005_Tam_co_570-588 13/02/15 12:48 Pagina 587 WHEN PAPYRI AND CODICES SPEAK: REVISITING JOHN 2,23-25 587 is also in motion here. From the previous pericopae, readers have seen different characters (from John the Baptist to the disciples) bearing witness to Jesus (marturi,a / marture,w 1,7.8.15.32.34). Although marture,w terms are not directly applied to the disciples, their confessions of Jesus’ identity and bringing people to Jesus (1,41.45.49) already function undoubtedly under the rubric of tes- timony language. Yet, conversely, the author mentions that Jesus needs no one to bear witness about man (ouv crei,an ei=cen i[na tij marturh,sh| peri. tou/ avnqrw,pou, 2,25). Jesus’ divine attribute, con- trasting with the limitation of the characters’ need of testimony in the narrative, is again stressed here (cf. 1,1.18). 3. Summary and Proposal Thus, summarizing my discussion so far, 2,23-25 partly con- cludes the previous pericopae by adding further nuances to the ap- prehension of Jesus, that is, how Jesus is being known in terms of seeing, knowing, believing, and witnessing. These verses correct a probable false impression: that a professing faith based on signs is automatically or necessarily true by itself. These verses give hints that some professing faith could be unreliable. Thus, with these an- ticlimactic remarks, the positive apprehensions of Jesus by the char- acters in 1,29 – 2,22 are counterbalanced by the negative depiction of the faith of the people here (polloi,). John 2,23-25, as explained in terms of the narrative linkages discussed in this paper, functions more importantly as a clarifying and concluding remark to the preceding 1,35 – 2,22 though in an anticlimactic way. It is neither merely transitional nor introductory to the Nicodemus pericope as many modern Johannine commentators claim. * * * This paper revisits the role of 2,23-25 in the first few chapters of the Gospel of John. Having surveyed the viewpoints of recent commentaries and observed some inadequacies, I examined the sense-unit delimitation in the earliest Greek papyri and codices. From these earliest textual witnesses, I observed a phenomenon at odds with the predominant view of modern commentators. The sig- nificance of these findings, pointing to the interpretative acts of the