By Water & Blood

Bethabara and the days after the temptation

And when he has narrated all these things, he says, “These things took place in Bethabara”; but in other copies, “in Bethany, beyond the Jordan.”

And after these things he shows that the disciples from John said to him, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” And he said, “Come and see.” And they went away, and stayed with him that day.

And on the next day—“it was about the tenth hour—Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter, was one of the two who had followed him. He first finds his own brother Simon and says to him, ‘We have found the Messiah,’ which is translated Christ. This one brought him to Jesus. Looking at him, Jesus said, ‘You are Simon the son of Jonah; you shall be called Cephas,’ which is interpreted Peter.

On the following day he wanted to go out into Galilee, and he finds Philip, and Jesus says to him, ‘Follow me.’ Now Philip was from Bethsaida, from the city of Andrew and Peter. Philip finds Nathanael and says to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses wrote in the law, and the prophets, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ And Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good be from Nazareth?’ Philip says to him, ‘Come and see.’

And seeing Nathanael coming toward him, Jesus says about him, ‘Behold, truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ Nathanael says to him, ‘From where do you know me?’ Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’ Nathanael answered him and said, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.’

Jesus answered him and said to him, ‘Because I said to you that I saw you under the fig tree, do you believe? You will see greater things than these.’ And he said to him, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

And on the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee,” and what follows—so as to show that after the forty days of the temptation, and after the return from that temptation itself and the movement toward Nazareth and Galilee, as the other three evangelists said, he came again to the Jordan;

as will also be shown from John’s word, who spoke thus when he saw him coming on the following day: “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” And again on the other day, when he saw him walking, he said, “This is he about whom I said to you, ‘The one coming after me has come to be before me, because he was first before me’”; “and John bore witness,” it says, “saying that I have seen the Spirit descending in the form of a dove and coming upon him.”

But the “he bore witness” and the “this is he of whom I said to you” are as of one already speaking about another time that has passed, so as to show that this time is not the same as that time of the baptism, but another beside that one.

For he does not arrive at once from the temptation to John, but first into Galilee, then from Galilee to the Jordan—which was this coming to John. Therefore he says, “This was he of whom I said to you,” and further the Gospel says, “And John bore witness that I have seen,” as of the matter having already taken place at some earlier time.