When you read what people say about the woman caught in adultery, John 8:1-11, you get the following notions as being “what the Gospel says”: (1) only those who have never sinned are allowed to judge, and since everybody sins, there should be no judgment; (2) Jesus is against capital punishment, ever; (3) mercy must always prevail instead of justice; and (4) the old Law is obliterated because it was not just, now we have the “law of love”.
These are wrong. They are completely wrong.
Let’s see the text:
1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.[a] 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.”[b] And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
Notice that the people who say (2) don’t seem to say “no to punishment at all of any sort”. Because that would be crazy and stupid: parents must punish to train, the law must punish SOME wrongdoing. But if the text where Jesus refuses to punish the woman were to apply universally as a mandate, then universally punishment would be forbidden.
Before we get into the weeds of understanding this, let’s recall some basic concepts of biblical interpretation: the layers of meanings are divided, first, into the literal and the spiritual senses. The spiritual is further divided into the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical (i.e. as they signify what relates to eternal glory).
The literal sense is the primary sense that the writer intended as he wrote it. So, for example, if the writer was using a multi-word idiom, the literal sense is the idiomatic intention, not the meaning of the individual words taken one by one. For example, neither Hebrew nor Aramaic had a specific “superlative” form of expression, as we do by adding “-est” to an adjective, “highest”, or our “most esteemed”. Instead they used a construction of “xxx among men” to mean “most xxx.” “Blessed among women” signifies “most blessed”. This is all part of the literal sense, the primary meaning the human author had in mind.
Another facet is what St. Augustine says about interpreting Scripture: generally, where a point is ambiguous at a certain point, the same point is made clearly, unambiguously elsewhere. This is not easy to employ, of course, but we can use it sometimes.
The allegorical senses are many, but the most common is that of “types” or figures. The OT contains a large number of types that prefigure the NT, especially Christ. Joseph going down to Egypt, who later saves his people, is a type of Christ. But the NT also has allegorical senses: in the parable of the workers in the vineyard starting at different times, being paid all the same benefit, the allegorical sense is that the gentiles receiving baptism into the Church receive the same benefit as the Jews who receive baptism.
An example of the anagogical sense is the from the parables in which Jesus refers to the wedding feast: the joy of heaven is signified through the image of the joy of the wedding feast.
What is critical to all of this is that the proper spiritual senses (and there are often several valid spiritual readings of one passage) are all rooted in the literal sense, for the literal sense is the ground of the rest. You have to get the literal sense right first.
So let’s tackle the passage. The Fathers have a lot to say about the first verses, on the Mount of Olives, on the “early morning”, “all the people”, and on Christ’s sitting down. You can gather them along at your leisure. At verse 3 the scribes and Pharisees brought to Jesus the woman “caught in the very act” of adultery. John doesn’t make us wonder about the motive, he tells us straight out: they wanted to trap him, to have something against him. Let us expand on this a bit.
Jesus was by this point well known for his compassion and gentleness. He had mercy on many afflicted, he bade the little children to come to him, etc. The scribes assumed that his preference would be not to punish the woman. In addition, in their perception at least, his reputation would suffer if he were seen to be harsh and punitive, even if that is what the Law of Moses required. They wanted to destroy his reputation and his ability to stand against them publicly. As a backup, if he condemned the woman to stoning, this would violate the Roman rule that all life-and-death matters were in their hands, so Jesus would be in trouble with the Romans. (And, if Jesus were to try to wiggle out by saying “the Law says to stone her, so let’s go to the Romans and get their permission”, this too would destroy his reputation through his being a Roman collaborator.)
So Rupertus, Bede, and S. Augustine, who says, “They saw that He was very gentle; they said therefore among themselves, If He rules that she be let go, He will not observe that righteousness which the Law enjoins. But not to lose His (character for) gentleness, by which He has already won the love of the people, He will say that she ought to be released. And we shall hence find occasion to accuse Him. But the Lord in His answer both observed justice, and did not forego His gentleness.” They thought to accuse Him of violating the law by her acquittal, and would say to Him, says S. Augustine, “Thou art an enemy of the law, thou judgest contrary to Moses, or rather against Him who gave the law. Thou art guilty of death, and must be stoned together with her.”
Either way he is destroyed.
Jesus evades the trap. How? He writes on the ground. When they press him, he says “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Then he stoops to writing again. And they walk away, one by one.
These two verses are the crux of the story: he writes, he says “let one without sin start the stoning”, and he writes again. So, why do they walk away? We won’t GET the literal sense unless we understand why they walk away. According to some versions there is added text, John says that it is because “those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one”. But most versions don’t have this, and it is probably an added gloss. In any event, it does not explain. WHY did their consciences pick this inopportune moment to rise up? Jesus’ words alone would not do it: they were self-righteous, and would pay no attention to a claim “you have committed sins in the past, you cannot do this”. The law didn’t say that. They would reject it.
The reason is either already in the passage elsewhere, or it is in the writing on the ground. If we don’t use the writing to explain the reason, we are forced to construct reasons which might seem to us to explain, but are at best highly conjectural, and generally are no more than vague ideas. And, for the most part, do a poor job of explaining why they walk away. (For instance, the thesis that Jesus as God “inspired” them with a general realization of their own need of mercy. But if Jesus was going to do that, the writing on the ground was irrelevant. And it does nothing to explain them walking away one by one. It’s a “miracle” without any supporting indicators or rationale – a LITERARY deus ex machina.) John put the writing on the ground in for a reason. The writing explains why they walk away.
Yet he did not tell us what Jesus wrote. At least, not directly. (The Fathers tell us that often the authors of scripture keep something partially hidden in order to evoke wonder, and force us to seek, to explore, to test and WORK at it, to increase our faith and hope.) But he did give us clues. First, Jesus did not write just once, but twice. Next, the accusers went away, “one by one, beginning with the elders”, not en masse. Third, he said “let he who is without sin cast the stone”. These are pointers to help us figure out us what Jesus wrote.
Elsewhere, Jesus said
Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets;I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. [Mt 5:17]
But what was the law? Let’s recall EXACTLY what the Law of Moses prescribed.
If a man lie with another man's wife, they shall both die, that is to say, the adulterer and the adulteress: and thou shalt take away the evil out of Israel. [Deut. 22:22]If any man commit adultery with the wife of another, and defile his neighbour's wife, let them be put to death, both the adulterer and the adulteress. [Lev. 20:10]
But also:
If there be a controversy between men, and they call upon the judges: they shall give the prize of justice to him whom they perceive to be just: and him whom they find to be wicked, they shall condemn of wickedness. [Deut. 25:1]15 One witness shall not rise up against any man, whatsoever the sin or wickedness be: but in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall stand. 16 If a lying witness stand against a man, accusing him of transgression, 17 Both of them, between whom the controversy is, shall stand before the Lord in the sight of the priests and the judges that shall be in those days. 18 And when after most diligent inquisition, they shall find that the false witness hath told a lie against his brother: 19 They shall render to him as he meant to do to his brother, and thou shalt take away the evil out of the midst of thee: 20 That others hearing may fear, and may not dare to do such things. 21Thou shalt not pity him, but shalt require life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. [Deut. 19:15-21]
6 By the mouth of two or three witnesses shall he die that is to be slain. Let no man be put to death, when only one beareth witness against him. 7 The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to kill him, and afterwards the hands of the rest of the people: that thou mayst take away the evil out of the midst of thee. [Deut. 17:7]
So now we have the REAL context to interpret Jesus writing on the ground. The scribes brought the woman “caught in the act”. How is it that they conveniently had an adulteress on hand just when they needed her to entrap Jesus? Isn’t it lovely that she was ready to hand?
No, the secret is in the omission: where was the man caught with her?
They brought no man there, because the scribes and Pharisees, these “interpreters of the law” were not going by the law. They were lawless. They made as if to be followers of the law, but they were not.
And why did they bring the woman to Jesus? The law was clear: bring the case to the judges for decision. Jesus was not appointed as one of the judges, nor did he set himself up in judgment at this time: his purpose, his mission, was to save sinners, not to kill them. They had no business taking the woman to Jesus to begin with, and they were violating the law to do so.
The final piece of the puzzle is this: the Law was written in stone – i.e., out of the earth. So, when Jesus stooped to write on the earth, he too was writing the Law: namely, the verses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy that said what the scribes were SUPPOSED to be doing, which they were not doing. He was providing the texts that would condemn the scribes in their own actions: Deuteronomy 17, 19, and 25. In fact, in verse 17, John himself mentions the specific law about requiring 2 witnesses, so we know it was in his mind.
But apparently at first they did not “get the message”, for they pressed him. So Jesus makes it pointed: let he who is without fault in this matter start the stoning. Yet the law said that the _witnesses_ were to throw the first stones, so Jesus was CALLING OUT the mob to force two or three of them to stand forth as “the witnesses” required. They had to take the responsibility. But the problem here for the scribes is this, the Law that they want to use is the Law – now written before their very eyes - that condemns THEIR OWN behavior in this matter: they did not follow the law, they did not bring the woman to the judges, they did not bring the man also caught in the act. And … under the Law, if a man is a false witness, HIS OWN LIFE will be paid in forfeit. Jesus reminded them the Law applies also to witnesses.
Tread carefully, for the life on the line here may be your own. Any man among the scribes and Pharisees who picked up a stone to begin the stoning would be accused by Jesus and all of “the people” as a violator of the Law. The very act of picking up a stone would condemn him. You may, if you wish, imagine Jesus writing “Deuternomy 19:19” on the ground, and as he says “he who is without sin” actually pointing to that location on the ground where he wrote it. (Actually, they were all violating the Law, but the focus would all rest on the one who first picked up a stone. Jesus carved up the indiscriminate mob by putting intense pressure on just one or two.)
Now the matter hangs by a thread. There is a stalemate: The Pharisees can’t win, but the woman is still faced with a mob of accusers. The mob won’t walk away just yet. Then Jesus stoops to writing again, and one by one, starting with the elders, they walk away. Why? Why starting with the elders? How does Jesus target each one in turn?
It is because of what Jesus was now writing: after he wrote the Law, he wrote more.
The sin of Juda is written with a pen of iron, with the point of a diamond, it is graven upon the table of their heart, upon the horns of their altars. [Jer. 17:1]they that depart from thee, shall be written in the earth: because they have forsaken the Lord, the vein of living waters. [Jer. 17:13]
There is an old tradition that Jesus was writing the specific sins of these men. For they turn away one by one, in a specific order. I.E. by design, individually targeted, not broadcast. One by one, starting with the elders who should have known the best and should have led the younger ones in truth, Jesus showed each one how he could be condemned if the Law were to be followed. Being unwilling to see themselves condemned, each one turned away. Yes, as the gloss suggests, they were convicted by their consciences – but it’s because Jesus himself gave each one the goad to conscience that would make him realize his false position for condemning the woman. St. Thomas points out that
Thirdly, there should be certitude about the sentence given; and so he says, "Jesus wrote."
