The Greek word translated linen cloths (so also Jerusalem Bible and Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch) occurs in 20.5,6,7 but nowhere else with certitude in the New Testament. (Luke 24.12 is textually uncertain.) Since the word may be diminutive in form, New English Bible translates “strips of linen cloth.” However, there is no solid basis for this rendering, and it is better to understand the word generically to mean the linen cloths used in burying the dead.

Wrapped it in linen cloths may be rendered in some languages “wrapped linen cloths around and around it.”

The word translated spices (elsewhere in the New Testament only in Mark 16.1; Luke 23.56; 24.1) may also have the meaning, “aromatic oil.” Most modern English translations, with the exception of New English Bible (“perfumed oils”), render with the meaning “spices,” as Good News Translation does. If the word means “aromatic oil,” it was a mixture made by blending myrrh and aloes into a vegetable oil base, and so creating a fragrant oil. If the word means “spices,” the picture of the preparation for burial is that of wrapping the body with the linen cloths and sprinkling the spices between the folds.

According to the Jewish custom of preparing a body for burial is more literally “as is the burial custom of the Jews” (Revised Standard Version). One may say in some languages “That is how the Jews habitually prepared a body in order to put it in a tomb” or “… before putting it in a tomb.”

Quoted with permission from Newman, Barclay M. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on the Gospel of John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .