The Gospels

by Sarah Ruden

  12 After this, he went down to Kafarnaoum*30—himself and his mother and [his] brothers and his students, and there he stayed a few days.

  13 And the pascha*31 of the Ioudaioi was near, and Iēsous went up to Hierosoluma.

  14 And in the temple precinct he found people selling cattle and sheep and doves, and the coin-changers sitting there, 15 and he made a small whip out of small cords and threw them all out of the precinct along with the sheep and cattle, and he poured out the coins of the money-changers on the ground, and he turned the tables upside down. 16 And to those selling doves he said, “Get these things out of here! Don’t make my father’s house a house for hawking.” 17 His students remembered that it had been written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”*32

  18 So the Ioudaioi responded and said to him, “What sign are you showing us, for doing these things?” 19 Iēsous responded by telling them: “Destroy this shrine, and in three days I’ll raise it again.”*33 20 So the Ioudaioi said, “For forty-six years, they’ve been building this shrine, but you’ll raise it in three days?” 21 But he had been speaking of the shrine that was his body.*34 22 So when he was raised from among the dead, his students remembered that he had said this, and they trusted in the writing and in what Iēsous had said.

  23 But when he was in Hierosoluma at the festival of the pascha, many trusted in his name, as they were watching the signs he performed. 24 But for his part Iēsous didn’t trust himself to them, given that he knew all people, 25 and so had no need for anyone to give him testimony about humankind. He certainly knew what was in the human mind.

  Chapter 3

  1 There was a man belonging to the Farisaioi,*35 and his name was Nikodēmos; he was a leader of the Ioudaioi.*36 2 Nikodēmos came to him during the night, and said to him, “Rabbí, we know you’ve come from god as a teacher. Certainly no one can perform these signs you perform, unless god is with him.” 3 Iēsous answered by saying to him, “Amēn amēn I tell you: unless someone is born anew—taking it from the top—he can’t see the kingdom of god.”*37 4 Nikodēmos said to him, “How can a person be born when he’s old? He can hardly go into his mother’s womb a second time and then be born again, can he?” 5 Iēsous answered, “Amēn amēn I’m telling you: unless someone is born out of water*38 and wind, breath, spirit,*39 he can’t enter the kingdom of god. 6 What’s born out of flesh and blood is flesh and blood, but what’s born out of the life-breath is the life-breath. 7 Don’t be bewildered that I say to you: all of you people must be born anew, taking it straight from the top. 8 The wind winds, the breath breathes*40 wherever it wants to, and you hear its sound, its voice,*41 but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s headed. That’s the way everyone is who’s born out of the life-breath.”*42 9 Nikodēmos answered by saying to him, “How can the things you speak of come into birth—into being?”*43 10 Iēsous answered by saying to him, “You’re the teacher of all Israēl, and you don’t know these things? 11 Amēn amēn I tell you: what we know, we say, and we testify to what we’ve seen—but you people don’t accept our testimony. 12 If I’ve spoken to you about the things that are on this earth, yet you don’t believe me, how will you believe if I speak to you about the things that are in the sky?

  13 “But no one has gone up to the sky unless he came down from the sky before, as the son of mankind. 14 And just as Mōüsēs lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the son of mankind be lifted up,*44 15 so that whoever trusts in him can have life for all time. 16 This is in fact how much god loved the world: he gave the only son born to him, so that everyone who trusted in him wouldn’t be annihilated, but would have life for all time. 17 God, you see, didn’t send the son into the world to judge the world, but so the world could be rescued through him. 18 Whoever trusts him isn’t judged; but whoever doesn’t trust in him has been judged already, because he didn’t trust in the name of the only son born to god. 19 The judgment is this: the light came into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light, as the things they did were contemptible. 20 Everyone who does despicable things hates the light and doesn’t come near the light, for fear that it’s going to find him guilty of what he’s done. 21 But whoever acts on the truth comes to the light, so that the things he’s done show brightly and clearly that they were done through the power of god.”

  22 After these things, Iēsous and his students went into the countryside of Ioudaia, and there he spent time with them and was baptizing.