So, lest there be doubt and dispute about the specifics of the matter, Jesus commits them to writing – the only occasion in the Gospels which shows Jesus writing anything. Jesus resorts to the scribes’ own preferred medium, the written word. (Perhaps “those who live (wrongly) by the pen shall die by the pen”?) The scribes are “convicted” by their consciences, because Jesus pricks their consciences and punctures their sanctimoniousness with pointed words that accuse them, individually, from the elders on down.
Additional commentary uses the fact that the woman was so conveniently caught “in the very act”, to condemn the scribes: How did they know the adultery was going on? If she was a woman of ill repute, who was known to take attention from men not her husband, then they should have accused her before this. Their omission from following the law was wrong. It would be worse yet, if they themselves were implicated in her adulteries, and this is how they knew where to get her at need, for then they should be standing next to her in the circle. Either way, they would be even more at fault.
Jesus also condemned divorce:
But I say to you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, excepting for the cause of fornication, maketh her to commit adultery: and he that shall marry her that is put away, committeth adultery. [Mt 5:32]
So, what is going on here? The “law” that the Jews demanded of Moses, which the scribes and Pharisees ruled upon, allowed a man to divorce a woman, but Jesus says that doing so “makes her to commit adultery”. How so? Because by divorcing the woman, the man cuts her off from any honorable means of support. She cannot own property, she cannot run a business: she will starve if she does not find some means of support, e.g. other men. How kindly the “law” was, to allow divorce! This is an instance of what Jesus points out later, the Pharisees “binding up heavy loads, but will not lift a finger to help them”. [Lk 11:46]
In any one of three pathways, these men may have been directly or indirectly complicit in her adultery, in addition to wrongly handling the case that morning. Or, Jesus may have pointed out their own sexual sins that were not related to this woman, but worthy of condemnation. In any case, what he wrote made each one uncomfortable, one by one in order. Targeted, that is, so specifically designated for each one in turn.
Now we come to the last verses. Christ asks “has no one condemned you”? She says “No, Lord”. And then “Neither do I”.
This too is according to the Law. Christ did not witness her caught in adultery, and he cannot condemn her before others nor initiate the stoning. Christ FOLLOWED THE LAW. Because no witnesses were there ready to condemn her, nobody else in the community could rightly condemn her or start the stoning, whereas they were all required to participate if she (and the man) were properly accused by direct witnesses and found guilty before the judges. Jesus followed the Law.
But Christ does not leave it at “Neither do I”, as if she is free to return to “business as usual.” He adds the further admonition: “Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
[Note: I think in the context the admonition is primarily directing this sinner’s attention to the sins which had gotten her into hot water. To crowds and groups, he reproves sin in general and by category. In individual settings, he picks out specific faults to correct, not the entire gamut of wrongdoing. He never goes over the whole range of someone’s sins individually – it would take forever. In this instance, I think he meant to draw attention especially to her sins of adultery, not to everything sinful in her life. This is also why it is fair to take Jesus’s answer to the scribes as meaning “he who is without sin in this matter should cast the first stone,” that Jesus’ criterion is focused, not broadcast. Certainly the Fathers of the Church take him that way, because they uphold that there is a proper human office of judgment.]
The Fathers also attest that Jesus, in sending her away without condemnation, forgave her sins, for this was his purpose, to draw sinners away from sin.
That is the literal sense, as I put it together from the Fathers and Doctors and orthodox Christian commentators. This is not the only possible reading, but unlike all the others I have read, it makes sense of all of the details given. It leaves no important loose ends nor any unexplained or implausible actions.
Does it mean that only those who have never sinned can be a judge or juror? No. Does it mean that capital punishment is wrong? No, it does not. Does it mean that mercy must prevail instead of justice in every case? No. Does it mean that the old Law was unjust and now overturned? No, it does not. How could it? Jesus followed the Law!
Now for the moral sense:
Again, there is food for thought in the early verses, I will leave you to get that from the Fathers. In the heart of the passage, the moral sense is developed in dealing with judgment. The scribes and Pharisees ask him to judge the case, but Jesus turns and writes on the ground. Why? Because he has not been constituted judge (yet), and he refuses to sit in judgment. Not his problem.
When they press him, he again declines to judge the woman on his own word, but points at the law: let the witnesses throw the first stone – IF they are free of taint in the matter. He provides the rope by which the scribes and Pharisees will be free to hang themselves. When they finally notice the hangman’s noose over their heads, they walk away from judgment themselves. St. Thomas:
Here the question arises as to whether a sinful judge sins by passing sentence against another person who has committed the same sin. It is obvious that if the judge who passes sentence is a public sinner, he sins by giving scandal. Yet, this seems to be true also if his sin is hidden, for we read in Romans (2:1): "When you judge another you condemn yourself." However, it is clear that no one condemns himself except by sinning. And thus it seems that he sins by judging another. My answer to this is that two distinctions have to be made. For the judge is either continuing in his determination to sin, or he has repented of his sins; and again, he is either punishing as a minister of the law or on his own initiative. Now if he has repented of his sin, he is no longer a sinner, and so he can pass sentence without sinning. But if he continues in his determination to sin, he does not sin in passing sentence if he does this as a minister of the law; although he would be sinning by doing the very things for which he deserves a similar sentence. But if he passes sentence on his own authority, then I say that he sins in justice, but from some evil root; otherwise he would first punish in himself what he notices in someone else, because "A just person is the first to accuse himself" (Prv 18:17).
And here we have the answer to people who use John 8 to condemn ALL judging as if it were wrong: “First get rid of the beam in your own eye, and then you can see to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” Notice that the injunction is not “you have a beam in your own eye, so never judge”. The admonition is to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Correct it. Get rid of your sins. Confess, be forgiven, and amend your life. Turn to righteousness. Then you will see rightly the mote in your brother’s eye. In just the previous chapter, John says
Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.
Is it reasonable that John intended chapter 8 to condemn judging altogether if he just got done telling people to judge in righteousness? Not hardly. That’s stoooopid.
And what is righteous judgment? Clement of Alexandria:
Let no, one then, run down law, as if, on account of the penalty, it were not beautiful and good. For shall he who drives away bodily disease appear a benefactor; and shall not he who attempts to deliver the soul from iniquity, as much more appear a friend, as the soul is a more precious thing than the body? Besides, for the sake of bodily health we submit to incisions, and cauterizations, and medicinal draughts; and he who administers them is called saviour and healer, even though amputating parts, not from grudge or ill-will towards the patient, but as the principles of the art prescribe, so that the sound parts may not perish along with them, and no one accuses the physician's art of wickedness; and shall we not similarly submit, for the soul's sake, to either banishment, or punishment, or bonds, provided only from unrighteousness we shall attain to righteousness?For the law, in its solicitude for those who obey, trains up to piety, and prescribes what is to be done, and restrains each one from sins, imposing penalties even on lesser sins.
But when it sees any one in such a condition as to appear incurable, posting to the last stage of wickedness, then in its solicitude for the rest, that they may not be destroyed by it (just as if amputating a part from the whole body), it condemns such an one to death, as the course most conducive to health. "Being judged by the Lord," says the apostle, "we are chastened, that we may not be condemned with the world." (1 Cor. 11:32) For the prophet had said before, "Chastening, the Lord has chastised me, but has not given me over unto death." "For in order to teach you His righteousness," it is said, "He chastised you and tried you, and made you to hunger and thirst in the desert land; that all His statutes and His judgments may be known in your heart, as I command you this day; and that you may know in your heart, that just as if a man were chastising his son, so the Lord our God shall chastise you."
And to prove that example corrects, he says directly to the purpose: "A clever man, when he sees the wicked punished, will himself be severely chastised, for the fear of the Lord is the source of wisdom." (Prov. 22:3-4)
But it is the highest and most perfect good, when one is able to lead back any one from the practice of evil to virtue and well-doing, which is the very function of the law. So that, when one fails into any incurable evil—when taken possession of, for example, by wrong or covetousness—it will be for his good if he is put to death. For the law is beneficent, being able to make some righteous from unrighteous, if they will only give ear to it, and by releasing others from present evils; for those who have chosen to live temperately and justly, it conducts to immortality. To know the law is characteristic of a good disposition. And again: "Wicked men do not understand the law; but they who seek the Lord shall have understanding in all that is good." (Prov. 28:5)
Lactantius:
But in what can the action of God consist, but in the administration of the world? But if God carries on the care of the world, it follows that He cares for the life of men, and takes notice of the acts of individuals, and He earnestly desires that they should be wise and good. This is the will of God, this the divine law; and he who follows and observes this is beloved by God. It is necessary that He should be moved with anger against the man who has broken or despised this eternal and divine law. If, he says, God does harm to any one, therefore He is not good. They are deceived by no slight error who defame all censure, whether human or divine, with the name of bitterness and malice, thinking that He ought to be called injurious who visits the injurious with punishment. But if this is so, it follows that we have injurious laws, which enact punishment for offenders, and injurious judges who inflict capital punishments on those convicted of crime. But if the law is just which awards to the transgressor his due, and if the judge is called upright and good when he punishes crimes—for he guards the safety of good men who punishes the evil—it follows that God, when He opposes the evil, is not injurious; but he himself is injurious who either injures an innocent man, or spares an injurious person that he may injure many.
So the moral sense of John 8:7 is not “there must be no judging”, but otherwise: the judges must be upright, and act righteously, for the sake of goodness, not evil. They should first judge and correct their own faults, receive forgiveness, and then avoid sin. They must steep themselves in righteous judgment for the good of all, both the good of the criminal and the common good, and act with the authority God has delegated to them to stand, in His place, to act for good. When they punish, acting righteously, their punishments are good and to be praised, as God’s punishments also are to be praised for they accomplish the good God intends.
The scribes and Pharisees did not judge so. They judged from motives of pride and personal gain, and from every sort of basis other than that of righteousness. This is what Jesus condemned in them, over and over. He said “do as they say, but not as they do”. They did indeed (some of the time) apply the law, but from wrong motives. Jesus (through John) corrects this: when you are required in duty to judge, you are to purify yourself so that you can, first, see rightly, and then speak with God’s authority and judge in righteousness.
