50 Fun Facts About Gospel of John

Which term from Greek philosophy does John's prologue apply to Christ, rendered 'the Word' in English Bibles?

Logos, which also carries the senses 'discourse' and 'reason', is presented in John 1 as pre-existent: with God from the beginning, and itself God.

Which word completes John 1:14 in the NIV: 'The Word became ___ and made his dwelling among us'?

Flesh completes the verse, which the King James Bible renders 'the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us', going on to speak of 'the only begotten of the Father'.

Which title did John the Baptist give Jesus at the Jordan, adding 'who takes away the sin of the world'?

The Lamb of God was said the day after priests and Levites had questioned the Baptist, and its Latin form, Agnus Dei, became a fixed part of the Catholic Mass.

In which Galilean village did Jesus perform his first sign, at a wedding where the wine ran out?

Cana is where the master of the banquet, tasting the new wine without knowing where it came from, told the bridegroom he had saved the best till now.

Which verse, the shortest in the King James Bible, comes as Christ nears a dead friend's tomb in John 11?

Jesus wept is John 11:35, and the onlookers read the tears two ways: 'See how he loved him!' and why had a healer of the blind not prevented the death.

What three things does Jesus call himself in John 14:6, just before 'No one comes to the Father except through me'?

The way, truth and life is how Jesus answers a disciple who had just admitted the Twelve did not know where he was going.

Which title does Jesus take in John 10, contrasting himself with a hired hand who runs from the wolf?

The good shepherd calls his own sheep by name, and Jesus adds that he has 'other sheep that are not of this sheep pen' still to bring in.

Which apostle, absent when the risen Jesus first appeared, said he would not believe without touching the nail marks?

Thomas, also called Didymus, cried 'My Lord and my God!' a week later, and Jesus replied that those who believe without seeing are blessed.

How many husbands did Jesus say the Samaritan woman at the well had had, the current man not being one?

Five husbands, and her reply, 'Sir, I can see that you are a prophet', turned the talk to whether God should be worshipped on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem.

What did Jesus do for his disciples during the supper in John 13, after wrapping a towel around his waist?

Washed their feet, a job for the lowest servant, and then told them 'no servant is greater than his master' and to do the same for each other.

Which friend of Jesus, dead four days and smelling in the tomb, did he call out alive in John 11?

Lazarus came out still bound in strips of linen with a cloth over his face, and the chief priests then plotted to kill him too, because so many believed on his account.

Which verse, waved on stadium signs worldwide, comes from Jesus's night-time talk with the Pharisee Nicodemus?

John 3:16, 'For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son', has been called 'the gospel in a nutshell', and Nicodemus returns at the burial bearing spices.

Which disciple, first a follower of the Baptist, went to find his brother Simon saying 'We have found the Messiah'?

Andrew was one of two Baptist followers who trailed Jesus at the Jordan and asked where he was staying; the reply was 'Come, and you will see'.

Which disciple asked whether anything good could come from Nazareth, then heard Jesus had seen him under a fig tree?

Nathanael, whom Jesus greeted as 'an Israelite in whom there is no deceit', is usually identified with the Bartholomew of the synoptic apostle lists.

What new name did Jesus give Simon son of John at their first meeting, a name the text itself then translates?

Cephas is Aramaic for rock; its Greek equivalent, Petros, gives the name Peter by which Simon is known through the rest of the Gospel.

Which lakeside town does John 1 name as the home of Philip, who then fetched a friend to meet Jesus?

Bethsaida was also the home of Simon Peter and his brother, and John 12 repeats Philip's hometown when Greeks at the festival ask him, 'Sir, we would like to see Jesus'.

How many stone jars, each holding twenty to thirty gallons, did Jesus have filled at the wedding in John 2?

Six jars of the kind kept for Jewish ceremonial washing were filled 'to the brim', so the miracle produced well over a hundred gallons of wine.

What did Jesus make from cords before driving sheep, cattle and traders from the temple, a detail only John gives?

A whip out of cords appears in none of the synoptic versions, and John sets the whole scene near the opening of the ministry rather than in Holy Week.

How many years, his hearers protested, had the temple taken to build when Jesus spoke of raising it in three days?

46 years, and John explains that the temple Jesus meant was his body, a saying his disciples only understood after he was raised from the dead.

What does Jesus call himself in John 15, adding that his Father prunes every fruitful branch and cuts off the barren?

The true vine image ends 'apart from me you can do nothing', and the disciples are told to 'remain in me' and bear much fruit.

How many years had the invalid at Bethesda been ill before Jesus told him to pick up his mat and walk?

38 years, and the healing came on a Sabbath, so the Jewish leaders objected to the cured man carrying his mat and began to persecute Jesus.

In which pool did Jesus tell a man blind from birth to wash, after putting mud made with saliva on his eyes?

Siloam, which John glosses as 'Sent', and the Pharisees then interrogated the man and his parents because the cure had been worked on a Sabbath.

What did Jesus call himself in Capernaum after feeding the 5,000, saying whoever comes to him will never go hungry?

The bread of life discourse cost Jesus followers — John says many of his disciples 'no longer followed him' — once his talk of eating and drinking him proved too hard a teaching.

Who, John alone says, supplied the barley loaves and two small fish with which Jesus fed the 5,000?

A boy carrying barley loaves, the poor man's grain, and afterwards Jesus withdrew to a mountain because the crowd meant to make him king by force.

What must a person be to see the kingdom of God, Jesus told Nicodemus, a phrase that now labels evangelicals?

Born again — or 'born from above', as the Greek can equally mean — baffled Nicodemus, who asked whether a man could enter his mother's womb a second time.