  23 Meanwhile, Iōannēs was baptizing at Ainōn near Saleim, because there was a lot of water there, and people were showing up there and were baptized. 24 Iōannēs had of course not been thrown into prison yet.*45

  25 Now a controversy arose between Iōannēs’ students and a Ioudaios concerning cleansing. 26 And they came to Iōannēs and said to him, “Rabbí, the one who was with you on the other side of the Iordanēs, to whom you testified—look, he’s baptizing, and everyone’s coming to him.” 27 Iōannēs responded by saying, “No one can receive a single thing unless it’s given to him from the sky. 28 You yourselves can testify on my behalf [that] I said, ‘I’m not the anointed one; instead, I’m sent ahead of him.’ 29 It’s the bridegroom who gets the bride; the friend of the bridegroom is the one who stands and listens to him and has joy on top of joy at the voice of the bridegroom. So this joy of mine had been made complete. 30 He has to increase, and I have to decrease.*46

  31 “The one who comes from above is above everyone. But whoever’s from the earth is of the earth and speaks of the earth. The one coming from the sky [is above everyone]. 32 What he’s seen and heard, this he testifies to, but no one accepts his testimony. 33 Whoever’s accepted his testimony has placed a seal on god’s truthfulness.*47 34 The one god sent says the things god has spoken, as he gives more of the life-breath than anyone can measure. 35 The father loves the son and gives everything into his hands.*48 36 Whoever trusts in the son has life for all time; whoever disobeys the son won’t see life: no, the anger of god against him remains.”

  Chapter 4

  1 So when Iēsous found out that the Farisaioi had heard he was recruiting and baptizing more students than Iōannēs did— 2 but as a matter of fact Iēsous himself wasn’t baptizing them: his students were— 3 he left Ioudaia and went back to Galilaia.

  4 But he had to go through Samareia.*49 5 Thus he came to a town of Samareia called Suchar, near the plot of land that Iakōb gave to Iōsēf his son. 6 In that place was Iakōb’s spring.*50 So Iēsous, worn out from his journey, was just sitting by the spring. It was about the sixth hour after sunrise. 7 There came a woman, a native of Samareia, to draw water. Iēsous said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 His students, you see, had gone away into the city to buy provisions. 9 The Samaritis naturally said to him, “How is it that you, a Ioudaios, ask me for a drink, though I’m a Samaritis? The Ioudaioi certainly don’t have anything to do with the Samaritai.”*51 10 Iēsous answered and said to her, “If you knew the gift god can give, and who it is who’s saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 [The woman] said to him, “Sir, you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So how do you come to have this living water?*52 12 Surely you’re not greater than our forefather Iakōb, who gave us this well and drank out of it himself—and so did his sons and his flocks?” 13 Iēsous answered and said to her, “Everyone drinking any of this water will be thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks any of the water I give him will, for all of time, not be thirsty; no, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into life for all time.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I won’t get thirsty and keep coming all the way here to draw water.”*53 16 He said to her, “Go and call your man, and come back here.” 17 The woman answered by telling him, “I don’t have a man.” Iēsous told her, “It’s good that you said, ‘I don’t have a man.’ 18 You’ve had five men, and the man you have now isn
’t lawfully yours.*54 That was the truth you spoke.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see you’re a prophet. 20 Our forefathers fell down to worship on this mountain;*55 but you people say that Hierosoluma is the place where it’s necessary to worship.” 21 Iēsous said to her, “Woman, believe me that the hour is coming when you’ll worship the father neither on this mountain nor in Hierosoluma. 22 You people worship what you don’t know. We worship what we do know, because rescue comes from the Ioudaioi. 23 But the time is coming, and it’s here, now, when the true worshippers will worship the father in the life-breath and in truth. The father is in fact searching for people like this, to worship him. 24 God is a wind, a breath, a spirit, and those worshipping him must worship in the life-breath and in truth.”*56 25 The woman said to him, “I know the Messias is coming, who’s called ‘the anointed one.’*57 When he comes, he’ll bring us word of everything.” 26 Iēsous said to her, “It’s me, the one who’s talking to you.”

  27 At this point, his students came, and they were shocked that he was talking with a woman. However, no one said, “What are you trying to do?” or “Why are you talking with her?”*58 28 The woman then left her water jar behind*59 and went away into the town and told the people, 29 “Come see the man who told me everything I’ve done. He couldn’t be the anointed one, could he?” 30 The people went out of the town and came to him.

