¹ Many commentators speculate that the specific feast—Tabernacles/Sukkot—carries symbolic and thematic freight (see, e.g., Mary L. Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2001] 115–43).

² Translations are my own, conforming as far as possible to the RSV.

³ The NA28 reading, “I am not going up” (ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀναβαίνω), is supported on the principle of lectio difficilior potior and by its presence in a diverse set of witnesses (א D K 1241 sy^s.c lat bo arm eth). Other early witnesses show the reading, “I am not yet going up” (ἐγὼ οὔπω ἀναβαίνω; so P⁶⁶ P⁷⁵ B L T W Χ Γ Δ Θ Ψ)—an early scribal emendation designed “to alleviate the inconsistency between ver. 8 and ver. 10” (Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament [2nd ed.; London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994] 185).

⁴ The 3rd-cent. writer Porphyry accused Jesus of “inconstantia ac mutatio” on the basis of 7:8 (attested in Jerome, Dialogus Contra Pelagianos 2.17), and 3rd-cent. Christian discomfort with the text is also evident in the presence of the variant reading, “not yet” (οὔπω) in P⁶⁶ and P⁷⁵. (See, however, arguments for a 4th-cent. dating for these texts in Brent Nongbri, “The Limits of Palaeographic Dating of Literary Papyri: Some Observations on the Date and Provenance of P. Bodmer II [P66],” Museum Helveticum 71 [2014] 1–35; and idem, “Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament,” JBL 135 [2016] 405–37).

⁵ So Adele Reinhartz, who considers Jesus’s words a blatant lie (“The Lyin’ King? Deception and Christology in the Gospel of John,” in Johannine Ethics: The Moral World of the Gospel and Epistles of John [ed. Sherri Brown and Christopher W. Skinner; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017] 156). Other solutions to this ethical problem exist. Klaus Wengst, shying away from characterizing Jesus’s response as “lying,” insists that the episode reflects Jewish notions of the permissibility of certain otherwise forbidden acts under duress, so that the scene depicts Jesus taking “legitimate camouflage” (Klaus Wengst, Das Johannesevangelium [2 vols.; ThKNT 4/1; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2004] 1:285–86). Other interpreters insist that Jesus’s words are not false, since he does not go to the city in the open manner presumed and understood by his brothers, but secretly (Rudolf Bultmann, Das Evangelium des Johannes [KEK 2; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1941] 221; Udo Schnelle, Das Evangelium nach Johannes [4th ed.; ThKNT 4; Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2009] 158–59; Johannes Beutler, A Commentary on the Gospel of John [trans. Michael Tait; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017] 211; Harold W. Attridge, “Thematic Development and Source Elaboration in John 7:1–36,” in Essays on John and Hebrews [WUNT 264; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010] 105–14, at 107–8, esp. n. 7). Another segment of commentators claim that Jesus’s words are not false when understood on a different plane of meaning (e.g., Edwyn Clement Hoskyns, The Fourth Gospel [2nd ed.; London: Faber & Faber, 1956] 312–13; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary [AB 29; Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966] 308), including Tyler Smith, who sees deception in this ambiguity (Tyler Smith, “Deception in the Speech Profile of the Johannine Jesus [John 7.1–10],” JSNT 40 [2017] 169–91). Still others interpret Jesus’s response to his brothers as a rebuff that asserts or secures his independence of action, without necessarily excluding a subsequent change of intention or action (e.g., C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text [2nd ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978] 311; Josef Blank, Das Evangelium nach Johannes [3 vols.; Geistliche Schriftlesung; Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1981] 1b:83–84; D. Moody Smith, John [ANTC; Nashville: Abingdon, 1984] 7; Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel: Issues and Commentary [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002] 132; Michael Theobald, Das Evangelium nach Johannes [2 vols.; RNT; Regensburg: Pustet, 2009] 511–12). Last, a few writers attempt to eliminate this “unsolvable problem” by insisting that the reading “not yet” is preferable—if not in the original Greek text of John (Chris C. Caragounis, “Jesus, His Brothers and the Journey to the Feast [John 7:8–10],” SEÅ 63 (1988) 177–87, at 181), then in a supposed Aramaic original (Charles Cutler Torrey, Our Translated Gospels: Some of the Evidence [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936] 135, 137–38) or as the implicit sense of “οὐκ” (Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to John [3 vols.; New York: Crossroad, 1982] 2:141).

⁶ In the nomenclature adopted here, “half-truths” are not statements containing both truth and falsehood, but strictly “true statements … that selectively emphasize facts that tend to support a particular interpretation or assessment of an issue and selectively ignore or minimize other relevant facts that tend to support contrary assessments” (Thomas L. Carson, Lying and Deception [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010] 57–58). Half-truths, though deceptive, are not actually lies: “lying differs from deception in two important respects. First, in order to lie, one must make a false statement. Deception does not require that one make a false statement or make any statement at all. True statements can be deceptive and some forms of deception do not involve making statements” (ibid., 55).