Jesus wrote out their sins in the dirt. Instead of saying to each one verbally “these are your sins” in public and forcing them into a combative stance, he lets the fault be recognized privately by each one. Yet these words are merely written in dirt, which does not abide (unlike the stone tablets of the Law), for they will be erased from evidence by rain. And their sins will be erased if they turn away from evil and submit in repentance and are restored again with the font of living water. One by one they turn away from THIS wrongdoing. Do they repent? Maybe some do. Maybe Jesus has retrieved some from the snares of Satan. This too is the work of the Law.
Passing to the last verses: Note that the woman adds his title, saying “No, Lord”. She recognizes in Jesus the one who DOES have the authority to judge, should he claim it. She has the beginnings of repentance, for she is no longer making her own law for her own sake (as we all try to do in saying “that rule doesn’t apply to me” to justify our sins). Thus Jesus has prepared her to receive the grace of being forgiven of her sins. His final warning completes the action of mercy: it does the sinner no good to escape the fire once if they jump right back in later. Do not repeat the sins that brought you to such a state. Persevere in goodness.
Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. The purpose of the law is to perfect our love. Jesus followed the law properly, but so as to pursue love, not hatred, fear, or destruction. He reproves the scribes’ evil motives, draws the adulterous woman away from sin, forgives her, and sets her on the path of true love (of God), not the fraudulent “love” of adultery. Jesus protects, defends, and fulfills the Law. The Law is just and good in all its workings. (cf. Ps. 19:7)
Now we see why claims (1) – (4) at the beginning of this post are COMPLETELY wrong: they get everything just about exactly backwards in respect of the literal and moral senses. In particular, the passage says NOTHING about the licitness of the death penalty as such; as a general standard, the passage upholds the law and just punishments justly handed down. It stands against pretending to do justice while acting for evil purposes. In no way does it suggest mercy replaces justice.
The allegorical and anagogical senses are left as an exercise for the student. You WILL be graded on this. Due date is not later than the moment of your death. Late submissions get an F unless you’re in Purgatory 😊.
Comments (44)
Tony, out of curiosity: Is there an official Catholic position concerning the textual issues on this passage? These are what are known as "lower critical" concerns as opposed to the (silly) "higher critical" objections. Already in Augustine's time it was known that many copies of John didn't contain the incident of the woman taken in adultery at all. Augustine commented that perhaps earlier scribes had *taken out* the passage because they feared that it would seem that Jesus was being easy-going on adultery!
It appears to be extremely ancient in origin but perhaps not original to the Gospel of John or at least not original *in that location*. Some manuscripts even put the passage in (of all things) the Gospel of Luke!
One theory that I think has a lot to be said for it is that this was a story that was actually told by the Apostle John in his lifetime and written down and hence was known to be authentic in its origin, but that John did not initially put into his Gospel. It may then have been included in his Gospel after his death because it was known that it came from him.
Anyway, I was curious as to whether there was an official Catholic "line" on the textual question.
It is mildly ironic that in all probability those somewhat "on the left" who want to use the passage in the silly ways you are rightly arguing against here--e.g., to oppose all capital punishment--would normally not be taking what one might call an "ultraconservative" line on whether or not a legitimately textually disputed passage should be considered canonical! But in this case they think the passage is useful for their agenda and hence ignore considerations that even strong biblical conservative scholars think relevant to whether the passage was part of the gospel originally.
Posted by Lydia | March 24, 2018 9:27 AM
Lydia, I read about this controversy in researching for this. As far as I know, there is no official Catholic stance about the controversy as such, but the Latin Vulgate has this section of John 8. The Vulgate is not "the official" Bible, it is merely the "authorized" Latin translation of the Bible for public uses. It has a "preferred" status in some contexts, but it does not, for example, displace the untranslated original texts.
I suspect, (rather than know), that in virtue of the Vulgate having the text, and so many of the Fathers commenting on it and approving it, seems at least comparable to the attestation by which the canonical books were approved and the non-canonical books were set aside. I haven't studied up on whether the Fathers disputed separate sections of various books as they did on the canonical books as a whole.
I think you are right that leftiberals would generally seek to include this incident as part of John. I suppose that we should give a hesitant denial of it to push them into a firm and definitive stance in favor of the passage being authentically part of John, and then pull the rug out from underneath them: OK, fine, you're right, this incident belongs in John. But it doesn't in the least mean what you think it means.
I don't have any strong opinion on the dispute itself. I have to go completely on argument from authority as to the basic claim itself, that none of the earliest texts have the incident, I have no way to assess that claim. If it is a valid claim, the thinking that the passage was added out of John's verbal record is reasonable. But I would still feel uncomfortable about it, in that for the Bible as a whole we say that God inspired the individual authors who wrote it: in what sense did He inspire the persons (assuming a group) who agreed to add to ch. 8? It's a little odd.
Posted by Tony | March 24, 2018 1:39 PM
Read John 7-8 with the Pericope de Adultera included. Then read it again with the Pericope taken out. In the latter reading, you end up with a meeting of Jesus' enemies, in which Jesus is clearly not present, (it begins at 7:45) in which it has just been said of Him "out of Galilee ariseth no prophet", when all of a sudden "Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." John 8:12 does not naturally follow John 7:52 without something in between. If the Pericope de Adultera was not there originally, then it has been put in place of something else that was removed. What was that something else?
That is the internal argument for the Pericope's having been part of the original text. The textual evidence here, at first glance appears to be age versus majority. Is the original reading most likely to be that found in the majority of the manuscripts we possess? If so the Pericope is authentic. Is the original reading most likely to be that found in the oldest manuscripts we possess? If so, the Pericope may not be genuine after all. Zane Hodges penned the classic articulation of the majority principle - essentially boiling down to the fact that is extremely unlikely that all these latter manuscripts were all copied from the same erroneous earlier manuscript and so actually attest to a large number of earlier manuscripts with the same reading that are no longer extent. However, it is not a simple case of age versus majority. In this case, the dispute over the authenticity of the passage was known in ancient times and commented on, with St. Ambrose, St. Augustine and St. Jerome arguing for its authenticity. St. Jerome included it in his Latin translation, and St. Augustine in his book on Adulterous Marriages, maintained that it had been removed from some manuscripts by men of "little faith" for fear that their wives might be encouraged to cheat because of it. These are Latin Fathers, those who argue against the Pericope say, and no Greek Father refers to the passage for the first millennium of the church. As it happens this is not the case - there are numerous allusions, albeit not as plain as those in Augustine and Jerome - but Dean John William Burgon further argued against this point with the fact that the Greek Fathers may not have said much about the passage, but they set if for the Gospel Lesson on St. Pelagia's Day (October 8th). At any rate, the passage's inclusion in the Old Latin translation, the otherwise low quality of certain of the oldest manuscripts (a point Burgon dwelt upon at great length), the fact that some of these manuscripts which supposedly leave the passage out cannot be cited as authorities for or against the passage because the leaf or two where it would have appeared is missing entirely, and others that omit the passage leave a space for it thus testifying that the passage was known to the scribe and therefore at least as old as the manuscript in question, are all arguments that take away from the weight attached to the age of the minority of manuscripts that exclude the passage.
That is my brief argument for retaining this passage in the place in the Sacred Text received and passed down by the church. I agree, of course, with your arguments against those who would use the text as an argument against capital punishment.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 24, 2018 4:53 PM
Gerry, what a fantastic summary of the debate! Thank you for clarifying the state of the question so well. (And boy, am I glad I didn't have to go do all that work, too.) It is good to have additional ammunition for accepting the gospels as we have them.
Perhaps my largest concern about the reading I tendered above is that has John necessarily relying on the reader to know Deuteronomy well enough to link up the passages that warn the witnesses and that require punishment of both adulterers up with the fact that the Pharisees were not following the law. Unlike Matthew (probably), John was not specifically writing to Jews, so maybe he would not be willing to simply assume sufficient familiarity with Deuteronomy? While those passages are not particularly obscure, neither are they the ones everyone will simply recall as needed.
Posted by Tony | March 24, 2018 5:34 PM
Tony, I think even without a thorough knowledge of Deuteronomy, the reader of John could be expected to recognize that what was going on here was not quite kosher. The episode that immediately precedes the periscope demonstrates that the scribes and Pharisees were already out to "get" Jesus and, if one did not from this alone draw the conclusion that they were not acting in bona fide with regards to this woman, John pretty much spells it out for us in verse six.
In my previous comment I mentioned St. Jerome as an ancient authority for the authenticity of the Pericope. I should have mentioned that the evidence from him is stronger than just his inclusion of the passage in the Vulgate. In his treatise against the Pelagian heresy he writes "In Evangelio secundum Johnnem in multis et Graecis et Latinis codicibus invenitur de adultera muliere, quae accusata est apud Dominum" (In the Gospel according to John, in many codices both Greek and Latin, is found the story about the adulterous woman, who was accused before the Lord). Contro Pelagio, II. 17. 4. In context, in which he is using the passage authoritatively, this clearly indicates that he finds the textual support for the Pericope conclusive.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 24, 2018 6:14 PM
Hi Gerry,
Not sure I see (yet) the merit in your internal argument for the pericope's being original. You say 8:12 doesn't naturally follow 7:52 without something between. But it's not clear to me that 8:12 follows the pericope (ending at 8:11) with any more naturalness. In 8:9-11, Jesus is alone with the woman. So in 8:12, suddenly Pharisees are back? There's apparently at least a bit of a narrative gap between verse 11 and 12. But we can say the same thing if we cut the pericope and take 8:12 to follow 7:52: there's a bit of a narrative gap between the meeting in 7:45-52 and Jesus' remarks to the Pharisees in 8:12. And the gap doesn't strike me as that large. Even if Jesus was not right there with the Pharisees in 7:45-52, we get the impression from 7:32-33 that he was nearby. I'm also tempted by the thought that Jesus' remark in 8:12 *was* a response to the Pharisees' remarks in 7:52. Isaiah 9:1 says God will honor Galilee, and verse 2 talks of those walking in darkness seeing a great light.
Posted by Daniel Murphy | March 24, 2018 10:11 PM
>> ‘When you read what people say about the woman caught in adultery, John 8:1-11, you get the following notions as being “what the Gospel says”: (1) only those who have never sinned are allowed to judge, and since everybody sins, there should be no judgment; (2) Jesus is against capital punishment, ever; (3) mercy must always prevail instead of justice; and (4) the old Law is obliterated because it was not just, now we have the “law of love”. (line feed removed) These are wrong. They are completely wrong. …’
“… Tread carefully, for the life on the line here may be your own.”
Is the last sentence not related pretty closely to #1? If so, either what people say isn’t completely wrong, or the traditional analysis is missing something. The latter in my judgment.
