John 16:30 and 21:17 affirm that Jesus knows all things (*panta oidas*), and Colossians 2:2-3 says all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden in Christ. Mark 5:30-31 and Luke 8:45 have Jesus ask *tis hēpsato mou tōn himatiōn?* — 'who touched my garments?' — apparently not knowing who in the crowd had touched him. Mark 13:32 has Jesus deny knowing the day or hour of his return. The canon both ascribes and denies omniscience to Jesus.
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
17He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of Jonah, do you have affection for me?” Peter was grieved because he asked him the third time, “Do you have affection for me?” He said to him, “Lord, you know everything. You know that I have affection for you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.
2that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and gaining all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,3in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
45Jesus said, “Who touched me?” When all denied it, Peter and those with him said, “Master, the multitudes press and jostle you, and you say, ‘Who touched me?’”
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is the omniscience problem, and it reaches into the deepest Christological waters of the New Testament. The standard harmonization is theologically coherent, but it works only by importing dogmatic categories the Gospel writers themselves do not develop.
The omniscience-affirming texts are largely Johannine and Pauline, and most are confessions rather than narrator-assertions. John 16:30 is the disciples' acclamation, *nyn oidamen hoti oidas panta* — 'now we know that you know all things' — prompted by Jesus anticipating their question; it reports their growing faith, not a metaphysical inventory. John 21:17 is Peter's *kyrie, panta sy oidas* — 'Lord, you know all things' — in a scene testing Peter's love, where 'you know all things' functions as 'you know my heart.' Colossians 2:2-3, *en hō eisin pantes hoi thēsauroi tēs sophias kai gnōseōs apokryphoi* ('in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge'), is a hymnic, cosmic-Christological claim about Christ as the locus of divine wisdom, not a statement that the earthly Jesus consciously held every fact (Dunn, Colossians).
The ignorance texts, by contrast, are direct narrator-claims or Jesus's own words. Mark 5:30 has Jesus *epignous en heautō tēn ex autou dynamin exelthousan* ('perceiving in himself that power had gone out of him') turn and ask *tis mou hēpsato tōn himatiōn?* — 'who touched my garments?' The disciples find the question absurd in a crush of people (5:31), and the woman must come forward and confess; the narrative does not read as a staged or rhetorical question (Marcus). Luke 2:52, *kai Iēsous proekopten en tē sophia* ('and Jesus increased in wisdom'), presupposes a developing, non-omniscient baseline. The hardest text is Mark 13:32 / Matthew 24:36: *peri de tēs hēmeras ekeinēs ē tēs hōras oudeis oiden, oude hoi angeloi en ouranō oude ho huios, ei mē ho patēr* — 'about that day or hour no one knows, not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.' Jesus explicitly excludes himself, *ho huios*, from a specific knowledge. Its difficulty is confirmed by the textual record: the clause 'nor the Son' is omitted in many Matthean witnesses, a scribal softening that itself testifies to early discomfort.
The harmonization, formalized at Chalcedon (451) and defended by orthodox commentators since (Pannenberg, Macleod, Bauckham, Wright), is the two-natures doctrine, often joined to a kenotic reading of Philippians 2:7's *heauton ekenōsen* ('he emptied himself'). Jesus possesses omniscience in his divine nature while experiencing genuine human limitation in his human nature; the ignorance texts speak of the latter, the omniscience texts of the former. This is internally consistent and is the strongest form of the apologetic case. If one grants Chalcedon, Mark 13:32 and John 16:30 can both stand.
What the harmonization cannot show is that the Gospel writers were operating with this framework. Mark simply narrates Jesus not knowing who touched him and adds no parenthesis ('he asked this according to his human nature'). Mark 13:32 places the denial in Jesus's own mouth, unqualified. The two-natures epistemology is a later conceptual achievement, and reading it back into Mark is anachronistic. The critical reading (Brown; Marcus; Dunn, Christology in the Making) is that New Testament Christology is developmental: Mark's Jesus is more humanly limited; John's Jesus knows hearts and origins and 'all things'; the deutero-Pauline hymns (Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians 2) ascend higher still. The omniscience question is a snapshot of that trajectory rather than two faces of a single settled metaphysic. Crucially, pre-Chalcedonian Christians took the limitation texts at face value: Adoptionists and Arians built whole Christologies on Mark 13:32 and Luke 2:52, which is precisely why the orthodox party had to develop the two-natures formula to contain them.
Where the critical reading lands: disputed. The kenotic/two-natures harmonization is coherent as dogmatic theology if Chalcedon is granted, but it does not describe what the evangelists themselves were doing; Mark 5:30 and the unqualified Mark 13:32 present a Jesus who does not know certain things, and the omniscience texts are largely confessional. The resolution is doctrinal, not exegetical.