⁷ “To withhold information is to fail to offer information that would help someone acquire true beliefs and/or correct false beliefs” (Carson, Lying and Deception, 56).

⁸ Craig R. Koester, Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995) 74. Other literary critics of John have developed similar categories, encompassing some of the same episodes Koester calls “symbolic actions.” Dorothy Lee, for one, applies the term “symbolic narratives” to a narrower set of six episodes incorporating additional elements, including misunderstandings, confessions of faith, and/or statements of rejection (3:1–36; 4:1–42; 5:1–47; 6:1–71; 9:1–41; 11:1–12:11) (Dorothy Lee, The Symbolic Narratives of the Fourth Gospel: The Interplay of Form and Meaning [JSNTSup 95; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1994]). John Painter, in turn, applies the term “narrative symbol” to Jn 9:1–41 (John Painter, “John 9 and the Interpretation of the Gospel,” JSNT 28 [1986] 31–61, at 42). One should not insist too strongly on a clear distinction between episode and discourse. On the contrary, many symbolic actions unfold through a succession of scenes or multistage dialogue (e.g., 4:1–42; 6:1–41; 9:1–41; 11:1–59).

⁹ Koester, Symbolism, 74.

¹⁰ John 7:11–8:59 has a notoriously fragmented and complex structure, even setting to one side the insertion of the Pericope Adulterae (7:53–8:11). Nevertheless, a compelling case for the coherence of this passage within a larger cycle of Sukkot stories (Jn 7:1–10:40) appears in Ludger Schenke, “Joh 7–10: Eine dramatische Szene,” ZNW 80 (1989) 172–92.

¹¹ As Harold Attridge notes, “most commentators prefer to treat 7:1–13 as simply introductory material setting the external stage for the dialogues to follow” (Attridge, “Thematic Development,” 107). Andrew Lincoln, for one, begins engaging the episode as “transitional material linking the past action both in Jerusalem and Galilee with the imminent future action back in Jerusalem” (Andrew Lincoln, The Gospel according to Saint John [BNTC; London: Continuum, 2005] 243).

¹² More precisely, “in Johannine thought … the passion, death, resurrection, and ascension constitute the one, indissoluble salvific action of return to the Father” (Brown, John, 399), though the departure does not appear to be complete until the ascension (20:17). Martinus de Boer speculates that the departure came to encompass all these final events of Jesus’s life through a secondary “transfer of resurrection/ascension language to Jesus’ death by crucifixion” (Martinus de Boer, “Jesus’ Departure to the Father in John: Death or Resurrection?” in Theology and Christology in the Fourth Gospel [ed. Gilbert Van Belle, Jan D. van der Watt, and Petrus J. Mauritz; Leuven: Peeters, 2005] 1–20, at 19).

¹³ The disciples, in turn, (correctly) greet this statement as an example of Jesus finally “speaking plainly and not in any figure” (16:29).

¹⁴ Among ancient interpreters recognizing or exploiting these similarities, see Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatessaron 14.28; Epiphanius, Pan. 51.25.4–6. Among modern interpreters, see Hoskyns, Fourth Gospel, 312–13; Brown, John, 308; Smith, “Deception,” 177–86; Thyen, Johannesevangelium, 387–88.

¹⁵ On the motif of “elusiveness” in John, see M. W. G. Stibbe, “The Elusive Christ: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel,” JSNT 44 (1991) 19–38, at 25. A focused study of “hiddenness” in Jn 7 appears in John Painter, The Quest for the Messiah (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991) 245–60.

¹⁶ Painter, Quest for the Messiah, 248.

¹⁷ Jerome H. Neyrey, “Secrecy, Deception, and Revelation: Information Control in the Fourth Gospel,” in idem, The Gospel of John in Cultural and Rhetorical Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) 253.

¹⁸ Ibid., 271–79.

¹⁹ This pattern continues and expands a motif visible in the Synoptics—e.g., Mk 4:11. On John’s knowledge of the Synoptics, see Harold W. Attridge, “John and Other Gospels,” in The Oxford Handbook of Johannine Studies (ed. Judith M Lieu and Martinus C. de Boer; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) 44–62.

²⁰ The setting is, in fact, the most privileged one in the Gospel. As Neyrey observes, “Simply in terms of the volume of very secret information shared in a most private setting, the disciples who hear Jesus’s Farewell Address (John 13–17) must be classified as consummate insiders with exceptionally high status. Jesus calls them ‘friends’ (or ‘beloved ones’) precisely because ‘all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you’ (15:15)” (Neyrey, “Secrecy,” 275).

