Where the manuscripts differ · John 5:4
The angel who troubled the water at Bethesda
The explanation that an angel stirred the pool and healed the first one in is missing from the earliest manuscripts of John, and looks like a note explaining local belief that a copyist folded into the text.
In older Bibles, John 5 explains the crowd of sick people at the pool: they were waiting for the moving of the water, because an angel went down at a certain season and troubled it, and whoever stepped in first was made whole. In newer Bibles that explanation is gone, and the story runs from the crowd of the sick straight to Jesus asking the paralyzed man whether he wants to be healed.
The evidence here is unusually one-sided for a verse this familiar. The earliest papyrus copies of John do not have it. Neither do the major fourth-century codices. And here is the detail that decides it for most scholars: many of the later manuscripts that *do* have it mark it with critical symbols in the margin — the ancient equivalent of a scribe writing "doubtful" beside the line. The copyists themselves were flagging it.
There is also a language test. The verse uses several Greek words that appear nowhere else in John's Gospel. A writer's vocabulary is a fingerprint, and this sentence does not match John's.
What the manuscripts actually show
| Witness | Date | What it reads here |
|---|---|---|
| The earliest papyrus copies of John (P66, P75) | about AD 200 – 3rd century | No angel, no troubling of the water — the explanation is simply absent. |
| Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, and Codex Bezae | 4th–5th centuries | Also without the explanation. |
| Later Greek manuscripts and the Byzantine majority | 5th–15th centuries | Carry the explanation, with noticeable variation in wording — and a substantial number mark it with critical symbols indicating doubt. |
| The sick man's own words in verse 7, in every manuscript | All periods | "I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool" — the belief about the stirring water is preserved by the story itself, whether or not verse 4 is present. |
The case each way
That it belongs in the text
The verse is present in the majority of later manuscripts and in the tradition behind the KJV.
Without it, verse 7 mentions troubled water that has not been explained, and some argue the narrative needs the explanation to make sense.
That it came later
It is missing from every early witness, papyrus and codex alike, across families.
Scribes who copied it flagged it as doubtful, which is direct ancient testimony that its status was already known to be uncertain.
Its vocabulary does not match John's elsewhere.
It has the exact profile of a marginal note: it explains a local custom the way a helpful reader would, and explanatory notes are precisely the kind of material that migrated from margin to text.
Verse 7 does not actually need verse 4. The man explains the belief himself, in his own voice, which is how a reader in any century learns what the crowd was waiting for.