Open a King James Bible to John 5 and you will find a verse 4.
Open a NIV, ESV, or NLT to the same place and the chapter moves directly from verse 3 to verse 5.
The verse numbers skip, the text flows on, and for anyone who notices, the immediate question is obvious: who took a verse out of the Bible?
The answer is actually the reverse.
No one removed John 5:4 from the Bible.
The question is whether it was ever in the original Gospel of John in the first place.
Working through that question carefully requires understanding how Bibles are made, what the manuscript evidence actually shows, and why none of this threatens the reliability of Scripture.
What Is Actually Missing
The Verse and What It Says
For readers whose Bible does not include it, here is the verse as it appears in the KJV:
“For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” (John 5:4, KJV)
The verse explains why a large number of sick people were lying near the pool of Bethesda.
They believed that at certain times, an angel stirred the water, and the first person to enter after the stirring would be healed.
Without verse 4, the story creates a puzzle: in verse 7, the paralyzed man tells Jesus that he has no one to help him into the pool “when the water is stirred,” but the reader who does not have verse 4 has never been told why that matters.
Why the Gap Is Noticeable
Modern Bible translations kept the verse numbering system inherited from earlier editions.
That means when verse 4 is absent from the text, the numbers still jump from 3 to 5, and a careful reader will notice.
This is not a mistake, a conspiracy, or an attempt to hide anything.
It is the natural result of translators working from different manuscript evidence while retaining a shared numbering system.
Where Bibles Come From
A Plain-English Primer on Manuscripts
The original letters and Gospels of the New Testament (called autographs) no longer exist.
What we have are thousands of handwritten copies (called manuscripts) made across many centuries, in many locations, by many different scribes.
These manuscripts are not all identical.
Scribes occasionally made errors, some accidentally skipping lines and others adding explanatory notes in the margins.
Over time, some of those marginal notes found their way into the main text of later copies.
Two Major Manuscript Families
Modern Bible translations generally rely on older manuscripts, particularly the Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus (both from the fourth century), when those older manuscripts differ from later ones.
The King James Bible was translated from a collection of later Greek manuscripts called the Textus Receptus (compiled around the twelfth century), which represents what is called the Byzantine manuscript tradition.
These two manuscript streams often agree, but in places like John 5:4, they differ.
Neither tradition is secretly conspiring against the other.
They are simply different streams of manuscript transmission, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
The Manuscript Evidence for John 5:4
What the Earliest Manuscripts Say
John 5:4 is absent from the earliest and most widely respected Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of John.
These include Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, both dating to the fourth century.
It is also absent from a range of early manuscripts representing different manuscript families and different geographic regions.
The breadth of that absence matters: when a passage is missing from manuscripts that do not share a common lineage, the most natural explanation is that the passage was not in the original text.
What the Later Manuscripts Say
The verse does appear in the Byzantine manuscript tradition, which forms the majority of surviving New Testament manuscripts.
The sheer number of manuscripts that include it has sometimes been used to argue for its originality.
However, the majority of surviving manuscripts come from a later period, and many of them share a common ancestor.
Number alone does not establish originality.
Age, diversity of geographic origin, and independence of manuscript lineage all factor into the evaluation.
Internal Evidence Within the Manuscripts Themselves
Scholars who study manuscripts in detail have found that in roughly two dozen copies that do include John 5:4, scribes placed asterisk or obelus marks next to the verse.
These marks were ancient signals from one scribe to the next, indicating that the scribe suspected the material was not original.
Additionally, four of the last five Greek words in verse 4 appear nowhere else in the entire Gospel of John.
John had a consistent vocabulary and writing style.
The presence of so many vocabulary words foreign to his usual pattern is a significant textual signal.
Why Scribes Are the Most Likely Explanation
The Marginal Note Theory
One of the most widely held explanations among textual scholars is that John 5:4 began as a marginal note.
The original text of John 5 described the paralyzed man and the pool without explaining the stirred water tradition.
An early reader, knowing the local belief about angelic stirring, wrote an explanatory note in the margin to help other readers understand the scene.
When a later scribe encountered that manuscript, they copied the marginal note into the main body of the text, assuming it belonged there.
Subsequent scribes copied from that manuscript, and the note gradually spread through later manuscripts.
The Angel Is Not the Problem
A common assumption is that the verse was removed because ancient Christians were uncomfortable with the idea of an angel stirring water to heal people.
The manuscript evidence does not support this explanation.
Early Christian writings were full of angelic activity of many kinds.
The Shepherd of Hermas, widely read in the early church, describes angels governing entire domains of creation.