²¹ An extensive review of studies on “repetition” and “amplification” in John appears in Gilbert van Belle, “Repetitions and Variations in Johannine Research: A General Historical Survey,” in Repetitions and Variations in the Fourth Gospel: Style, Text, Interpretation (ed. Gilbert Van Belle, Michael Labahn, and Petrus J. Maritz; BETL 223; Leuven: Peeters, 2009) 33–85.

²² The shift in verb fits the tendency toward “variation” in Johannine restatement and elaboration (cf. Jn 3:3, 5).

²³ This article agrees with Martinus de Boer that although “Jesus’ promise to ‘come again’ in 14:3 seems at first glance to be a reference to the Parousia (see 21,22), or perhaps to his resurrection appearances (he ‘comes’ to the disciples in 21, 19, 24) … within the context of ch. 14 the promise is probably a reference to his ‘coming’ to believers (14,18.23.28) as ‘the Paraclete, the holy Spirit’ (14,25; cf. 14,16–17), whereby he shall take believers ‘to himself’, and thus into heavenly and familial fellowship with himself and the Father (cf. 14,6b)” (de Boer, “Jesus’ Departure,” 14; so also Jürgen Becker, “Die Abschiedsreden Jesu im Johannesevangelium,” ZNW 61 [1970] 215–45; Alois Stimpfle, Blinde Sehen: Die Eschatologie in traditionsgeschichtlichen Prozeß des Johannesevangeliums [Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990] 147–216; Hans-Christian Kammler, “Jesus Christus und der Geistparaklet: Eine Studie zur johanneischen Verhältnisbestimmung von Pneumatologie und Christologie,” in Johannesstudien. Untersuchungen zur Theologie des vierten Evangeliums [ed. Otfriend Hofius and Hans-Christian Kammler; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996] 87–190, at 104 n. 68; Coloe, God Dwells with Us, 157–78; Gitte Buch-Hansen, “It Is the Spirit That Gives Life” [John 6:63]: A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in John [BZNW 17; Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010] 394).

Other interpreters see an “intended double meaning” in the saying (e.g., Robert Gundry, “ ‘In my Father’s House Are Many Mοναί’ (John 14:2),” ZNW 58 [1967] 68–72, at 72; Wayne Meeks, “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” JBL 91 [1972] 44–72, at 65); or see the saying as holding different conceptions in a process of supplantation, reinterpretation, or correction (Brown, John, 646 n. 3; Christian Dietzfelbinger, Der Abschied des Kommenden. Eine Auslegung der johanneischen Abschiedsreden [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997] 99; Michael Theobald, Herrenworte im Johannesevangelium [HBS 34; Freiburg: Herder, 2002] 518).

²⁴ The paradoxical idea that Jesus will go to the Father, but that he is also “in the Father” (10:38), is brought out even in the first departure prediction. There, Jesus describes the place to which he will go as the place “where I am” (7:34).

²⁵ Claims that the chapter merely pairs different, complementary understandings of Jesus’s “coming,” without a thoroughgoing program of clarification or correction, so that 14:18–21 represents a distinct conception of Jesus’s “coming” from 14:2–3 (so, e.g., Jörg Frey, Die johanneische Eschatologie [3 vols.; WUNT 96, 100, 117; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997–2000] 3:134–78), fail to appreciate the unity of the chapter’s argumentation and the chapter’s early moves to deconstruct literal interpretations of vv. 2–3 (as in v. 4).

²⁶ The relationship between Jesus and the Paraclete in John is a complex issue, complicated by later christological controversies. A survey of recent scholarship on this question appears in Peter C. Orr, Exalted above the Heavens: The Risen and Ascended Christ (New Studies in Biblical Theology 47; Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2018) 54–61.

²⁷ A fuller set of parallels appears in Brown, John, 1135–36.

²⁸ Borrowing the language of Buch-Hansen, Spirit That Gives Life, 394.

²⁹ Jesus’s passage to the Father and return to his own “is not a chronological succession of separate events but two dimensions of his postpaschal life. As Jesus promised on the eve of this death, “I go away … and I come to you … (14:28), both verbs in the present” (Sandra M. Schneiders, “The Resurrection of the Body in the Fourth Gospel: Key to Johannine Spirituality,” in eadem, Jesus Risen in Our Midst: Essays on the Resurrection of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013] 82).

³⁰ Jesus’s response demonstrates that the “coming” envisioned does not correspond (primarily or exclusively) to the resurrection appearances but to the future indwelling of the disciples.

³¹ The truth of the statement is held together by the present tense: “I am not going up” (ἐγὼ οὐκ ἀναβαίνω; Morris, John, 399; Blomberg, Historical Reliability, 132).

³² “The writer wants us to understand that Jesus stood by his promise, at least for a brief time” (J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010] 428).

