Almost all the material examined so far has been found in the Synoptic Gospels. Only the spurious story of the woman taken in adultery, whose presence in the Fourth Gospel is almost accidental, has led us into its pages. This chapter will do little to redress the balance, for its purpose is not to introduce variants but to discuss a methodological question which demands our attention. Many of the most important variants in the Fourth Gospel are small changes of vital theological significance, such as the variant ‘only God’ or ‘only Son’ at 1.18. None of these will be discussed. Instead, one longer passage of little theological significance will serve as a prologue to the main question.

The story of the angel at the pool is, after the story of the adulterous woman, the most significant legendary accretion on whose inclusion the manuscripts differ. The RSV at 5.3 reads

In these lay a multitude of invalids, blind, lame, paralyzed.

To this Ac C3 D Ws Φ Ψ 063 078 fam1 fam13 and most later manuscripts, with the Latin, Peshitta and Harklean Syriac versions and some Bohairic witnesses, add (the square brackets indicate words omitted in one or more of these witnesses) waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel [of the Lord] went down [at certain seasons] [into the pool], and troubled the water: whoever stepped in first [after the troubling of the water] was healed of whatever disease he had.