John 10


John 10 is the tenth chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. The author of the book containing this chapter is anonymous, but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that John composed this Gospel. This chapter records Jesus' description of himself as the "door of the sheep" and the "Good Shepherd", and contains the only mention of Hanukkah, "the Feast of Dedication", in the New Testament.

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 42 verses. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:
  • Papyrus 75
  • Papyrus 66
  • Codex Vaticanus
  • Papyrus 6
  • Codex Sinaiticus
  • Codex Bezae
  • Codex Alexandrinus

    Old Testament references

  • :,
  • :
  • : Psalm

    Places

Events recorded in this chapter refer to the following locations:
In verses, Jesus uses a parable, illustration or "figure of speech" regarding the manner in which a true shepherd enters his sheepfold, through the door or the gate, unlike the manner of a thief or a stranger. H. W. Watkins notes that "the word rendered 'parable' is the wider word which includes every kind of figurative and proverbial teaching, every kind of speech... which departs from the usual course ". The word παραβολα is not used in John's Gospel.
Jesus begins:
The Pharisees are not mentioned in the Greek text but they are mentioned in the New International Version in continuity with John 9:40, where "some Pharisees" had spoken with Jesus. The NIV and the Jerusalem Bible also confirm in verse 6 that the Pharisees are the group Jesus is addressing. German Protestant theologian Heinrich Meyer argues that these verses continue from chapter 9 "without the slightest indication of a change having taken place", and that ideally the chapter break would have been inserted at John 9:35. Henry Alford likewise connects this pericope with John 9:35-41.
In this illustration, the true shepherd "enters the sheepfold by the door" and "calls his own sheep by name and leads them out ". The alternative way in, taken by the thief or stranger, is to "climb up some other way", i.e. to climb over the wall of the sheepfold. The narrative is introduced "very truly" or "most assuredly". Jesus' audience did not understand what he was saying, and did not understand that he was applying the reference to thieves and robbers to themselves.
In its reference to the shepherd leading the flock out of the sheepfold, verse 3 has the only occurrence in the New Testament of the word ἐξάγει. The Ethiopic version adds "and loves them" to verse 3.

The door of the sheep and the good shepherd

In verse 7, Jesus "feels compelled" to start again. He describes himself here and in verse 9 as "the door of the sheep", and in and as "the good shepherd". The word in is translated as "door" in the King James Version and the American Standard Version, but as "gate" in the New Revised Standard Version, the Common English Bible and other translations. In verse 7, the Textus Receptus adds that Jesus said to them but this addition is generally agreed to be "of doubtful authority".

The hired hand

These verses contain a new figure of speech which builds on the reference to a "stranger" in verse 5, here highlighting the unreliability of the hired hand who runs away.

Verse 21

This verse further reiterates the continuity between this chapter and the dialogue following the healing of the man born blind in John 9.

The Feast of Dedication

Verse 22 refers to Hanukkah:
The feast recalls the Maccabean purification and re-dedication of the Temple,. The narrative moves forward from the Feast of Tabernacles, when the events and teaching from to appear to take place. During the intervening two months, there is no account of whether Jesus remained in Jerusalem or not. In we read that Jesus "went away again beyond the Jordan". Meyer identifies a number of commentators who have suggested that there was an additional "journey to Galilee or Peraea" before the feast of dedication, although he himself considers that these suggestions are "dictated by harmonistic presuppositions and clumsy combinations,... and not by the requirements of exegesis".
Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch or colonnade, a gathering place used by the early church located on the eastern side of the temple.

The believers beyond the Jordan

The chapter ends with Jesus evading Jewish attempts to stone him and then leaving Jerusalem and traveling "beyond the Jordan to the place where John was baptizing at first". and similarly record that Jesus traveled "to the region of Judea by the other side of the Jordan", but in the synoptic tradition He had previously been in Capernaum rather than Jerusalem. Perea was a region where many people "came to the decision that He was the Messiah".