  31 In the meantime, the students appealed to him, saying, “Rabbí, eat!” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” 33 So the students said to one another, “What? Someone’s brought him something to eat?” 34 Iēsous said to them, “My food is to do what the one who sent me wants, and to complete his work. 35 Don’t you yourselves say, ‘Four months more, and the harvest will be here’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see the fields, which are pale and ready for reaping. 36 The reaper gets his pay already and gathers in the grain for life without end, so that the sower and the reaper together are full of joy. 37 In this case, in fact, the byword is true: ‘One man is the sower, and another the reaper.’ 38 I’ve sent you out to reap what you didn’t work to grow. Others worked, and you’ve come for what their work achieved.”*60

  39 Many of the Samaritai from that town trusted in him because of the account the woman gave when she testified, “He told me everything I’ve done.” 40 So when the Samaritai came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed for two days.*61 41 And many more of them had trust because of his own account. 42 To the woman they said, “We no longer believe because of what you said, as we’ve now heard it for ourselves, and we know this is truly the rescuer of the world.”

  43 After those two days he left that place and went to Galilaia. 44 Iēsous himself in fact testified that a prophet doesn’t have honor in his own fatherland. 45 So when he went to Galilaia, the Galilaioi received him hospitably, having seen all that he did in Hierosoluma during the festival, as they themselves had gone to the festival.*62

  46 So he went back to Kana in Galilaia, where he’d made wine out of water.

  And in Kafarnaoum there was a royal official*63 whose son was ailing. 47 When this man heard that Iēsous had arrived in Galilaia from Ioudaia, he went to meet him and asked him to come down with him and heal his son, as he was about to die. 48 So Iēsous said to him, “If you people don’t see signs and wonders, you never believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Iēsous told him, “Be on your way! Your son is going to live.” This man believed what Iēsous told him, and went on his way. 51 Even before he reached home, his slaves met him, saying his boy was going to live. 52 So he asked them what time he had gotten better. They then told him, “Yesterday, at the seventh hour after dawn, the fever left him.” 53 So the father realized that this was the time when Iēsous had said to him, “Your son is going to live”; then he came to have trust, and so did his entire household. 54 [But] this was the second sign that Iēsous performed after he went from Ioudaia to Galilaia.*64

  Chapter 5

  1 After these things, there was a festival of the Ioudaioi,*65 and Iēsous went up to Hierosoluma. 2 Now in Hierosoluma, by the sheep gate, there is a pool called in Hebrew Bēthzatha, with five porticoes around it.*66 3 In these there lay a mass of debilitated people: the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 5 In that place was a man who’d been debilitated for thirty-eight years. 6 When Iēsous saw him lying there and realized that he’d been waiting quite a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” 7 The debilitated man answered him, “Sir, I don’t have anyone who could put me into the pool when the water’s disturbed. Whenever I’m going there, someone else steps down ahead of me.”*67 8 Iēsous said to him, “Get up, pick up your stretcher, and walk.” 9 And right away the man was made well, and picked up his stretcher and walked.

  But that day was the sabbaton. 10 So the Ioudaioi said to the man who’d been cured, “It’s the sabbaton, and it’s not permitted that you pick up your stretcher.” 11 But he answered them, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your stretcher and walk.’ ” 12 They asked him, “Who’s the man who told you, ‘Pick it up and walk’?” 13 But the man who’d been healed didn’t know who he was, as Iēsous had slipped away through the crowd in that place. 14 Afterward Iēsous found him in the temple precinct and said to him, “Look, you’re well now: don’t do wrong any more, and that will keep anything worse from happening to you.”*68 15 The man went away and reported back to the Ioudaioi that Iēsous was the one who’d made him well. 16 And this was the reason the Ioudaioi proceeded to hound Iēsous: he was doing these things on the sabbaton.

  17 [Iēsous] had this response for them: “My father’s been working this whole time, and I’m working too.” 18 So because of this, the Ioudaioi tried even harder to kill him: not only did he break the sabbaton, but he also called god his own father, making himself out to be god.

