Is John chapter 9 in the same day with John chapter 10:22-23?

Question

When you read John 9, you may think .. Where did The Lord Jesus heal the blind man...

John 9:1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

It doesn't say clearly in John 9, where Jesus did this miracle.

But in John 10:23 we read that Jesus was already in the temple, it is never mentioned when Jesus entered to the temple.

It just says "walked"

John 10:23 And Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch.

What do you think Jesus was already in the temple since John chapter 9 or John 10:23 was in other time lapse.

Answer 1

The way I read the gospels is as a collection of stories about Jesus. The gospels were written decades after the events happened, and the authors drew on this collection of stories, whether from memory or their own notes, and put them together in chronological order into a finished work.

Think of how you would remember some event, say an adventure you had -- you would remember a series of memorable stories that happened on that adventure. So the Gospels are these stories put together, and it's useful to recognize the starting and ending points of the stories, which tend to have similar narrative devices, because you almost never get markers like "three months later". At best you see markers like "Now on the feast of dedication..." or "When Jesus was preaching in the temple.." and then a story begins. If you read carefully, you can see the narrative arc and know when a story ends.

Then another story is presented "Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha..." and you know you are in the next story.

So when I read this, in John 9.1:

"And as he went away, he saw a man blind from birth...”

So begins the story of Jesus and the Blind man.

This story continues until 10.21. Then in 10.22, another story starts, the story of "Christ questioned whether he is the Messiah":

Now there is no reason to assume that each story took only a single day. It would be almost impossible for the story of Jesus and the Blind Man to happen over one day. Look at all the events occuring in this story:

1. Jesus sees blind man, spits in dirt and rubs his eyes, tells him to go wash in the pool of Siloam.
2. Blind man does this and is cured, and then comes back to report being cured.
3. Neighbors question the blind man, asking who cured him
4. Blind man brought to pharisees for questioning
5. The man's parents are brought in for questioning
6. The man is questioned again, and then kicked out
7. Jesus finds the man and the man worships him
8. Jesus rebukes the Pharisees, telling the parable of the good shephard. (climax of the story)
9. Some believe and others do not (resolution)

So this story ends at 10.21.

Note that there is no reason to assume all the above events happened in a single day. That would be extremely unlikely. It is just a series of events that happened as part of this narrative arc, and then another story is recounted, this one starting during the feast of dedication. It could be months between the blind man story and the next story.

"Then the feast of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter,..." Another story begins here.

Answer 2

Chapter 8 of John's Gospel finishes with:

⁵⁷Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?
⁵⁸Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
⁵⁹Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
_{John 8:57-59 (KJV)}

Chapter 9 of John's Gospel begins:

¹And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.
_{John 9:1 (KJV)}

Two points:

1. There are no chapter divisions in the Greek.

2. The word 'Jesus' doesn't appear in the Greek text of John 9:1, as the Greek text is:

   Καὶ ^and παράγων ^{passing by} εἶδεν ^{he saw} ἄνθρωπον ^{a man}

So, the text, without the chapter break and without the additional word inserted, reads:

^8:58Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.
^8:59Then took they up stones to cast at him: but Jesus hid himself, and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by.
^9:1And as he passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

The chapter division has caused a break in John's narrative that shouldn't be there. John's readers would have immediately recognised the continuance of person, place and time of the events John was recounting here.

So, the Greek text makes it abundantly clear that Jesus restoring the sight of the blind man happened immediately following the encounter with the Jews, and therefore on the same day.

Now, all of chapter 9 concerns the event surrounding the man whose sight Jesus restored.

At the end of Chapter 9 the Jews ask Jesus:

⁴⁰... Are we blind also?
_{John 9:40 (KJV)}

Then Chapter 10 begins with Jesus demonstrating the blindness of the Jews by relating to them a parable that they didn't understand:

⁶This parable spake Jesus unto them: but they understood not what things they were which he spake unto them.
_{John 10:6 (KJV)}

Then immediately following Jesus' declaration, "I and my Father are one", John records this:

³¹Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him.
_{John 10:31 (KJV)}

There is no doubt that the events depicted in Chapters 8, 9 and 10 occurred on the same day.