Through the Bible: John 7-8
The story of the woman caught in adultery is one of my favorite stories in the Gospels. So it causes me a lot of angst to read the big honkin’, all caps, bracketed statement in my ESV bible: THE EARLIEST MANUSCRIPTS DO NOT INCLUDE 7:53-8:11.
Noooo! Don’t take out my favorite story!
There are a lot of reasons scholars give for this, and John Piper does a masterful job of explaining it all in this 2011 sermon. Briefly:
- The story doesn’t appear in any surviving Greek manuscripts of John’s Gospel before the fifth century AD.
- The style of the Greek doesn’t match the rest of John.
- It breaks up the flow of the text.
However, there’s a helpful text footnote at the bottom of the page in the ESV. It tells us four ways scholars have dealt with this passage:
- Omit it completely
- Keep it where it is
- Move it somewhere else in John
- Move it to Luke
So let’s look at each of these:
Cut the story out completely
To be clear, no major English translation does this. Interestingly, even modern Bible translations that question whether John originally wrote this story have chosen to preserve it. Some place it in brackets. Others include explanatory footnotes. But the story remains available for us to read. And for me, leaving it out would rob us of one of the most beautiful narratives in the Gospels.
So let’s take that one off the table, and look at the other options:
At The End Of John?
Some manuscripts have the story at the end of John. But this makes no sense narratively, because it places it after the resurrection, and would make the awkward jump from Galilee (where Jesus reinstated Peter, see Day 293) to Jerusalem.
In Luke?
One logical possibility is after Luke 21:38, placing it between the statement that Jesus taught early in the morning in the temple and the Pharisees plotting with Judas to kill Jesus. If you put it there, the flow would be:
“And early in the morning all the people came to him in the temple to hear him.”
Luke 21:38 ESV
[insert John 8:1-11 material]
“Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread drew near, which is called the Passover. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to put him to death, for they feared the people.”
After John 7:36?
Other manuscripts place the story after John 7:36. In this arrangement, 7:53-8:1 would come right after John 7:36. Thus, it would read:
36“What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?”” Then they each went to his own house, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early the next morning…
Narratively, this seems to make more sense. It’s a logical thought progression from “where I’m going, you can’t come” to “so they went home.”
Here’s another reason this makes sense: imagine you are reading straight from 7:52 to 8:12, without the story of the woman. The Pharisees say, in 7:52,
“Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”
If you move the story of the woman caught in adultery, the next verse would be,
“Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.””
The Pharisees knew their scriptures. So they would know Isaiah 9:1 is the only time the prophets mention Galilee. Isaiah 9:1 reads,
“…But in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.
Isaiah 9:1-2 ESV
Read without the interruption of John 7:53–8:11, Jesus’ declaration that He is the light of the world becomes even more striking. The Pharisees have just dismissed the possibility of a prophet coming from Galilee. But Isaiah had already promised that a great light would shine in Galilee. Could John’s original readers have heard an echo of Isaiah’s prophecy in Jesus’ declaration?
My Vote: Keep it where it is
Now, if you are still with me after such a long and technical blog post, let me share where the Holy Spirit took me as I was thinking about this.
This is a story about a woman who found herself in a place she didn’t want to be. Humiliated. Shamed. Surrounded by men who knew nothing about her except her sin, and who were prepared to use her as a weapon in their argument against Jesus.
She was an interruption. An inconvenience. A problem to be dealt with. In other words, the woman herself embodies the very textual criticism issues we’re dealing with in this post.
But Jesus didn’t see a problem to be resolved. He saw a person to be restored.
For centuries, scholars have debated where this story belongs. They’ve examined Greek manuscripts, compared writing styles, and considered how the story fits into the surrounding narrative. Those are worthwhile questions, and I’m grateful for the scholars who ask them.
But there’s another question I find even more compelling: What does this story tell us about Jesus?
It tells us that Jesus was more interested in redeeming her story than analyzing it.
There’s something about the story itself that is beyond dispute: the kind of grace Jesus demonstrates is exactly the kind of grace we encounter throughout the Gospels.
The woman was dragged into the presence of Jesus by people who wanted to condemn her. And she discovered that His presence was exactly where she needed to be.
Perhaps the story interrupts John’s story of Jesus. But isn’t that what grace does?
Grace interrupts our story. It shows up where condemnation was expected. It changes the direction of a story.
The story of the woman caught in adultery is a glorious, grace-filled, redemptive interruption. Jesus’ actions say to the woman and her accusers, I’m not concerned with your background or your context. No matter what has happened up to this point, you belong here. Neither do I condemn you.
I think that’s the point.
For further reading:
Piper, John. Neither Do I Condemn You. Desiring god.org
This blog will always be a free resource for anyone who wants to grow in their love for God’s Word. If it has blessed you and you would like to support the ministry of 66in52, please consider a one time or recurring donation. Thank you!
Leave a Reply