John 5:4, the angel who troubled the water
Modern Bibles omit John 5:4 when they follow the shorter text without the pool explanation; the longer text includes the angel stirring the water. The difference concerns whether that explanation belongs in the narrative.
The APB text at this verse
The manuscripts, editions, and versions
The committee record at this verse
The APB is translated by a committee of language models that works blind. The translators are never told they are translating the Bible, never given a book name or a verse number, and never shown the witnesses listed above. Where the manuscripts disagree, the choice between readings is made before translation by the same kind of translator working the same way: it sees the competing readings and the witnesses by age and class, but never a reference or a manuscript name. There are 14,877 such places. For APB 4.0 every one was decided again in October 2026. GPT-6.1 Sol decided every one first. Claude Fable 5.1, from another model family, decided 2,483 of them second, including every place where the first translator left the base text. A departure from the base text needs both translators to agree and the first to be at least 0.8 confident. There is no third translator, so the base text stands when the two disagree. APB 4.0 is translated over those decisions. Whatever was done at this verse was done on the language and the evidence alone, and the record is public.
John 5:4: set in brackets as a disputed passage, wording kept.
“The base text reads πλῆθος. The copies also carry πλῆθος πολὺ [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The evidence strongly favors the default.”
“The base text reads ξηρῶν. The copies also carry ξηρῶν ἐκδεχομένων τὴν τοῦ ὕδατος κίνησιν. 4 ἄγγελος γὰρ κατὰ … δήποτε κατείχετο νοσήματι. [later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The strong earlier support and explanatory character of the addition decisively favor the default.”
“The base text reads (nothing). The copies also carry πολὺ [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The default is strongly supported.”
“The base text reads (nothing). The copies also carry ἐκδεχομένων τὴν τοῦ ὕδατος κίνησιν. [greek majuscule; later majority tradition]; the committee kept the base text. The phrase about waiting for the water to move is a later explanation. The earliest and most varied copies lack it.”
“This passage is not in the earliest copies of the text. The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it. The passage is found only in late copies and reads as an explanation added to the story. The default is clearly against the evidence here.”
The APB committee set John 5:4 in brackets as a disputed passage and kept its wording. Its textual decision states: "The committee judged it a later addition and keeps it in brackets rather than removing it." GPT-6.1 Sol (OpenAI) served as the first translator, and Claude Fable 5.1 (Anthropic) served as the second translator. The committee's printed text ends John 5:3 with the description of the sick and includes the angel's stirring of the water in the bracketed passage that follows.
The argument for each reading
If the angel is a gloss
The case for the shorter reading rests on the absence of the pool explanation and on its role in the story. Nestle-Aland 28 ends the description of the sick with the blind, lame, and paralyzed. It does not include their waiting for the water or the account of the angel. The paralytic's words in verse 7 already assume a story about the water. A scribe could have added that story to explain his words. On this account, the longer reading preserves an explanation that entered the text during copying. The shorter reading leaves the paralytic's assumption unexplained by the narrator.
If the verse belongs
The case for retaining the angel passage has a concrete witness in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform. This edition carries both the waiting phrase and the angel account in full. Together, they explain why the sick gather at the pool and why entering the water first matters. The paralytic's words in verse 7 then follow an explanation the narrator has already given. If the passage belongs, omitting it removes that explicit connection. Its explanatory role makes it useful within the narrative, although that usefulness alone cannot establish whether it belonged to the text from the beginning.
The uncertainty concerns whether the angel account belonged to the narrative or entered it as an explanation of the paralytic's words. The two editions show the textual difference, but their readings alone do not establish the full history of copying. Both readings retain the sick at the pool and the paralytic's assumption about the water. The variant changes whether the narrator explicitly explains that assumption through an angel's action. It does not by itself settle a doctrine about angels or healing.
Related entries
Witness readings for critical editions are quoted from the SBLGNT apparatus (CC BY 4.0); Hebrew text from the Westminster Leningrad Codex (Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible). Readings of ancient manuscripts and versions are cited from the sources linked above.