Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary John 7:52

"They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet." — John 7:52 (ASV)

The scornful and snobbish reply “Are you from Galilee, too?” intimates that Nicodemus was taking the stand of the crude and ignorant Galileans who were gullible enough to trust in the wandering prophet, Jesus. The statement “a prophet does not come out of Galilee” seems inconsistent with the fact that some of the OT prophets, like Jonah, did originate from northern Israel.

Although this narrative is included in the sequence of the outline, it can hardly have belonged to the original text of this gospel. It is absent from most of the oldest copies of the gospel that precede the sixth century and from the works of the earliest commentators. But this does not mean that it is unhistorical. Its coherence and spirit show that it was preserved from a very early time, and it accords well with the known character of Jesus.