Which object from Moses's wilderness years did Jesus compare to the lifted-up Son of Man when talking to Nicodemus?

The bronze snake of Numbers 21 healed Israelites who looked at it, and John 3:14 makes it the picture of the crucifixion, just ahead of the Gospel's most quoted verse.

Which miracle did the disciples see on the lake the night after the feeding of the 5,000 in John 6?

Walking on water, in John's telling, ends with the boat 'immediately' reaching the shore, and unlike Matthew's version there is no Peter stepping out to join him.

Which episode, missing from the oldest manuscripts of John, ends with 'Go now and leave your life of sin'?

The woman caught in adultery, with its 'let any one of you who is without sin' challenge, is widely judged a later insertion, and many Bibles now bracket it.

Which Jewish festival, named nowhere else in the New Testament, finds Jesus in Solomon's Colonnade one winter?

Hanukkah, the Festival of Dedication, marks the Maccabees' rededication of the temple, and there the crowd demands that Jesus say plainly whether he is the Messiah.

How did the crowd react when Jesus said 'Before Abraham was, I am' in John 8, taking the divine name for himself?

They picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself and slipped away from the temple grounds.

Which sister went out to meet Jesus in John 11 and heard 'I am the resurrection and the life'?

Martha answered, 'I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world', a confession the synoptics give to Peter.

Which high priest argued in John 11 that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish?

Caiaphas meant it as politics, but John reads it as unwitting prophecy that Jesus would die for the nation, and from that day the council plotted to take his life.

What did Judas say the pint of pure nard Mary poured over Jesus at Bethany could have fetched for the poor?

A year's wages, and John adds that Judas said it not because he cared for the poor but because he kept the common purse and helped himself to it.

What did the crowd carry out to meet Jesus at the triumphal entry in John 12, a detail the synoptics omit?

Palm branches are specified only by John, which is why the day is Palm Sunday; Matthew and Mark speak merely of branches cut from the fields or trees.

What must fall to the ground and die to produce many seeds, Jesus said when told some Greeks wished to see him?

A kernel of wheat, and the request of the Greek pilgrims is the cue, in John, for Jesus to declare 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified'.

How did Jesus point out his betrayer to the beloved disciple reclining next to him at the supper in John 13?

By passing him a dipped morsel, and as soon as Judas took it 'Satan entered into him'; he went out at once, 'and it was night'.

What 'new command' did Jesus give at the supper in John 13, by which 'everyone will know that you are my disciples'?

Love one another 'as I have loved you' is what gives Maundy Thursday its name, from the Latin mandatum, 'commandment'.

What did Jesus say would not happen until Peter had disowned him three times, after Peter vowed to die for him?

A rooster crowing, and in John 18 it crows at the instant of Peter's third denial, made while he warmed himself at a fire in the high priest's courtyard.

Which Greek term for the Holy Spirit in John 14 to 16 is rendered Advocate, Comforter or Helper in English Bibles?

Paraclete combines the Greek for 'alongside' and 'to call', and the farewell discourse promises this figure will 'remind you of everything I have said to you'.

Which high priest's servant lost his right ear to Peter's sword at the arrest, a name only John records?

Malchus — and John alone also names Peter as the swordsman; a relative of the servant later challenged Peter in the courtyard, 'Didn't I see you with him in the garden?'

Who questioned Jesus first after the arrest in John 18, before sending him bound to the high priest, his son-in-law?

Annas, a former high priest, asked about his disciples and teaching, and when Jesus replied that he had spoken openly, an official slapped him in the face.

What did the arresting party do when Jesus answered 'I am he' in the garden across the Kidron Valley?

They drew back and fell to the ground, a detail only John records, and Jesus had to ask a second time whom they wanted before telling them to let his disciples go.

Which prisoner, of whom John says only that he 'had taken part in an uprising', did the crowd choose over Jesus?

Barabbas was freed under a custom, cited by Pilate, of releasing one prisoner at Passover, and Pilate had just said he found no basis for a charge against Jesus.

What did Pilate say as he brought Jesus out to the crowd wearing the crown of thorns and a purple robe?

Here is the man — Ecce homo in the Latin Vulgate — became one of the great subjects of Christian art, and the chief priests answered it with shouts of 'Crucify!'

What was special about the undergarment of Jesus for which the soldiers at the cross cast lots rather than tear it?

Woven in one piece from top to bottom, and John presents the lots as fulfilling the psalm 'They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment'.

Why did the soldiers not break Jesus's legs, as they did to the two men crucified beside him?

He had already died, so a soldier pierced his side instead, and John ties the unbroken legs to the scripture 'Not one of his bones will be broken'.

Roughly how much myrrh and aloes did Nicodemus, who had first come by night, bring for Jesus's burial in John 19?

About 75 pounds — a hundred Roman litrai, which the King James renders 'an hundred pound weight' — a quantity fit for a king; Nicodemus then helped Joseph of Arimathea lay the body in a tomb 'in which no one had ever been laid'.

Whom did Mary Magdalene take the risen Jesus for when she turned from the empty tomb in John 20?

A gardener — until he said 'Mary' and she answered 'Rabboni', after which he told her 'Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father'.

How many large fish filled the unbroken net the disciples hauled ashore in John 21, a number John gives exactly?

153, and 'even with so many the net was not torn'; Jesus then cooked them breakfast on a fire of coals and asked Peter three times whether he loved him.

Which creature stands for John the Evangelist in Christian art, from the four living creatures of Ezekiel's vision?

An eagle, believed able to look straight into the sun, as John's Gospel was thought to gaze most directly at Christ's divinity; the lion, ox and man go to Mark, Luke and Matthew.