Look, I think in the the most general sense the context is that Jesus was diffusing a lynch mob. A very big deal. People dealing mostly with first world problems naturally overlook this. Think you could do it? So I suppose everything he did in the passage ought to be interpreted within that context. Lynch mobs operate by rules of their own, and most definitely in the moment. Their proximate cause isn’t where the action or lesson truly is. I suppose the lesson has to do with human nature and how it plays out in social reality in this fallen world. Jesus saved the life of a scapegoat, and it was recorded in history. He was a student of human nature–God’s highest creation–and his deep understanding of human nature was demonstrated in this passage. There’s a lesson there. Get that wrong, and not a lot else will really matter.
Posted by Mark | March 24, 2018 10:23 PM
I don't think we need to worry about that, because the scene is powerful and worth knowing about even if one doesn't follow all those nuances. Jesus and the accusers would have both known the law, and that's what matters for the historicity of the passage. As for John's reason for telling it, if we assume that he did recount is (e.g., in his original gospel) he needn't have been worrying too much about a highly specific audience and what they would or would not understand. Maybe he just thought it was a wonderful incident and recounted it accurately, and that's all there is to it.
One thing I think we can say, and that is that the style of the story is not like that of Matthew. But Matthew is the one Gospel that we know was targeted at a specifically Jewish audience.
Posted by Lydia | March 24, 2018 10:38 PM
Mark, I am not following your logic. I am afraid you will have to spell it out for me one point at a time.
Theory (1) says that the gospel passage means "don't judge". My reading is that the passage means "when it is your duty to judge, then judge with righteousness." I am not seeing how those are compatible.
I agree that Jesus was defusing a 'mob' of sorts, but I don't think it was a lynch mob: first, John explicitly says they were out to trap Jesus, not to lynch the woman, and they weren't using the woman as a scapegoat but as bait. Second, not the whole crowd was involved - there were lots of people there before the scribes and Pharisees brought the woman, and the scribes were counting on that crowd NOT wanting Jesus to condemn the woman. Third, the Roman law did not allow them to put people to death on their own, and there is no way the scribes and Pharisees themselves were going to test the Roman rulers on the issue over a mere adulteress. Fourth, while the focus of the story is on Jesus deconstructing the mob, the account of that defusing is not explainable except in terms of how Jesus uses the Law to make them back down. Certainly Jesus has great insight into human nature, but he doesn't SHOW any of that except by crafting a successful ploy to disrupt the plan of the Pharisees, and this is (again) only explainable in terms of his using the Law on them.
Daniel, there does seem to be a sort of possible discontinuity between 8:11 and 8:12, because the scribes and Pharisees who brought the woman all went away one by one, and then in verse 13 the Pharisees challenged Jesus (in a new way).
But the seeming oddity there is not impossible to explain. It could be, for example, that a number of Pharisees were in the crowd before the woman was brought to Jesus, and a distinct group of Pharisees brought the woman - and left one by one. That would leave the first Pharisees still there.
There are also marks of continuity between the pericope and the following verses: the Pharisees in v. 13 are challenging hum based on who is an appropriate witness to his claim, and both 7:50 and (my reading of) 8:7 are ALSO about the Law regarding witnesses. In the pericope Jesus refuses to act as judge, and (in my reading) does so correctly and uses the fact that the Pharisees are acting contrary to the Law on this point. In verses 8:15-16, Jesus again refuses to claim the mantle of judge here and now.
There is also a contextual oddity in having verse 8:12 start with "When Jesus spoke again to the people, after 7:40 to 7:52 being other speaking about Jesus without him being directly present. Sure, Jesus could have been nearby, but the oddity is that while the temple guards went back to the priests and the Pharisees who then had a discussion, Jesus would not have been waiting for the upshot of that discussion. He would have gone right on speaking to the crowd. So his "next" speech to the people (i.e. 8:12) would have not been in the context of what the priests and Pharisees had discussed in 7:45-52, but in connection with his speech at 7:37. I think it makes more sense if the temple guards reporting back denotes the end of that day and its confrontation, with the confrontation picking up again the next day on slightly different (but still related) terms.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 12:15 AM
Superb exegesis, Tony. You have illuminated many things for me. This series of commentaries on famous Scripture passages is awesome. I hope you keep it up.
Posted by Paul J Cella | March 25, 2018 1:30 AM
It is really doubtful to be original, though maybe a oral tradition inserted into the Gospel of John (that might have belonged in Luke). Metzger summaraizes the evidence as follows:
7:53–8:11 Pericope of the Adulteress
The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the pericope of the adulteress is overwhelming. It is absent from such early and diverse manuscripts as 𝔓66, א B L N T W X Y Δ Θ Ψ 0141 0211 22 33 124 157 209 788 828 1230 1241 1242 1253 2193 al. Codices A and C are defective in this part of John, but it is highly probable that neither contained the pericope, for careful measurement discloses that there would not have been space enough on the missing leaves to include the section along with the rest of the text. In the East the passage is absent from the oldest form of the Syriac version (syrc, and the best manuscripts of syrp), as well as from the Sahidic and the sub-Achmimic versions and the older Bohairic manuscripts. Some Armenian manuscripts and the Old Georgian version omit it. In the West the passage is absent from the Gothic version and from several Old Latin manuscripts (ita, *, ). No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it.
When one adds to this impressive and diversified list of external evidence the consideration that the style and vocabulary of the pericope differ noticeably from the rest of the Fourth Gospel (see any critical commentary), and that it interrupts the sequence of 7:52 and 8:12 ff., the case against its being of Johannine authorship appears to be conclusive.
At the same time the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity. It is obviously a piece of oral tradition which circulated in certain parts of the Western church and which was subsequently incorporated into various manuscripts at various places. Most copyists apparently thought that it would interrupt John’s narrative least if it were inserted after 7:52 (D E (F) G H K M U Γ Π 28 700 892 al). Others placed it after 7:36 (ms. 225) or after 7:44 (several Georgian mss) or after 21:25 (1 565 1076 1570 1582 armmss) or after Lk 21:38 (f ). Significantly enough, in many of the witnesses that contain the passage it is marked with asterisks or obeli, indicating that, though the scribes included the account, they were aware that it lacked satisfactory credentials.
Sometimes it is stated that the pericope was deliberately expunged from the Fourth Gospel because Jesus’ words at the close were liable to be understood in a sense too indulgent to adultery. But, apart from the absence of any instance elsewhere of scribal excision of an extensive passage because of moral prudence, this theory fails “to explain why the three preliminary verses (vii 53; viii 1–2), so important as apparently descriptive of the time and place at which all the discourses of c. viii were spoken, should have been omitted with the rest” (Hort, “Notes on Select Readings,” pp. 86 f.).
Although the Committee was unanimous that the pericope was originally no part of the Fourth Gospel, in deference to the evident antiquity of the passage a majority decided to print it, enclosed within double square brackets, at its traditional place following Jn 7:52.
Inasmuch as the passage is absent from the earlier and better manuscripts that normally serve to identify types of text, it is not always easy to make a decision among alternative readings. In any case it will be understood that the level of certainty ({A}) is within the framework of the initial decision relating to the passage as a whole.
Source:
Bruce Manning Metzger, United Bible Societies, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.) (London; New York: United Bible Societies, 1994), 187–189.
Posted by Jonathan Hanna | March 25, 2018 2:50 PM
Jonathan, thank you for this further information. I knew there was a lot of evidence that seems to exclude the pericope from John's original text, though I didn't know how much.
Meh. Almost all of the arguments I have seen in the past based on style and vocabulary are far from certain, usually comprising evidence that even in the aggregate arises to no better than "more likely than not". I have never seen one that could stand as "certain". Doesn't mean it is impossible, but I would not accept such a claim off the cuff. As to the thesis that it "interrupts" the sequence of 7:52, not only is THAT not conclusive, it isn't any better than 50-50, as far as I can tell: there is a way of reading it as interruptive EITHER WAY, and a way of reading it as more connected with the pericope. And any New Testament scholar who writes in his book that it is "conclusive", I would for that reason alone probably put on my "be cautious, and take with a grain of salt" shelf.
On the other hand, I agree that the argument from St. Augustine attributing the excision due to concerns about laxness seems kind of lame.
But I don't feel very strongly about the basic issue one way or another. Do you agree with the idea that all of the Latin Fathers considered the pericope authentic to (at least) the Apostles' oral tradition and reliable? This, to me, is the more critical question.
Of course, if the passage were neither in John's original text, nor an addition from an apostolic oral tradition, but something created and inserted later, then it wouldn't in any authoritative sense stand in criticism of judgment, punishment, or the death penalty, would it?
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 3:30 PM
By the way, for the sake of clarity: My reading of the passage given above, specifically in terms of what Jesus wrote, is my own take and not "what the Fathers said". As far as I can tell, the Fathers said many different things about it, they were not in full agreement - in posing a variety of offerings, they left it open to debate. My explanation is compatible with everything ELSE that the Fathers said about the passage, as far as I can see, and ties up loose ends better than any other explanation I have seen so far. But I don't hold it forth as "certain" at all, only that it is reasonable. The rest of my exegesis effectively just borrows from the Fathers and Doctors, or simply folds what they said here and elsewhere in with the idea that Jesus wrote specific parts of the Law.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 3:59 PM
Tony, going point by point when there are very different assumptions isn't a good way to go. I'll just simply point out a few things more things that might help.
I could have misunderstood but it seemed to me you were emphasizing that a major point of the passage if not the major point was "Tread carefully, for the life on the line here may be your own." On that understanding I was just pointing out the similarity between that view and "(1) only those who have never sinned are allowed to judge, and since everybody sins, there should be no judgment", which I thought you wanted to debunk. Whereas I think it's a mistake to see the passage being about judgment in any central way. And of course, there's no shortage of passages giving that message clearly and directly as to leave no doubt, to say nothing of common sense and the application of the Law itself.
I don't see how anything John said would or could imply that it wasn't a lynch mob. The Jewish cultural context means there would be at least the Jewish Law in the mix. Sure, we can imagine purely spontaneous lynch mobs where no authorities or standards are referenced whatever. A supposed witness pointing out someone and a crowd rushing to kill or at least brutalize and humiliate the victim with no thought of any outside standard of judgment other than the collective frenzy of a spontaneous mob. On that fairly contrived basis it was no lynch mob. I'm not going to take the time right now to list the essential aspects of lynch mobs, but if you think about what they might be I think this one fits any reasonable definition.