If discomfort with angelic activity had motivated the removal of verse 4, we would expect to find it absent from a wide range of texts for that reason.
Instead, the pattern of the manuscript evidence points more naturally to a verse being added than to a verse being removed.
What This Means for Your Bible
No Doctrine Hangs on John 5:4
The most important thing to say about this passage is the same thing scholars say about virtually every significant textual variant in the New Testament: no core Christian doctrine is affected.
The healing in John 5 is clear and complete without verse 4.
Jesus encounters a man who has been paralyzed for thirty-eight years, asks him whether he wants to be healed, and tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk.
The man is immediately healed.
That miracle is the heart of the passage, and it stands intact in every Bible, with or without verse 4.
How to Read John 5 Without Verse 4
In modern translations, the passage makes complete sense once the reader understands that verse 7 assumes the background knowledge verse 4 supplies.
When the paralyzed man says “when the water is stirred, someone else always gets there ahead of me,” he is referencing a local tradition about the pool.
That tradition is real historical background; it simply may not have been part of what John originally wrote.
Most modern study Bibles explain this in a footnote.
Reading John 5 without verse 4 is not reading an incomplete Bible.
It is reading what the best available manuscript evidence suggests John actually wrote.
Why the Passage Still Speaks
What the Scene Is Really About
Whether or not John 5:4 was part of the original Gospel, the scene it describes is one of striking tenderness.
A man who has been unable to walk for thirty-eight years is lying beside a pool he cannot reach.
He has no one to help him.
And then Jesus, who needs no stirred water and no first-mover advantage, simply speaks to him.
What the Healing Demonstrates
“Jesus said to him, ‘Get up, take up your bed and walk.’ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked.” (John 5:8–9, ESV)
The pool’s tradition, if it was real, depended on timing, proximity, and being first.
Jesus depends on none of those things.
The healing in John 5 is a demonstration that the one standing before the paralyzed man is not competing with angel-stirred waters.
He is the source of everything the waters were thought to represent.
A Prayer for Confidence in God’s Word
Lord, I am grateful that You preserved Your Word through centuries of human hands and imperfect copies. Where I encounter questions about the text, give me curiosity rather than fear.
Remind me that the questions are not threats to faith. They are invitations to understand more deeply.
Let every investigation of Your Word lead me back to the same place: a paralyzed man, a speaking Savior, and a healing that no tradition or timing could produce.
In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Frequently Asked Questions About John 5:4 and Missing Bible Verses
Why does John 5:4 appear in the KJV but not modern Bibles?
The KJV was translated from later Greek manuscripts (the Textus Receptus) that include the verse. Modern translations like the NIV and ESV use older manuscripts, notably Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus, which do not contain it. Translators follow the older manuscripts as generally more reliable evidence of the original text.
Does this mean part of my Bible has been removed or corrupted?
No. Scholars believe John 5:4 was most likely a marginal note added by an early scribe that later entered the main text of some manuscript copies. The question is not whether something was removed, but whether it was ever in the original Gospel. Most manuscript evidence suggests it was not.
Does the absence of John 5:4 affect any Christian doctrine?
No. The healing miracle in John 5 is completely preserved in every translation. Jesus’s identity, the nature of the miracle, and the theological message of the passage are all intact. No major doctrine in Christianity depends on whether verse 4 was original or a later scribal addition.
What is textual criticism, and should Christians be afraid of it?
Textual criticism is the scholarly process of comparing manuscripts to determine what the original text most likely said. It is not an attack on the Bible; it is a discipline that exists because scholars take the original text seriously. It has confirmed the overwhelming reliability of the New Testament documents.
How many other verses are missing from modern Bibles compared to the KJV?
Modern translations typically omit around 16 to 17 individual verses found in the KJV, along with portions of others. Most of these are short passages absent from early manuscripts. No verse carries a major doctrinal teaching that disappears from the Bible if that verse is removed.
Sources
Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Wallace, Daniel B. Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament. Kregel Academic, 2011.
Comfort, Philip W. New Testament Text and Translation Commentary. Tyndale House, 2008.
Why Is John 5:4 Missing? GotQuestions.org.
The Case of John 5:4. Crosswalk.
Who Took John 5:4 Out of My Bible? Desiring God.
John 5:4 and the Manuscript Evidence. Bible Study Tools.
Understanding Textual Variants in the New Testament. The Gospel Coalition.
Missing Verses in Modern Bibles Explained. Christianity.com.
Textual Criticism and the Christian. Ligonier Ministries.
