Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
John 5:2
Bethesda. The manuscripts do not agree on the name of the pool.
John 5:2, in every translation this tool compares.
Three old letters give three spellings of the same village. You would not conclude the village is fictional. You would ask which spelling the writer used.
Because the name varies between Bethesda, Bethsaida and Bethzatha across the manuscripts, and one of the variants was confirmed by an archaeological find rather than by a copy.
The King James reads Bethesda. The NRSV reads Beth-zatha. The NIV reads Bethesda and footnotes the others.
Βηθεσδά Bethesda
Bethesda appears in the later majority, Bethzatha in Sinaiticus, Bethsaida in P75 and Vaticanus. The Copper Scroll from Qumran mentions a pool with a name close to Bethesda, which is external evidence of a kind textual criticism rarely gets.
This isn't a translation loss at all. The versions simply follow different Greek texts.
Place names vary in manuscripts more than almost anything else, because scribes normalise unfamiliar names to familiar ones.
Bethesda is the majority rendering in English versions.
- Bethzatha in Sinaiticus; Bethsaida in P75 and Vaticanus
- The Copper Scroll 3Q15 names a pool Beth Eshdatayin
- Metzger, Textual Commentary, at John 5:2