Many of the seeming perplexities as you pointed out essentially play the hypocrisy card: "Ha! Where was the man she committed adultery with?" as if it was a court of law or anything less than a hoped for fast moving drama set in motion by the Pharisees. Well since when did a lynch mob ever require any witness to be present? Has a lynch mob ever said, "Wait a minute boys, we can't string up this guy because our witness seems not to have followed us out to the hangin' tree." I've never seen that one either. One person just says "We're doing this for Billy-Bob ... or something!" and they pull the rope. That the judgment be accurate in any way simply isn't essential to the function of lynch mobs. It isn't about justice or accuracy. Vigilante justice might well be about that; punishing what the authorities won't and often rightly should. But a lynch mob just needs a victim to be selected and sacrificed. There usually is a peace that settles over the society when such things are done, at the expense of the victim. There surely must be few if any other examples of lynch mobs dispersed without force. One could assert that as evidence that it wasn't a lynch mob, or one could say Jesus' masterful understanding of human nature and society was on display as he did what few if any others has done.
Nothing Jesus did or said in the passage meant public standards shouldn't be applied to punish her after the crowd dispersed. He didn't say to anyone "go and judge judge or judge this woman no more" as he could have. He didn't imply those same people or others couldn't have her punished after this event if there were any applicable standards covering what she did. But Jesus, the accusers, and anyone knew full well after the moment was gone it was very likely there'd be no interest in doing that. They wanted to take out all their frustrations on her, and once the moment passed she couldn't be used again the way she would have been in that moment. That's why I think it's a mistake to emphasize what the passage says about judgment because I'm not sure what it actually does say about that when taking into account the context.
If the social characteristics of the mob is as I see it things look different. I think the Pharisees did assume he'd not agree with them. He'd faced them down with subtle wisdom at least a few times before. But they were presenting Jesus with the far more difficult issue of either getting swept up in their violent passions (not gonna happen), or standing aside as not his problem (not going to happen), or pushed aside by the mob if he couldn't dissuade them from stoning her in any case, which they could have done no matter his judgment in legal terms. If they'd have rushed to stone her while he was there–no matter what he did or said–it would have been a big win for them. He defended her because it was the right thing to do of course, but from the side of the Pharisees it was a matter of performance. He didn't just have to fight the battle, he had to win it. A very tall order. It was the ultimate intimidation, and he'd be shamed in the eyes of the public as the powerless savior who couldn't defend others. (Quite different from willingly laying down his own life as he was to do.)
Jesus wasn't merely pointing out that the accusers weren't sinless and were hypocrites, he deconstructed the mob to their astonishment–the one thing they didn't imagine he could do. They were hoping to overwhelm the type of wisdom he'd used against them in the past, so they raised the ante yet again. However, he just displayed to them that only pure force would work against him, or at least him not arguing on his own behalf.
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 4:36 PM
Stated crudely, the Pharisees tried to overwhelm whatever arguments and reasoning experience told them Jesus might be able to apply to the case by inciting a mob to render it irrelevant in public terms. Jesus responded by deconstructing the mob itself. So brilliant.
I don't see in the passage that we can necessarily infer anything about his judgment on possible future consequences of her actions if there might be any, right or wrong. I don't think we can pile on extra baggage by reading into it so many others things, especially ones dealt with more directly and clearly in other passages.
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 5:22 PM
Mark, I do think that your analysis fails to take into account both the religious and the nationalistic self-importance of those bringing the woman to Jesus.
Of course they were pretending to be acting according the Law of Moses. The Jewish leaders always chafed under the fact that they weren't allowed to put people to death, despite the fact that the Mosaic theocratic law specifically calls upon the people to put various classes of sinners to death. We see their chafing at it repeatedly, their idea that it is *lawful* (in God's eyes) for them to enact the death penalty and that it's just those pesky Romans preventing it. This even comes up in the case of Jesus himself. They hold a kangaroo trial for him by their own law and then drag him off to Pilate and faux-piously claim that they need Pilate to sentence him to crucifixion because "by our law he ought to die," but darn it, they "can't" actually kill him. One sees it even in the extremely spontaneous and passionate stoning of Stephen. He's considered guilty of blasphemy. One sees it in the later death of James the kinsman of Jesus, who was (almost certainly not coincidentally) bludgeoned to death when the region was in between two different Roman procurators.
Here we should imagine, multiplied many times over in passion, the bat-craziest theonomist theocrat you have ever met--some dude who believes that it's "God's law" that he be able to stone his wife to death with a few of his buddies if she cheats on him, or that he should be able (as in the OT) to subject her to trial by ordeal if it's overseen by his local pastor.
Or imagine Muslims who try to enforce sharia law within their own regions of a city, using sharia "courts."
Yes, in a sense those carrying out penalties in such cases may be mobs, but they are *extremely* self-righteous mobs and sometimes even mobs that play out their own religious concepts by having their own rules, etc., that they follow or say that they follow.
In this case, it actually does become relevant if their own ostensible rules have been written down somewhere (such as in the Torah) and they *aren't* really following them, while simultaneously trying to entrap Jesus by challenging him to "follow the Law."
Posted by Lydia | March 25, 2018 6:46 PM
>> Mark, I do think that your analysis fails to take into account both the religious and the nationalistic self-importance of those bringing the woman to Jesus.
Not at all. I don't see how anything I've said contradicts anything you've said. I've added additional context.
>> Yes, in a sense those carrying out penalties in such cases may be mobs, but they are *extremely* self-righteous mobs and sometimes even mobs that play out their own religious concepts by having their own rules, etc., that they follow or say that they follow.
Of course they're extremely self-righteous and playing out religious concepts. I thought I was pretty clear in asserting that indeed they were.
>> In this case, it actually does become relevant if their own ostensible rules have been written down somewhere (such as in the Torah) and they *aren't* really following them, while simultaneously trying to entrap Jesus by challenging him to "follow the Law."
How exactly does recognizing an additional contextual element contradict anything you've said, none of which I've disputed or intend to? The usual suspects this time added inciting a mob as *an additional measure* to try to win an argument and force an execution to undermine Jesus' public credibility. Surely that is undeniable.
I can't see a force to your argument since I can't see you've stated explicitly where the contradiction lies between the single additional element I've added and what you've said. The passage demonstrates the superiority of Jesus to his adversaries. He thwarted them on every level, and my additional contextual element doesn't negate yours in any way I can see.
No, the problem comes, as you know, in how we see it's possible ******application*******. Does it have to do with making personal judgments? Of course the application can't be that only the sinless can judge. We all know that. But my point is that in terms of possible application, is the passage about judging at all? It seems to me it's about executing judgment. We've no right to try to execute public justice by inciting irrational responses to harm people. In the context of stoning or this type of "justice", the fact is that if one person throws a stone, for any reason, everyone throws their stone. Anyone that doesn't think that's the way it works is naive. That is why Jesus honed in on the personal basis for acting as executor of public judgment. There was none. The question isn't "Who are you to judge?" it is "Who are you to act as if executor of some public tribunal unless you happen to be one."
In light of what I think is the full context, it seems to me the range of applications we can draw from it should have to do with the proper means executing judgment. Repudiating the way people pile on after others and righteously enjoying seeing a victim get what they suppose he has coming to him.
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 8:02 PM
There is defintely more textual evidence for the pericope de adultera than the Comma Johanneum.
Posted by Jonathan Hanna | March 25, 2018 8:37 PM
So again, for me the most amazing aspect aspect of the story is whether Jesus can pull off the saving of the woman from the mob. Simply because it seems to me by far the hardest task.
As I've said, in this instance Jesus can win all the arguments and still lose, and that is what the Pharisees were hoping for. That was what was new in this story, what was added in the struggle over all the other traps they'd tried and failed. I just think Jesus' task was harder than we seem to think now, as if it were some debate as usual with the Pharisees that they were bound to respect. I think they went in not thinking surely this was the time they could cast what would no doubt again be brilliant reasoning aside, but were forced to respect it on a different and unexpected level.
The Pharisees demonstrated a shrewd grasp of human nature and social reality in leveraging the mob against Jesus, but Jesus showed himself to have a far greater understanding of it and schooled them yet again, thus saving the woman an unjust and cruel fate. And yes, allowing us to make the familiar religious and legal points we all know and love. :)
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 8:40 PM
Mark, you seem to have done a very interesting job of analyzing the situation, except for a couple of smalls facets. One: you have failed to suggest even an iota of HOW it is that Jesus pulls off the save. So far as I can see, nothing you said indicates how it is that Jesus' actions foreclose the mob murder. Nothing you said explains the mob dissolving:
As far as I can see, all you have done is hand-waving around the issue. Did he use magic? Miracle? What?
Second, you failed to answer Lydia's point at all. Indeed, I gather you didn't see it:
The contradiction, if I may it out in black and white, is that the Pharisees had no intention of initiating the throwing of stones without Jesus saying that she must be stoned, (which they did not expect) as they weren't going to risk the Romans coming in and chopping them all to bits and asking questions later. Whereas you seem to say that they had every intention of starting the throwing of stones regardless of what Jesus did.
As a Catholic, I conform myself to the interpretation of the Fathers when they are in agreement. They are in agreement that the trap they were setting Jesus was in the form of pincers between Jesus repudiating the law by saying she must not be stoned, or Jesus repudiating his own character as gentle and compassionate, (with a side order of being denounced to the Romans as inciting a stoning party). I don't see how your interpretation can be made to fit with that, because NONE of those actually requires a stoning to occur, and the one they EXPECTED was that Jesus would repudiate the Law to save her, which would have been sufficient for their purposes.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 10:23 PM
Jonathan, does the Comma play into this issue of the pericope at all?
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 10:26 PM
BTW, the Jewish chafing under the rule of the Romans that Tony and Lydia both mentioned is one of the things I explicitly had in mind when I said "They wanted to take out all their frustrations on her". Ostensibly lynching is about justice, whereas in fact it's about a gaining a cathartic release of pent up public frustration. Any victim will do. If you can't defeat the Romans, at least you could stone a random victim to death in a righteous frenzy while claiming plausible deniability or at least assuming some form of justice nullification will occur since they aren't very well able to deal with mobs of people. The authorities and everyone else just shrugs, as everyone including the poor victim knows they must. It's just another aspect of the story that gets overlooked now in as we tend to only emphasize overt religious and legal significance of events in the Bible. A grasp of human nature and our social nature are lost in the process. Jesus was acting in his human capacity, and he had built up by then a rich source of deep observation of human nature–God's highest creation–that he drew on to save the woman. I take it we could do likewise if we set our minds to imitate him in all possible respects.
