[resolved] Words of Jesus in John 3?

Graham Criddle said:

How are decisions like this made when there are differing viewpoints over boundaries?

I looked in a few more translations to see where they end the quotation. ESV, NASB, NRSV, HCSB, NIV 1984, and The Message all end it after verse 21. LEB, NIV 2011, and NET Bible end it after 15.

Searching in my "All Commentaries" collection for end quotation <Jn 3:15> turns up a few explanations for how this decision is made:

The Greek manuscripts have no standard way of indicating where a quotation ends. Thus, it is uncertain whether the verses 13–21 were spoken to Nicodemus, or to a wider audience on another occasion, or whether John is adding this as an editorial comment. Some students end Jesus’ quotation at verse 12, some at 13, some at 15, others at 21. Since the language and thought are so well knit together, it seems best to consider the whole as delivered to Nicodemus. The same thoughts may have been repeated at other times. As He moved about the country and spoke to different audiences, Jesus doubtless repeated many things over and over.

Lewis Foster, John: Unlocking the Scriptures for You, Standard Bible Studies (Cincinnati, OH: Standard, 1987), 41–42.

In Greek the speaker in these verses is not explicitly identified. Some scholars assume that the words are a continuation of Jesus’ comments to Nicodemus, while others believe that at least part of this section is John’s commentary on Jesus’ words. Mft, Phps, JB, NEB, and NAB all attribute these words to Jesus, while RSV and Gdsp end Jesus’ words with verse 15. Since Segond and the Luther Revised do not use quotation marks, it is difficult to tell precisely how they interpret this passage. Segond does indicate a break after verse 13, since he introduces 14–21 with a new section heading. Zür does not use quotation marks either, but it obviously takes the entire passage through verse 21 as the words of Jesus, since no paragraph break is introduced. TEV understands 14–21 to be the comments of the author of the Gospel.

Barclay Moon Newman and Eugene Albert Nida, A Handbook on the Gospel of John, UBS Handbook Series (New York: United Bible Societies, 1993), 86.

In ancient writing, there were no quotation marks to signify the end of a quote, so decisions about where quotations end are often difficult. The key here is that “Son of Man” is used only on the lips of Jesus in John, so 3:15 is probably part of Jesus’ words. In 3:16–21, the tone changes, and there are three terms found only in editorial sections in John—“one and only” (3:16, 18), “believes in him [lit., his name]” (3:18), and “do what is right” (3:21).

Grant Osborne, Philip W. Comfort, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol 13: John and 1, 2, and 3 John (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007), 57.

In two passages in this Gospel, both in this chapter (3:15–21 and 3:31–36), the words of a speaker (Jesus and John the Baptist respectively) are succeeded by the explanatory reflections of the Evangelist. Because the ancient texts did not use quotation marks or other orthographical equivalents, the exact point of transition is disputed. In the first incident, Nicholson (p. 89) thinks the dialogue ends at v. 10, with all of vv. 11–21 being the comment of the Evangelist. This is unlikely: the title ‘Son of Man’ is so characteristically reserved for Jesus’ lips as a form of self-identification that it is unthinkable that he ended before v. 15. The same problem attends the view of Beasley-Murray (p. 46), and others before him, that makes 3:12–21 structurally parallel to 3:31–36. Some argue that Jesus’ monologue extends to the end of v. 21. But vv. 16–21 read more plausibly as the Evangelist’s meditation. For instance, the expression ‘one and only’ (monogenēs) is a word used by the Evangelist (1:14, 18; cf. 1 Jn. 4:9), and is not elsewhere placed on the lips of Jesus or of anyone else in this Gospel. Nor does Jesus normally refer to God as ho theos (‘God’).15

Segovia (p. 166) and others argue that since the advent of redaction criticism it has become futile to attempt to distinguish between the original voice of Jesus and ‘passages that betray the evangelist’s own viewpoint’. He is right, but misses the point. If the Evangelist’s reportage captures the essence of Jesus’ teaching, but customarily in the Evangelist’s words, and if the Evangelist is in happy agreement with Jesus’ teaching, then clearly the distinction Segovia identifies cannot be made. But if the Evangelist usually casts his Gospel in such a way as to distinguish between the reported speech of various individuals (however much cast in his own linguistic patterns), and his own reflective comments, then if he fails to do so in a couple of instances it is noteworthy.

D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 203–204.

Graham Criddle said:

Although - from my screenshot above - it looks as though LEB (in terms of speaker tagging) extends it to verse 21.

Ah, I see. I overlooked that you were talking about speaker tagging as opposed to where the quotation mark finishes in the surface text (which in LEB is verse 14). It seems to me that this is a bug in their speaker tagging, then. They should match what they decided for where to put the quotation mark in. I can't imagine any other decision being made for how to do the speaker tagging. If they want to tag through 21 as spoken by Jesus, then they should have the quotation mark finish there too. And their decision as to where to end the quotation when doing the LEB translation was probably made by considering all the scholarly discussion about it and making up their minds as to which is most convincing. But I reiterate, the speaker tagging should match up with where the quotations marks go in the text.

What makes this a particular difficult call to make - where does Jesus end and the narrator begin - is that Jesus in the Gospel of John often uses language very similar to what we find in the narrator's sections of the book (and similar to language in the first epistle of John) and maybe a bit different from the typical vocabulary, style and themes of the synoptic Jesus.

So even though the fourth Gospel is rendering the message of Jesus faithfully, it is phrased in the style and choice of words of the evangelist. The "ipsissima verba versus ipsissima vox" issue.