Sources for this reading
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (xiii-xxi): Introduction, Translation, and Notes (Anchor Bible 29A; Doubleday, 1970) pp. 711-714, 1101-1105on John 16:30; 21:17John 16:30, John 21:17
Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Bible 27; Doubleday, 2000) pp. 359-369on Mark 5:30Mark 5:30
Joel Marcus, Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible 27A; Yale University Press, 2009) pp. 911-915on Mark 13:32Mark 13:32
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, Vol. 3 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1997) pp. 377-381on Matthew 24:36Matthew 24:36
James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd ed. (Eerdmans, 1989) pp. 33-46on Mark 13:32Mark 13:32
Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1998) pp. 25-42on Colossians 2:2-3Colossians 2:2-3
James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon (NIGTC; Eerdmans, 1996) pp. 130-138on Colossians 2:2-3Colossians 2:2-3
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is the omniscience problem, and it reaches into the deepest Christological waters of the New Testament. The standard harmonization is theologically coherent, but it works only by importing dogmatic categories the Gospel writers themselves do not develop.
The omniscience-affirming texts are largely Johannine and Pauline, and most are confessions rather than narrator-assertions. John 16:30 is the disciples' acclamation, *nyn oidamen hoti oidas panta* — 'now we know that you know all things' — prompted by Jesus anticipating their question; it reports their growing faith, not a metaphysical inventory. John 21:17 is Peter's *kyrie, panta sy oidas* — 'Lord, you know all things' — in a scene testing Peter's love, where 'you know all things' functions as 'you know my heart.' Colossians 2:2-3, *en hō eisin pantes hoi thēsauroi tēs sophias kai gnōseōs apokryphoi* ('in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge'), is a hymnic, cosmic-Christological claim about Christ as the locus of divine wisdom, not a statement that the earthly Jesus consciously held every fact (Dunn, Colossians).
The ignorance texts, by contrast, are direct narrator-claims or Jesus's own words. Mark 5:30 has Jesus *epignous en heautō tēn ex autou dynamin exelthousan* ('perceiving in himself that power had gone out of him') turn and ask *tis mou hēpsato tōn himatiōn?* — 'who touched my garments?' The disciples find the question absurd in a crush of people (5:31), and the woman must come forward and confess; the narrative does not read as a staged or rhetorical question (Marcus). Luke 2:52, *kai Iēsous proekopten en tē sophia* ('and Jesus increased in wisdom'), presupposes a developing, non-omniscient baseline. The hardest text is Mark 13:32 / Matthew 24:36: *peri de tēs hēmeras ekeinēs ē tēs hōras oudeis oiden, oude hoi angeloi en ouranō oude ho huios, ei mē ho patēr* — 'about that day or hour no one knows, not the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.' Jesus explicitly excludes himself, *ho huios*, from a specific knowledge. Its difficulty is confirmed by the textual record: the clause 'nor the Son' is omitted in many Matthean witnesses, a scribal softening that itself testifies to early discomfort.
The harmonization, formalized at Chalcedon (451) and defended by orthodox commentators since (Pannenberg, Macleod, Bauckham, Wright), is the two-natures doctrine, often joined to a kenotic reading of Philippians 2:7's *heauton ekenōsen* ('he emptied himself'). Jesus possesses omniscience in his divine nature while experiencing genuine human limitation in his human nature; the ignorance texts speak of the latter, the omniscience texts of the former. This is internally consistent and is the strongest form of the apologetic case. If one grants Chalcedon, Mark 13:32 and John 16:30 can both stand.
What the harmonization cannot show is that the Gospel writers were operating with this framework. Mark simply narrates Jesus not knowing who touched him and adds no parenthesis ('he asked this according to his human nature'). Mark 13:32 places the denial in Jesus's own mouth, unqualified. The two-natures epistemology is a later conceptual achievement, and reading it back into Mark is anachronistic. The critical reading (Brown; Marcus; Dunn, Christology in the Making) is that New Testament Christology is developmental: Mark's Jesus is more humanly limited; John's Jesus knows hearts and origins and 'all things'; the deutero-Pauline hymns (Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians 2) ascend higher still. The omniscience question is a snapshot of that trajectory rather than two faces of a single settled metaphysic. Crucially, pre-Chalcedonian Christians took the limitation texts at face value: Adoptionists and Arians built whole Christologies on Mark 13:32 and Luke 2:52, which is precisely why the orthodox party had to develop the two-natures formula to contain them.
Where the critical reading lands: disputed. The kenotic/two-natures harmonization is coherent as dogmatic theology if Chalcedon is granted, but it does not describe what the evangelists themselves were doing; Mark 5:30 and the unqualified Mark 13:32 present a Jesus who does not know certain things, and the omniscience texts are largely confessional. The resolution is doctrinal, not exegetical.
Sources for this reading