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 10:32 PM
>> The contradiction, if I may it out in black and white, is that the Pharisees had no intention of initiating the throwing of stones without Jesus saying that she must be stoned, (which they did not expect) as they weren't going to risk the Romans coming in and chopping them all to bits and asking questions later. Whereas you seem to say that they had every intention of starting the throwing of stones regardless of what Jesus did.
Well Tony, maybe my account is wrong. On the other hand, if Jesus didn't need to do anything to save her as you say–if the Pharisees had no intention of lifting a finger to hurt her–why did he do what he did? Why write in the dirt and ask them the questions he did? And why did they put down the stones and walk away *one by one*? If what you say is true that's puzzling behavior from both sides. Why not just stare at them as if to say "You fools, you know very well you're not going to stone her so just let her go like you know you're going to."
On your account that explains everything, and mine nothing, why did he do what he did? To provide theological material for Sunday schools texts?
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 10:44 PM
We have rejected this. Lydia already pointed out that the Jews went through a HUGE effort to enlist the Romans' consent to Jesus' murder, because they were unwilling to risk the Romans' wrath. They clearly considered it a real risk, and by no means assumed that "everyone just shrugs".
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 10:45 PM
since they aren't very well able to deal with mobs of people.
The Romans were perfectly willing to kill mobs of people when they felt it useful.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 10:48 PM
Have you forgotten the standard bully's reverse taunt trick: "Hah! You're just afraid to answer the question, aren't you!" In any event, they could have claimed that they were going to take her off to the Romans if Jesus agreed with Moses that she must be killed.
I don't know why you demean theological lessons: the gospels repeatedly (especially John) say that Christ did things to teach us: Jesus called out "who touched me" not for his education, but for everyone else's. Jesus asked X, Y, and Z, not for his discovery, but for ours.
None of the events in the gospels happen except by Jesus willing to permit them to happen: if he didn't want the incident to occur, it wouldn't have occurred. He let it happen for a reason, or (much more likely) for many, many reasons, including the salvation of the woman, the strengthening of the faith of the apostles, the conversion of many of the crowd of onlookers, and even the racheting up of irritation of the chief priests. And maybe the repentance of one or two Pharisees.
But as for the SPECIFIC reason for his overcoming the challenge, I have given it: he showed how they were violating the law and COULD be subject to penalties, and (as an implicit threat) showed how he could involve the crowd of onlookers by accusing the Pharisees of not following the law. Their loss of reputation would have been intense.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 10:57 PM
The Romans wielded authority as a blunt instrument as all governments do. If they had some magic powers to hold mobs accountable for their actions I'd love to know how that worked. Formally the Jews couldn't put someone to death, but if a mob stoned someone all the Romans could do would be to round up some "usual suspects" and punish them. And who might that be? Not likely the perpetrators.
How can you be sure that the Pharisees wouldn't stone someone for fear of the Romans "coming in and chopping them all to bits and asking questions later"? How confident can we be that the Sanhedrin who stoned Stephen were chopped to bits by the Romans? Yeah, not very for the same reasons I've already given.
Posted by Mark | March 25, 2018 10:59 PM
The Romans wielded authority as a blunt instrument as all governments do. If they had some magic powers to hold mobs accountable for their actions I'd love to know how that worked. Formally the Jews couldn't put someone to death, but if a mob stoned someone all the Romans could do would be to round up some "usual suspects" and punish them. And who might that be? Not likely the perpetrators.
You have ignored the evidence twice presented: the chief priests did not kill Jesus by mob, they went through the Romans. They apparently respected the risk. It's right in the gospels.
Posted by Tony | March 25, 2018 11:09 PM
Metzger's "overwhelming" evidence for the "non-Johannine" origin of the Pericope is not nearly as impressive as he presents it as being. He starts off with a list of manuscripts that omit the pericope. While it is not comprehensive - only about a tenth of the codices that could have been included in such a list are named - the list of manuscripts that include the passage is much, much, larger. Ironically, L and Δ are among those he does name, despite the fact that these manuscripts omit the Pericope in such a way as to testify to its being older than themselves - they leave a blank between John 7:52 to 8:12. Moreover, his description of this list as "early and diverse is misleading". The first three he names are really the only ones on that list early enough for it to be reasonable to weigh their age against the weight of the numbers of the manuscripts that include the pericope. Those three are not diverse at all. They all come from the same area in Egypt, the same roughly 150-200 year time period, and are well known for agreeing with each other in places, like this one, from most other manuscripts. This is why their readings are called the "Alexandrian text type." Furthermore, "the Sahidic and the sub-Achmimic versions and the older Bohairic manuscripts" are all Egyptian translations, very much suggesting that this text type represents, not something that is more likely to be closer to the autographs because of its age, but a regional variation. Note that the versions that most often agree with the Alexandrian text are from areas, like Syria, in close proximity to Egypt. Also note that none of these translations are as old as the Old Latin, and while it is true that some Old Latin manuscripts - Metzger's "several" is as misleading as a textual footnote in the NIV - omit the Pericope, the majority include it.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 25, 2018 11:50 PM
>> I don't know why you demean theological lessons
Well if the theological lessons derived from an event aren't secondary as opposed to primary, Jesus would be treating people as objects. That's the idea I'm demeaning. You should too.
>> You have ignored the evidence twice presented: the chief priests did not kill Jesus by mob, they went through the Romans. They apparently respected the risk. It's right in the gospels.
Oh please. I'm not quite that stupid. I point out that you've ignored the obvious fact that we have biblical testimony–even if one doesn't allow for common sense–to tell us Jewish society under Roman rule wasn't uniquely resistant to mob violence like no other society that's ever been before or since, undermining your assertion that the Pharisees could only have been making baseless threats so great was their fear or respect for the Romans. Nonsense. The Romans maintained an empire with an unbelievably small number of troops to enforce the rule of law directly. They worked with local authorities and corruption of the sort that is taking a blind eye for a great number of infractions by the powerful members of society–Jewish in this case–was rampant. You don't even have a clear response to this.
>> As a Catholic, I conform myself to the interpretation of the Fathers when they are in agreement. They are in agreement that the trap they were setting Jesus was in the form of pincers between Jesus repudiating the law by saying she must not be stoned, or Jesus repudiating his own character as gentle and compassionate, (with a side order of being denounced to the Romans as inciting a stoning party). I don't see how your interpretation can be made to fit with that, because NONE of those actually requires a stoning to occur, and the one they EXPECTED was that Jesus would repudiate the Law to save her, which would have been sufficient for their purposes.
Is it the interpretation of the Fathers that the threat of stoning was empty? Oh I don't think so. Look, the question is analogically the same as the one about whether Jesus could have sinned. If he couldn't sin was the temptation real, etc. A proper answer has to do with understanding of the incarnation and Jesus' divine and human nature. The point is that the Pharisees didn't think it was an empty threat for the reasons I've given, and Jesus didn't treat it as one because he was acting by and in his human capacities as any other man must do. He couldn't allow it as a man, and he had the ability to stop it as a man. From the divine perspective much of what he did makes no sense, which is what is wrong with not considering his human nature, and ours.
The mistake of your main–probably only–assertion that my extremely modest thesis that adds a contextual detail that doesn't contradict any of the others you've given can't be true seems clear enough. You say the Pharisees "had no intention" of stoning the woman. An empty threat. Whereas you say my view that the threat to stone her was credible and possible from their perspective, and the minds of the woman and spectators too of course. In other words, you'd probably admit that everyone thought the stoning could happen but God. And I'd say yeah and if Jesus weren't the man he was, then it surely would have happened. Both are entirely consistent still because of Jesus the God-man.
Take a few assumptions and a divine perspective, and yeah, it's impossible. Hey, some people persuaded of the truth of Calvinistic or compatibilist assumptions think anything that didn't happen couldn't have happened. So you can eliminate anything you want quite easily enough Tony. Not that challenging really. The only problem is explaining why the extraneous aspects on a divine view of the story exist in such exquisite detail. A lot of the story doesn't make sense on the purely divine perspective of the God-man Jesus or any other divine being. So why is it there and what are we supposed to do with it, or our own common or sense? Because we're human, of course. And we're to understand human nature to the extent that we can, else wise we can't treat other humans as we're supposed to.
It's not that hard to understand really, but I'm so glad we had this chat.
Posted by Mark | March 26, 2018 1:03 AM
One last thing. It seems to me when you said I "ignored the evidence twice presented ... It's right in the gospels" you're implying that if the Pharisees thought it possible that the woman could have been killed by a mob then it means the Pharisees shouldn't have tried to use any other method to kill Jesus, or would at least be stupid for trying it any other way. For one, they didn't win that round so I don't know why'd think another go round with Jesus–whom they'd learned to fear long since–would have been different. Might better try another way. For another, it would be far better to repudiate and humiliate Jesus like only the state could just in case any others claiming to be Messiah might come along. They love such teachable moments. Lastly, it wouldn't have fulfilled the Father's will for him to die that way as we all know.
Posted by Mark | March 26, 2018 1:28 AM
My original response was
according to the Law. If they had that, then yes, there was a real chance they would have gone ahead, because it would both lose Jesus the reputation of being gentle and compassionate, AND they could denounce Jesus to the Romans (for "inciting" the event). Without having Jesus as cover, there is no clear indication in the passage at all that they were going to go through with it.
When you say "mob" I think you are imagining many dozens or even hundreds of people keen on killing her. The reality is that there were many people there to listen to Jesus, and THEN there came a group of scribes and Pharisees, a distinct group, which almost certainly did not number many dozens or hundreds. The original people listening to Jesus were not already worked up against the woman, and John does nothing to recount the Pharisees "working" the crowd to get them riled up. Presumably, because they were listening to Jesus avidly, they were NOT upset with him, nor at that time particularly irritated at being "done out of" the usual (pre-Roman) stonings that none of them could have remembered from their youths.
When I originally used the term "mob", I meant specifically the group of scribes and Pharisees who came with the woman: a set presumably large enough to form a temporary "group" that was subject to "groupthink". Like, for example, "Let's all force Jesus to pick between the Law and compassion" - without necessarily thinking "who is going to be 'the witnesses' who throw the first stones" because they were not thinking it through; an example of groupthink. But not large enough to create a neighborhood-destroying riot: they were scribes and Pharisees, not bar-room brawlers. They were the elites, the educated of society. They might foment a riot (as political players have done through the ages), but the existing crowd was not initially on their side of the "problem" to start with and they did nothing to change that.
The kind of mob you are talking about wasn't there. Not in John's description.
AND I am going to shut down this particular line of discussion (on the mob) as having no further fruit to bear. On the other hand, I am learning ALL SORTS of good stuff from the comments of Gerry and Jonathan. I did not anticipate such detailed investigation into the data, so I really appreciate all this. Both of you, can you lay out the dating for, say, the 10 earliest solid manuscripts in each group (i.e. the ones with the pericope and the ones without)? Or something like that?