³³ Jesus’s final retreat in 8:59 parallels his retreat in 12:36—another symbol of the departure (Hugo Méndez, “Night and Day in John 9:4–5: A Reassessment,” NTS 61 [2015] 468–81, at 481).

³⁴ On the concept of “night” in John, see ibid., 468–81.

³⁵ Barnabas Lindars recognizes the pattern of delay and reversal as “a Johannine motif,” citing the wedding at Cana (2:3–9) and the raising of Lazarus (11:1–44) as other instances of the motif (Barnabas Lindars, The Gospel of John [NCB; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 1972] 281). Other commentators add the healing of the official’s son to this list (Lincoln, John, 243–45; Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary [NTL; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015] 61). Joel Nolette and Steven A. Hunt underscore that the pattern also seems to involve secrecy (Joel Nolette and Steven A. Hunt, “The Brothers of Jesus: All in the Family?” in Character Studies in the Fourth Gospel: Narrative Approaches to Seventy Figures in John [ed. Steven A. Hunt, D. Francois Tolmie, and Ruben Zimmerman; WUNT 314; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013] 238–44, at 242 n. 19).

³⁶ Parallels between this episode and the dialogue between Jesus and his brothers are noted in many sources, including Cornelis Bennema, Encountering Jesus (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009) 70. J. Ramsey Michaels stresses the differences between the scenes in an ultimately unconvincing attempt to downplay their similarities (Michaels, John, 420–21, 427).

³⁷ Attridge is probably correct that the difference between “hour” and “time” in these two verses “is not … particularly significant” (Attridge, “Thematic Development,” 107; also Schnackenburg, John, 2:142). In later chapters, the author glosses Jesus’s “hour” as “his hour … to depart out of this world to the Father” (13:1). Like the departure, then, this “hour” unfolds through the final movements of Jesus’s life (12:23; 13:1)—that is, not only the passion and death of Jesus (pace Ruben Zimmerman, “Eschatology and Time in the Gospel of John,” in Oxford Handbook of Johannine Studies [ed. Judith M. Lieu and Martinus C. de Boer; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018] 298–305) but also and ultimately the ascension as well. In 16:32, elements of the “hour” are still in the future. And Jesus characterizes the “hour” as the time when he gives the Spirit and (eternal) “life” (4:23; 5:25; cf. 6:63)—gifts associated with the time after Jesus’s resurrection (21:22). By taking up the language of the “hour” in 2:4 and 7:8, Jesus may hint that the transformation of water into wine and the secret journey to Jerusalem are connected—at least symbolically—to the events and gifts of the Gospel’s climactic “hour.” Along the same lines, the healing of the official’s son also associates its central act—Jesus granting life—with a certain “hour” (4:52).

³⁸ For the parallels between the first two Galilean signs, see the chart in Thompson, John, 114.

³⁹ Ibid., 113.

⁴⁰ Ibid.

⁴¹ Buch-Hansen correctly sees this moment as corresponding to the time when “the disciples are left alone ‘for a short time’ (16:16–19: μικρόν) and therefore are at risk of being caught by the dark (6:17, cf. 12:35)” (Buch-Hansen, Spirit That Gives Life, 454–55).

⁴² Buch-Hansen approaches this interpretation, writing, “The sign anticipates how, after his ascent and translation into the pneumatic Father (20:17), Jesus returns through the darkness (6:17, cf. 20:19) as God’s Spirit to the frightened disciples” (Spirit That Gives Life, 455).

⁴³ In an important twist, Jesus performs the miracle publicly, if even precisely to set his death in motion (11:38–46; cf. 11:53; 12:10–11); he then retreats into hiding again (11:54). Hiddenness and secrecy is not a permanent pattern until Jesus’s ascension.

⁴⁴ Stibbe cites several of these episodes to characterize John’s Jesus as “elusive in his physical presence”: “There is a game of hide-and-seek constantly being played out in the texture of John’s narrative. People seek Jesus but, more often than not, they do not find him because he conceals himself” (Stibbe, “The Elusive Christ,” 25). See also Painter’s discussion of “quest stories” in Quest for the Messiah.

⁴⁵ One can easily appreciate how the author adapts stories to suit these themes by comparing the Johannine account of the miraculous sea crossing to its Synoptic predecessors (Mk 6:45–53; Matt 14:22–34).

⁴⁶ There are several compelling reasons for identifying 7:1–11 as a mostly, if not exclusively, invented narrative. First, the scene has no cognate in the earlier Jesus traditions of the Synoptics. Secondly, the narrative is structured by a distinctly Johannine pattern of misdirection, delay, and secret reversal. Last, the speech of Jesus and his brothers is shot through with Johannine language and ideas (7:3–4, 5–8).