# John 3.11 **Book:** [John](/codex/john/) · NASB95 ## Immediate context (±2 verses) **ASV** ([ASV](/codex/asv/)) > 9. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10. Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou the teacher of Israel, and understandest not these things? > > **11. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that which we know, and bear witness of that which we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.** > > 12. If I told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13. And no one hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of man, who is in heaven. (John 3:9-13, ASV) **WEB** ([WEB](/codex/web/)) > 9. Nicodemus answered him, “How can these things be?” 10. Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and don’t understand these things? > > **11. Most certainly I tell you, we speak that which we know, and testify of that which we have seen, and you don’t receive our witness.** > > 12. If I told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13. No one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. (John 3:9-13, WEB) **KJV** ([KJV](/codex/kjv/)) > 9. Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? 10. Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? > > **11. Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.** > > 12. If I have told you earthly things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things? 13. And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven. (John 3:9-13, KJV) **YLT** ([YLT](/codex/ylt/)) > 9. Nicodemus answered and said to him, 'How are these things able to happen?' 10. Jesus answered and said to him, 'Thou art the teacher of Israel, and these things thou dost not know! > > **11. 'Verily, verily, I say to thee, What we have known we speak, and what we have seen we testify, and our testimony ye do not receive;** > > 12. if the earthly things I said to you, and ye do not believe, how, if I shall say to you the heavenly things, will ye believe? 13. and no one hath gone up to the heaven, except he who out of the heaven came down, the Son of Man who is in the heaven. (John 3:9-13, YLT) ## Setting - **Speaker:** Jesus, in the night conversation with Nicodemus - **Audience:** Nicodemus, a Pharisee and member of the ruling council - **Location:** Jerusalem - **Time period:** early in the ministry, around a Passover visit to Jerusalem ## Theological reading **A claim to speak from acquaintance rather than from tradition.** "We speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony." The verse pairs two verbs that the Fourth Gospel keeps pairing: knowing (*oidamen*) and having seen (*heōrakamen*). The second is perfect tense, the aspect of a completed act whose result stands, which is the tense a witness needs. And the whole is presented under the heading of *testimony* (*martyria*), a word that runs through John as a structural motif. What makes the verse pointed in context is who it is addressed to. Nicodemus is a teacher of Israel, whose authority is precisely that he stands in a transmitted tradition. The claim being made against him is not that the tradition is false but that the speaker's warrant is of a different order: not received, but seen. **The plural is a genuine puzzle.** "We speak... we know... we have seen." Proposals include the Son speaking with the Father and the Spirit, Jesus speaking with John the Baptist as a fellow witness, Jesus including the disciples, or the evangelist's own community voice bleeding into the discourse. The last of these is the reading favored by much critical scholarship and is worth engaging rather than dismissing, since John 3:11 to 21 is one of the passages where the boundary between the words of Jesus and the commentary of the evangelist is genuinely hard to locate. The codex does not pretend the question is settled. **Apologetic relevance.** The verse states the New Testament's characteristic warrant structure compactly: what is testified to is what was seen, and the resistance met is not to the evidence but to the testimony. That last clause matters. The text's own account of unbelief is not that the evidence was insufficient but that the testimony was not received, which is the same observation made at [Matthew 13:16](/codex/matthew-13-16/) and treated at [Divine Hiddenness Objection Defeater](/codex/divine-hiddenness-objection-defeater/). ## Key words - ***oida*** (G1492), to know, in the sense of knowing that or being acquainted with. - ***horaō*** (G3708), to see; here the perfect *heōrakamen*, "we have seen." See [G3708 - horao](/codex/g3708-horao/). - ***martyria*** (G3141), testimony, witness; a structural motif of the Fourth Gospel. - ***lambanō*** (G2983), to receive, take; what the hearers are said not to do. _Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word._ ## Quoted in **Concepts:** - [Jesus Said](/codex/jesus-said/), via [John 3](/codex/john-3/) - [Preaching to Non-Believers](/codex/preaching-to-non-believers/), via [John 3.1-21](/codex/john-3-1-21/) **Lexicon:** - [G3708 - horao](/codex/g3708-horao/) - [H3820 - lev](/codex/h3820-lev/), via [John 3.1-15](/codex/john-3-1-15/) **Passages:** - [1 John 1.3](/codex/1-john-1-3/) ## Notes _Your annotations._ ## Cross-references - **[John 1:18](/codex/john-1-18/)**, the same seeing-and-declaring structure applied to the Son - **[1 John 1:1](/codex/1-john-1-1/)**, the Johannine sense-verb stack - **[1 John 1:3](/codex/1-john-1-3/)**, what was seen and heard, proclaimed - **[Matthew 13:16](/codex/matthew-13-16/)**, evidence received and not received - **[G3708 - horao](/codex/g3708-horao/)**, the seeing verb across the Johannine testimony material --- ## Why these four translations ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the **most literal English translations available** (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the **public domain in the United States**, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance. The four: - **[ASV](/codex/asv/)** (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition. - **[WEB](/codex/web/)** (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English. - **[KJV](/codex/kjv/)** (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base. - **[YLT](/codex/ylt/)** (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff. See [Bibles](/codex/bibles/) for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.