John 7:53

PERICOPE ADULTERS.

John 7:53 to John 8:11. Jesus and the Woman Accused of Sin. The well-known story of the woman taken in adultery has no claim to be regarded as part of the original text of this gospel. It breaks the close connexion between John 7 and John 8:12 ff., and in style and vocabulary it is clearly Synoptic rather than Johannine. Of early Greek MSS the Cambridge MS (D) alone contains it, and in a text which differs considerably from that of the later Greek MSS from which it passed into the Received Text. Of early VSS the Latin alone contains it, and it was absent from some forms even of the Latin. It is supported by no early Patristic evidence. The evidence proves it to be an interpolation of a Western character. It is found in various places, after John 7:36 in one Greek MS, after John 7:44 in the Georgian Version, at the end of the gospel in other MSS. In one important group of Greek cursives it is found attached to Luke 21:37.

Eusebius (H.E., iii. 39) tells us that Papias recorded a similar story of a woman accused before the Lord of many sins, which was also in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. This suggests as the most probable explanation of its association with the Fourth Gospel that the story, which bears every mark of preserving a true tradition, found a place in Papias-' books of Expositions of the Dominical Logia, as illustrating the Lord's saying (John 8:15), I judge no man (see Light-foot, Essays on Supernatural Religion, pp. 203 ff.).

The evidence of Codex D and other textual phenomena suggest perhaps that it existed in more than one Greek translation. If so the original was not Latin, as the Latin texts show clear traces of translation from Greek. Its insertion in certain MSS in Lk. is due to the similarity between John 8:1 f. and Luke 21:37 ff.

The incident is not one which early Christian opinion would have been likely to invent. It is beyond the power of the sub-apostolic age to produce. As Lightfoot says, they had neither the capacity to imagine, nor the will to invent, an incident which, while embodying the loftiest of all moral teaching, would seem to them dangerously lax in its moral tendencies.

Like other questions addressed to the Lord the tempting consisted in the endeavour to catch Him in a dilemma. If He pronounced against the strict carrying out of the Mosaic Law He would be discredited with the people. If He counselled action contrary to the decrees of the Roman authorities, who had withdrawn from the Jews the power of inflicting capital punishment, His enemies would get material for accusation against Him. The answer contained nothing which disparaged legal punishment, and it threw on the accusers the responsibility of taking action. It left untouched the question of Jewish and Roman relations, and it raised the deeper moral issues of the right to condemn and the true end of punishment.

[John 8:9. when they heard it: C. R. Gregory (ET, x. 193) quotes an ancient MS as giving when thay read it. A. J. G.]

(See also Supplement)