Posted by Tony | March 26, 2018 8:07 AM
Hi Tony,
By View 1 I mean the view that the pericope wasn’t original and the text initially went from 7:52 to 8:12. By View 2 I mean the view that the pericope was original. You admit an apparent discontinuity on View 2, between 8:11 and 12, and note that it may nevertheless admit of explanation (e.g., in terms of two groups of Pharisees present with Jesus and the women, one of which never left). Just to be clear, I have no problem with this kind of discontinuity as such. Rather, Gerry’s internal argument for View 2turned on the idea that that transition is smoother than View 1's transition between 7:52 and 8:12, and that’s what I don’t see.
You: “There are also marks of continuity between the pericope and the following verses: the Pharisees in v. 13 are challenging hum based on who is an appropriate witness to his claim, and both 7:50 and (my reading of) 8:7 are ALSO about the Law regarding witnesses.”
If this is a theme in 7:50 and 8:13, then that would also seem to support the naturalness of View 1's transition. That the theme *also* shows up in the pericope (in 8:7, you say) doesn’t, as far as I see, give us a reason to prefer View 2, but only a potential defeater for an internal case against it. (If one is tempted by the external case, the thematic similarity may explain why the pericope was inserted there, and perhaps even give evidence that the event really happened then - despite not being originally recorded.)
You: “There is also a contextual oddity in having verse 8:12 start with "When Jesus spoke again to the people, after 7:40 to 7:52 being other speaking about Jesus without him being directly present.”
The contextual oddity you see here (I didn’t quote all of what you said) depends on the assumption that in 8:12 Jesus is speaking to the people/crowd. But 8:12 doesn’t say that Jesus spoke to the people; it says he spoke to “them”. If we think in terms of View 1, then the ‘them’ seems to refer to the Pharisees from 7:45-52; at any rate they’re the “closest” candidate antecedent for the pronoun. I’m not claiming Jesus was there with them in 7:45-52; there’s evidently a shift in setting. But if we set aside the pericope arguendo, then in 8:12 he seems to be addressing (at least in part) the Pharisees from 7:52. That’s also supported by 8:13: it’s not the crowd who are said to reply to Jesus, but the Pharisees. (Incidentally, doesn’t View 2 make the antecedent of ‘them’ in 8:12 unclear? Again, Jesus and the woman appear to be alone by the pericope’s end.) And as I suggested last time, I find it interesting that, right after the Pharisees talk about Galilee again in 7:52, Jesus in 8:12 seems (to me) to allude to Isaiah 9:1-2, which brings together Galilee, walking in darkness, and seeing light.
Posted by Daniel Murphy | March 26, 2018 10:51 AM
Fair enough. I can accept that.
I don't feel this is as good an argument. We agree that from 7:37 (Jesus' last words before 8:12, in V1), there is the feeling of a shift in setting. I don't think that 8:12 is addressed specifically to the Pharisees of 7:45-52. I think 8:12 is of a piece with 8:21, and that REPEATS what he said in 7:37, which was addressed to the crowd:
Because 8:21 uses "he said to them again", and repeats what Jesus said in 7:37, it makes sense that "them" is the same kind of audience, a crowd. But there is no reason to separate the "them" of 8:21 from the "them" of 8:12. Which makes it odd for 8:12 to be to the Pharisees specifically.
(It could be argued in response that 8:21, in saying "he said to them again", that Jesus was addressing the SAME crowd as 7:37, and this would argue for all of this taking place connected / in conjunction. But this approach has the problem of 7:45-52 being interposed in between, which clearly requires some substantial time. It is better to assume that John is treating "the onlooking crowd" as one party, Jesus as another, and "the Pharisees" as a third party in the entire literary construct, i.e. each group having literary unity even though (as groups) there is no need for them to be made up of the very same people throughout the entire process.)
I don't insist on it, but saying 8:12 is addressed to the Pharisees is not without difficulties of its own.
No, not really. In the pericope, Jesus is with a crowd of onlookers / listeners to his preaching. At the end, THEY are still there. The "alone" is with respect to the inner area where Jesus, the woman, and the accusing scribes and Pharisees were. You have to imagine: the crowd that was there before the scribes came with the woman were there the whole time. The scribes came into the area with the woman, brought the woman right up to Jesus, and thus they kind of "took over" center stage: Jesus, the woman, and the scribes / Pharisees accusing her of adultery and demanding Jesus say what to do. The onlookers remained there, but probably gave way to allow for these intruders to have some space all in the middle. When Jesus "responds" to the scribes, he was not including the crowd already present in his accusations of violating the Law - they did not bring the adulteress. The original crowd never were part of the people demanding of Jesus to judge the woman's case. Nor was there any reason for Jesus to get rid of them via the writing on the ground. The writing was only to get rid of those trying to force Jesus into staking a public claim for or against the stoning - the scribes and Pharisees. So when the accusing Pharisees depart, Jesus and the woman are left "alone" in the middle of the crowd.
Posted by Tony | March 26, 2018 12:23 PM
Tony,
The age of a manuscript only has weight if it can be demonstrated that the reading it disagrees with is not as old as itself. If the alternate reading is as old, all the manuscript testifies to is that its scribe, knowingly or not, followed one of two (or more for the odd cases where multiple variants exist) existing textual traditions. This is a fact that modern textual critics are slowly, if begrudgingly, beginning to acknowledge. In the nineteenth century, the discovery of Vaticanus (Codex B) and Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph), which being fourth century are the oldest complete vellum uncials we have, led, perhaps inevitably, to theory that the oldest manuscripts are the best, which has dominated textual criticism since, beginning to recede somewhat in the 1970s. John William Burgon, the Dean of Chichester Cathedral, argued strenuously against this theory at the time, arguing in a series of articles for Quarterly Review that the quality of manuscripts needs to be weighed against their age, and that in this regard B and Aleph were demonstrably corrupt manuscripts. He was largely ignored by what had become the mainstream school in lower criticism, although they could not comfortably dismiss him, as he was one of the leading experts on Patristic and lectionary evidence of his day.
At any rate, if you start with the principle that if a manuscript is not itself potentially older than an alternative reading that its age can not be set against the alternative reading, then the manuscript witnesses against the Pericope De Adultera whose age carries weight, is reduced to the two papyrus witnesses 𝔓66 and 𝔓75, both of the Bodmer Papyrii, both possibly as old as the late second century. These are the only manuscripts potentially older than either the Didascalia Apostolorum, which makes reference to the story contained in the Pericope, or the Old Latin version of the New Testament which includes it in the majority of manuscripts, both those known to us and those known to St. Jerome.
Another ancient witness to be considered is the lectionaries of the early Greek church. In these, the reading for Pentecost includes a portion of John 7 and John 8, that leaves out the Pericope. The question becomes which explains which. Does the reading in the lectionary reflect the Pericope's absence in the New Testament known to the early Greek Church or does the absence in the lectionary explain the genesis of the alternative reading of the Alexandrian text type? Dean Burgon and Zane C. Hodges both argued for the latter position. It was not uncommon for lectionaries to jump over passages like this was not considered appropriate for the day assigned. This would explain John 7:53's inclusion in the Pericope. It is clearly the ending of the previous episode and not the beginning of the one contained in the rest of the Pericope. The later inclusion of the Pericope in the Greek lectionaries for October 8th nullifies the argument that no Greek Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus in the twelfth century referred to the passage, an argument which is not true at any rate - Didymus the Blind refers to the passage and he is a particularly important witness in this regard since he was from Alexandria, the very region where the manuscripts that exclude the Pericope come from. If the lectionaries' omission of the passage from the Pentecost reading explains the origin of the passage's omission in the Alexandrian manuscripts it could also explain why it was so infrequently commented on in the Greek churches.
Alternatively, those who regard the Alexandrian text type as closer to the autographs, argue that the Pericope was originally an early oral tradition, possibly included in an alternative Gospel that did not make it into the canon, and that the early references to it in the Didascalia and Didymus refer to this tradition, which at some point was migrated into John's Gospel. That some manuscripts include the passage in alternate locations is cited as evidence for this theory. The "the Alexandrian text type is the oldest and best" theory, generally postulates some sort of official redaction of the New Testament text as taking place in the 4th to 5th centuries and producing the Byzantine text type, which is their explanation of the Byzantine type being reflected in the vast majority of manuscripts. The problem with the theory is that while there are no historical accounts of such a redaction having taken place, there are plenty of accounts of scholars tampering with the text - in Alexandria in the second and third centuries! This was one of the reasons - although his proto-Semi-Arianism was a much larger reason - why Origen fell into disrepute during and after the first two ecumenical councils.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 27, 2018 7:28 AM
I don't know if it's important, but the Diatessaron does not contain the story. I realize that the Diatessaron is not strictly speaking a manuscript of the gospels (it's a kind of harmony), but it's a very ancient attempt to include what is in them and put it all together.
Posted by Lydia | March 27, 2018 8:29 AM
Sorry my delay in responding. I was out of town helping my Dad.
Here is another view on the pericope from Hodges, Farstad, and Dunkin (who I think where mentioned above) :
THE APPARATUS FOR JOHN 7:53–8:11
The materials furnished by von Soden [German biblical scholar from the early 1900's] for the famous story of the woman caught in adultery are much more adequate than those he provides for the rest of the New Testament. Here, in fact, von Soden completely collated all available copies of this pericope, more than nine hundred altogether. Though the precise data of these collations must be painstakingly gathered from his discussions (and not from his apparatus alone), at least it is accessible. From it the editors of the present text have constructed a provisional stemma. This represents their understanding of the transmissional history of this narrative.
It is clear that the textual troubles which overtook the pericope began early. It is omitted by the most ancient witnesses for the Egyptian tradition, namely, P66, P75, א, and B. It was also evidently absent from C and even from A, which in the gospels often sides with the Majority Text. But the joint testimony of these manuscripts, except perhaps for A, simply may point to a very ancient copy from which the passage was missing.
There is no compelling reason to doubt that the story is originally Johannine, despite the prevailing contrary opinion. Among the marks of Johannine style which it exhibits, none is clearer than the phrase in 8:6: τοῦτο δὲ ἔλεγον πειράζοντες αὐτόν. This is a pure and simple Johannism, which is evident by comparison with 6:6; 7:39; 11:51; 12:6, 33; and 21:19. Likewise the use of the vocative γύναι (8:10) by Jesus to address a woman is a Johannine characteristic (cf. 2:4; 4:21; 19:26; cf. also 20:13, 15). The phrase μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε (8:11) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, except John 5:14, and the historic present of ἄγουσι (8:3) is consonant with John’s frequent use of this idiom.
