interpolations

John 5:4 and the Angel at the Pool

Handle with care. The verse carries no doctrine, so do not overstate its significance. Its value is as a clear, uncontested example of the process.

In short

• 1.John 5:4 is absent from the earliest and best manuscripts
• 2.It explains why the sick were waiting by the pool — a detail the original leaves unexplained
• 3.Modern Bibles skip from verse 3 to verse 5

The claim being examined

An explanatory verse about an angel stirring the waters of Bethesda was added by scribes to make sense of the narrative, and has now been removed again.

The Islamic position

This card shows the mechanism of interpolation in its simplest form: a reader's explanation becomes scripture in the next copy.

Analysis

The original narrative simply describes invalids lying by the pool and a man who cannot reach the water in time. Later copies supply the reason: an angel descended at intervals to stir the water, and the first to enter was healed. The verse uses vocabulary unusual for John and is missing from the earliest papyri and the great fourth-century codices. It is the clearest available demonstration that scribes did not merely copy — they clarified, and the clarification was inherited as the text.

Side by side

From the Qur'an

From the Bible

Sources

Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament · Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus

More in Additions & Interpolations

• 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: The Silence of Women
• Fairness Check: What This Argument Does and Does Not Prove
• The Bloody Sweat and 'Father, Forgive Them'
• The Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)
• The Long Ending of Mark (16:9-20)
• The Missing Verses of Modern Bibles