John 14:4

Ver. 4. “ And whither I go you know, and the way you know. ”

We translate according to the received reading, which has in its favor 14 Mjj., the Peschito and most of the manuscripts of the Itala. According to it, Jesus attributes to the disciples the knowledge both of the end and of the way. According to the Alexandrian reading: “And whither I go, you know the way,” He attributes to them only the knowledge of the way. The difference is not great. For if, according to the second reading, the knowledge of the end is not declared, it is certainly implied, and this by reason of John 14:2, where the end (the Father's house) had been clearly pointed out. But did the apostles know the way to reach it? Yes and no; yes, since this way was Jesus and Jesus was what they knew better than anything else. No, in the sense that they did not know Him as the way. This is the reason why, if Jesus can say to them with truth: You know the way, Thomas can answer him with no less truth: We know it not. Preoccupied until then with another end, the earthly kingdom of the Messiah, their imagination had not transferred their hopes from the world to God, from the earth to heaven; they were thinking, in fact, like the Jews (John 12:34): “ We have heard that the Christ abides forever (on the earth, which is glorified by Him); how then dost thou say, The Son of man must be lifted up? ” Comp. Acts 1:6. And this false end to a certain extent veiled the truth from them. It is Thomas, the disciple who was particularly positive in his spirit, who becomes here, as at other times, the organ of doubting thoughts and discouraged feelings which exist more or less in them all; comp. John 11:16; John 20:25.