Nor is the narrative improperly suited to the place where it is found in the overwhelming majority of the nine hundred copies which contain it. On the contrary, a setting at the Feast of Tabernacles (cf. 7:2, 14) is ideal for the story. It was on just such an occasion, when Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims, that strangers might be thrown together with the resulting sin around which the story centers. An interview with a woman in a court of the temple would likely have been in the Court of the Women. And that is evidently where Jesus was, as the reference to the “treasury” in 8:20 indicates. Moreover, the way in which the woman’s accusers are driven to cover by the moral exposure which Jesus brings upon them furnishes a suggestive introduction to the initial Johannine reference to the Lord as the Light of the World (8:12). The setting of the incident at daybreak is likewise suitable (cf. 8:2) since the rising sun furnishes the natural backdrop for the same title. It is in fact to the sun (not the temple candelabra, as Hort thought) that the title Light of the World refers (cf. 9:4, 5; 11:9). Finally, as the Qumran finds have shown (cf. 1QS iii 6–7), the thought of forgiveness of sin experienced here by the woman is properly linked to the phrase “light of life” (8:12).
In view of the features of Johannine style that have been noted and the narrative’s almost unique suitability to this context, the idea that the passage is not authentically Johannine must finally be dismissed. If it is not an original part of the Fourth Gospel, its writer would have to be viewed as a skilled Johannine imitator, and its placement in this context as the shrewdest piece of interpolation in literary history! Accordingly, the consideration of the narrative’s text that follows assumes its Johannine authenticity.
Von Soden distinguished seven subgroups among the Greek manuscripts containing the pericope. These he designated with the siglum μ (for μοιχαλίς) and by a superscribed numeral. In the apparatus of the text presented herein von Soden’s μ has been changed to M, but his superscribed numbers have been retained. Thus our M = his μ1, M2 = his μ2, and so on. (This M1 is not to be confused with the M1 cited elsewhere in the gospels.) In von Soden’s own stemmatic reconstruction of the textual history of the pericope (cf. Die Schriften, I, Part 1:524), M1 stands nearest the archetype, while M7 is the farthest removed. But von Soden’s preference for M1 is unjustifiably influenced by his high regard for δ5 (or D) and its close allies in this group. As usual, despite its age (fifth century), D is an idiosyncratic text, and M1 as a whole is not very useful in reconstructing the original form of the story
Source:
Zane Clark Hodges, Arthur L. Farstad, and William C. Dunkin, The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text, 2nd ed. (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1985), xxiii–xxiv.
However, that is from 1985 and Metzger was from 1994 (though I think his results are still firm: See also Metzger and Ehrman in the book "The Text of the New Testament" p. 319-321, 2005... But I do not always agree with Metzger and other reasoned eclectics e.g. I think a reasonable case can be made for the inclusion of εἰκῇ [eikē] "without a cause" in Matthew 5:22 as the KJV and NKJV include it in the body of the text while other translations usually include it in a footnote).[1]
Not that old is worse (avoiding what Lewis called "chronological snobbery"), but there is the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method that being employed the last 15 or so years that I have not really read up on extensively.
What do you think about this new method, Gerry T Neal?
For a brief introduction to this method see: http://www.etsjets.org/files/JETS-PDFs/59/59-4/JETS_59-4_675-89_Gurry.pdf
For more information, also see The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005, with Morphology. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2006, Introduction.
On Matthew 5:22a, see Black, David Alan. "Jesus on Anger: The Text of Matthew 5:22a Revisited." Novum Testamentum 30, no. 1 (1988): 1-8.
Thank you. Interesting discussion.
Posted by Jonathan Hanna | March 27, 2018 8:39 AM
Here is a link to a book on the Pericope of the Adulteress, but it is expensive. It offers views pro and con.
https://www.amazon.com/Pericope-Adulteress-Contemporary-Research-Testament/dp/0567665798/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522155239&sr=8-1&keywords=pericope+of+the+adulteress
Posted by Jonathan Hanna | March 27, 2018 8:59 AM
Lydia,
Zane and David Hodges write something on probability that the Majority Text is, generally speaking, would be right. Starts at this link on page 121.
Just mentioning it since I know you have dealt with probability in the past.
http://www.standardbearers.net/uploads/The_Identity_of_the_New_Testament_Text_Dr_Wilbur_N_Pickering.pdf
Posted by Jonathan L Hanna | March 27, 2018 11:10 AM
Maybe this was mentioned already, Eusebius might be recording Papias referring to the pericope (early second century?):
And he [Papias] relates another story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.
Source:
Eusebius of Caesaria, “The Church History of Eusebius,” in Eusebius: Church History, Life of Constantine the Great, and Oration in Praise of Constantine, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Arthur Cushman McGiffert, vol. 1, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1890), 173.
Posted by Jonathan L Hanna | March 27, 2018 12:31 PM
Gerry, I am having trouble with the "only has weight" concept there. I would expect a more nuanced, more involved view that allows many factors to "have weight" even if not conclusive. Take, for example, the following situation. The original text T is (for simplicity) written in year 100. Copy C1 is made from it in year 300, directly from T itself. Separately, copies D2, D3, D4 and D5 are made sequentially every 40 years: D2 is made from T, D3 is made from D2, etc. D5 is made in year 260. The fact that D5 is older than C1 does not ITSELF imply that C5 is more likely to be a better copy than C1. If the above facts were the ONLY facts known about the copies, we would have to assume C1 is more likely to be a better copy than D5, in spite of D5 being older. Nevertheless, it remains possible for D5 to ACTUALLY be the better text (i.e. more faithful), because of the reliability of the copyist(s) involved.
Naturally, X is older than Y is never the ONLY thing we know about a text copy. (And sometimes "X is older than Y" is, itself, not a definitively known fact, but is only a tentative or probable conclusion). And to me it seems more than likely that each of the factors that can be significant cannot be determined to ALWAYS have weight or merit in an a priori precisely prescribed sequence and way. The age may have weight, the quality of the copy may have weight, the location of the copyist may have weight, etc.
Posted by Tony | March 27, 2018 1:11 PM
I probably should know this already, but I don't so I figured I would ask the people who have studied the issues around competing texts: is there ANY chance that John himself produced more than one variant? That is, suppose he put out the gospel, it has been copied 10 times so far, and then 6 months later when he is looking over another copyist's version to check it, he realizes that he wanted to include something that got left out of the first version. So he inserts (or has the copyist insert) the additional material into THIS copy. Is there any feasibility at all to something like this happening, so that BOTH variants are actually "original" to the text John wrote?
Posted by Tony | March 27, 2018 4:48 PM
Tony,
That other factors than age have weight is precisely what I have been arguing. If the text type reflected in 𝔓66, 𝔓75, Aleph, B, and the handful of other ancient manuscripts that we call Alexandrian can be demonstrated to have claims to better accuracy other than their age, then demonstrating through other evidence such as the Didascalia and the Old Latin that the alternative reading to the Alexandrian is as old as the Alexandrian witnesses, with the possible exceptions of 𝔓66 and 𝔓75, does not negate these other claims, merely the weight attached to the age of the Alexandrian witnesses, again with the stated possible exceptions, because the witnesses are not themselves older than the alternative reading. Thus, when I say "only has weight" there, it does not mean "only age has weight and not other factors" "but age as an independent factor only has weight if." Modern textual criticism has slowly been backing away from the overemphasis on the age of the Alexandrian manuscripts that has dominated the field since the days of Tischendorf, Tragelles, Westcott and Hort. An alternate case for the superiority of the Alexandrian text type could be made from the fact that it arose in what was the scholarly capital of the ancient world. Counterbalanced against that, however, is that it is also the place where history records tampering with the Scriptural texts to have taken place and in precisely the era that produced these manuscripts. Alexandria has been the source of many different disputes over the Biblical text. It was Alexandrian, albeit pre-Christian Alexandria obviously, where the LXX that became the received Old Testament of the early church was produced, and also in Alexandria, that the school of thought that said the LXX ought to be set aside in favour of the Hebrew text that post-Temple Judaism had decided upon as its canonical Scriptures. This, of course, is where the debate over the canonicity of the deuterocanonical books comes from, and until recently it had the appearance of scholarship being set against orthodox theology (the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, the Hebrew text antedates any translation such as the LXX, no Hebrew witnesses to the text type found in the LXX versus LXX being the Old Testament that is quoted in the New, and clearly being the Old Testament used by the oldest non-canonical Christian writings - Clement of Rome, Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, Ignatius, etc.,) although the discovery of Hebrew manuscripts with the LXX text, including some of the deuterocanonical books, in the last century has changed the situation somewhat.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 27, 2018 7:48 PM
Tony,
That is not a common hypothesis, but neither is it outside the realm of possibility. Alternately, Zane Hodges suggested that the alternate reading, whether it be the addition of the Pericope or its subtraction, might have occurred during John's lifespan, which did stretch to the end of the first century after all, become known to him, and were in his mind was he penned Rev. 22:18-19.
The life of the author, incidentally, is not considered in textual criticism as often as it should be, perhaps due to an overlap between lower criticism and higher criticism, the latter of which tends to be biased against the authorship traditionally assigned to many Scriptural books, which certainly holds true of the Johannine corpus. Taking, however, the conservative, orthodox, traditional position that the Apostle John wrote the Gospel and three epistles attributed to him, as well as the Apocalypse, consider what we know about his life and ministry. Initially, after the Ascension, the Apostles remained in the Church in Jerusalem, but when they scattered, John is said to have gone to the Greek city of Ephesus in Asia Minor. Polycarp, who is known to have been his personal disciple, became bishop in Smyrna, another Greek city in Asia Minor. When he was exiled to the Greek prison island of Patmos, and wrote the Revelation, the two chapters containing epistles to the churches are all addressed to churches in Asia Minor, Ephesus and Smyrna being the first two of these.
Consider the significance of this to the textual questions. The text type that contains the Pericope De Adultera is called the Byzantine Text Type precisely because the manuscripts in which it is contained belong to the area of the world in which John lived, ministered, and to which he addressed his writings. The majority of manuscripts contain the Byzantine Text Type. Does this testify to some official redaction by the Greek Church of which we have no historical record, or to the Byzantine Text Type's having been the majority text type in earlier manuscripts from this region which have not survived? If the latter, then surely the Byzantine Text Type is logically closer to the autographs than the Alexandrian, since it arose in the region which received the autographs.
Posted by Gerry T. Neal | March 27, 2018 11:55 PM