John 5:1
[After these things, there was a Jewish festival, and Yeshua went up to Jerusalem.]
Textual Variant: According to scholars, the entire chapter – from 5:1 to 5:18 – was an early oral legend tha someone interpolated into John’s text, thus becoming part of the traditional reading. Then a second interpolation expanded the story (in 5:3b-4). The evidence is pretty obvious, because at the end of chapter 4 Yeshua heals someone that was almost dead, and in John 5:19 (right after the story of Bethesda) Yeshua is still talking about his power to give life (5:21).
John 5:2
[Now in Jerusalem by the sheep gate, there is a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches.]
John 5:3
[Here laid a great number of sick people, blind, lame, and paralytics.] [[waiting for the moving of the water;]]
Textual Variant: Most manuscripts resembling an earlier reading omit “waiting for the moving of the water”.
John 5:4
[[for an angel went down at certain times into the pool, and stirred up the water. Whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made whole of whatever disease he had.]]
Textual Variant: This verse is certainly a later interpolation and a forgery. It is completly absent in the manuscripts that reflect earlier readings (Codex Sinaiticus, Vaticanus or Bezae, among many others). The Peshitta was also burdened with this addition although it was likely not there originally, as it is also missing in other Aramaic manuscripts such as the Old Syriac.
Greek manuscripts use the expression “hygies genesthai” (will you be made whole? – 5:6) which is not used anywhere else in the N”T, but it is common in pagan writings. There were some pools to which people attributed healing powers, but they had nothing to do with God’s angels, they were healing pools consecrated to Roman gods such as Asclepius (the god of healings) or the goddess Fortuna (see Mishna Zavim 1:5). The scribe’s attempt to claim that the Asclepeion’s powers come from Heaven simply does not stand up.