  19 So Iēsous responded by telling them: “Amēn amēn I tell you, the son can’t do anything on his own, but only what he sees the father doing: whatever he does, the son does likewise. 20 The father loves the son specially and shows him everything he himself does, and will show him even greater work than this, so that you’ll all be amazed. 21 In fact, just as the father awakens the dead and brings them back to life, the son as well brings back to life whoever he wants to. 22 And the father, in fact, doesn’t judge anyone, but has granted all judgment to the son, 23 so that all people honor the son as they honor the father. Whoever doesn’t honor the son doesn’t honor the father who sent him.*69

  24 “Amēn amēn I tell you, the one hearing what I say and trusting in the one who sent me has life for all time and doesn’t come under judgment, but instead has crossed over from death to life. 25 Amēn amēn I tell you, the time is coming, and it’s here now, when the dead will hear the voice of god’s son, and those who’ve heard it will live. 26 Just as the father possesses life in himself, in fact, so he’s granted his son as well life to possess in himself. 27 And he gave him the authority to pass judgment, because he’s mankind’s son.*70 28 Don’t be amazed at this, because the time is coming when all those in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and make their way out: those who’ve done excellent things will be raised to their feet to live, and those who have done unworthy things will be raised to their feet to be judged.

  30 “I can’t do anything on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is lawful, because I’m not looking to do what I want, but rather what the one who sent me wants.

  31 “If I give testimony about myself, my testimony isn’t true. 32 There’s someone else who testifies about me, and I know the testimony he gives about me is true. 33 You sent messengers to Iōannēs, and he has testified to the truth. 34 But I myself don’t accept testimony from a human being; instead, I say these things so that you all can be rescued. 35 He was a lamp, burning and shining, and you were willing to be delighted for a while by his light.

  36 “But I have test
imony that’s greater than that of Iōannēs. The work my father gave me to complete, the work itself that I do testifies on my behalf that the father sent me. 37 And the father who sent me—he’s testified on my behalf. You’ve never heard his voice or seen his form, 38 and you don’t have what he’s spoken remaining within you, because the one he sent is the one you don’t trust. 39 You search the writings, because you think you possess in them life for all time; but it’s these that testify on my behalf. 40 But you don’t want to come to me to have life.

  41 “I don’t accept glory from human beings; 42 no, I know you all, and that you don’t have the love of god in you. 43 I’ve come in the name of my father, but you don’t accept me; if someone else comes in his own name, you’ll accept him. 44 How can you trust when you accept glory from each other but don’t look for the glory that comes from the one god?

  45 “Don’t think I’m going to indict you before the father. The one who’s indicting you is Mōüsēs, on whom you’ve placed your hopes. 46 If you trusted Mōüsēs, you would trust me: he in fact wrote about me. If you don’t trust what he wrote, how will you believe what I’m speaking about?”*71

  Chapter 6

  1 After these things, Iēsous went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilaia or Tiberias.*72 2 A large crowd followed him, because they were observing the signs he performed to heal debilitated people. 3 But Iēsous went away up the mountain and sat there with his students. 4 It was near the time of the pascha, the festival of the Ioudaioi.

  5 So, lifting his eyes and noticing that a large crowd was coming toward him, he said to Filippos, “Where can we buy loaves so that these people can eat?” 6 He said this to test him: he himself knew what he was about to do. 7 Filippos answered him: “Two hundred denarii worth of loaves aren’t enough for each of these people to get a tiny [share].”*73 8 One of the students, Andreas the brother of Simōn Petros, said to him, 9 “There’s a little kid here who has five barley loaves and two little cooked fish. But what are these good for, when there are so many to feed?” 10 Iēsous said, “Have the people recline for a meal.” There was a lot of grass in the place. So the men reclined; they numbered about five thousand.*74 11 So Iēsous took the loaves, gave thanks for them, and shared them out to those reclining there, and the same for the fish, as much as they wanted. 12 And when they were full, he said to his students, “Gather together the leftover pieces, so that nothing’s wasted.” 13 So they gathered them together and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten. 14 So the people who saw the sign he performed said, “This is truly the prophet coming into the world.” 15 Then Iēsous, knowing that they were about to come and drag him away to make him king, withdrew again onto the mountain, all by himself.