Bible Dictionary
SEARCH THE SCRIPTURES
“Search the Scriptures” refers to Jesus’ statement in John 5:39. The wording may be understood either as a command to examine Scripture or, more likely, as a declaration that His hearers were searching it while failing to come to Him.
Definition
“Search the Scriptures” is the traditional rendering of the opening words of John 5:39. The supplied interpretation understands the sentence not as a command but as a declaration: Jesus’ hearers were searching the Scriptures because they thought that in them they had eternal life.
Biblical Usage
The statement occurs in Jesus’ discourse concerning the Scriptures and their witness. On the indicative reading, it exposes the hearers’ activity and expectation while showing that they failed to come to Jesus, to whom the Scriptures testify.
Historical Background
The interpretation depends on taking the Greek verb as indicative rather than imperative. The supplied material notes that the Greek permits this reading and cites earlier and later scholars who defended it.
Related Figures
Historical Bible Dictionaries
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (ISBE)
<p>The sentence beginning with (eraunate), in Joh 5:39 the King James Version has been almost universally regarded as meaning "Search the scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life." But one cannot read as far as dokeite, "ye think," without feeling that there is something wrong with the ordinary version. This verb is at least a disturbing element in the current of thought (if not superfluous), and only when the first verb is taken as an indicative does the meaning of the writer become clear. The utterance is not a command, but a declaration: "Ye search the scriptures, because ye think that in them," etc. Robert Barclay as early as 1675, in his Apology for the True Christian Divinity (91 ff), refers to two scholars before him who had handed down the correct tradition: "Moreover, that place may be taken in the indicative mood, Ye search the Scriptures; which interpretation the Greek word will bear, and so Pasor translated it: which by the reproof following seemeth also to be the more genuine interpretation, as Cyrillus long ago hath observed." So Dr. Edwin A. Abbott, in his Johannine Grammar (London, 1906, section 2439 (i)). See also Transactions American Philological Association, 1901, 64 f.</p><p>J. E. Harry</p>