Cmty on John 8
The Adulterous Woman
For most in the church, Protestants (including the present writer) and Roman Catholics alike, this pericope is regarded as being fully canonical, even though it has been understood by textual scholars for centuries to be out of place. Our oldest manuscripts of John do not contain this text, and it is conspicuously absent not only from the early eastern Greek texts and versions, such as the Syriac and Coptic, but also no eastern Church Father commenting on John makes any mention of the story during the first nine centuries of the Christian era. In the west during the first three centuries the situation was not much different, though by the fourth and fifth centuries the story found its way into Codex Bezae and into a number of later Greek and old Latin manuscripts. Yet even some of these manuscripts contain sigla indicating the doubtful nature of the pericope’s placement. While the earliest western Church Fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian do not mention the pericope, it is found in the works of Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome.
My thesis that this pericope was a text looking for a context is supported by the fact that this story is found not only after John 7:52 but also after Luke 21:38 in a number of later Greek manuscripts as well as in a few texts after John 21:25 and after John 7:36 and John 7:44. But in spite of the confusing textual state of this pericope’s placement, the style is closer to that of a Synoptic pericope, particularly a Lukan story, than one attributable to John.
There are several reasons why I find this pericope to be more akin to that of Luke than of John. Although the Synoptics are quite similar, the stories of Luke in particular tend to focus on the poor, the dispossessed, the rejects of society, and helpless women. Moreover, a number of clues argue against the story being Johannine. The term “scribes” (grammateis, 8:3) appears nowhere else in John. The same is true of the place designation “the Mount of Olives” (8:1). In addition, the identification of Jesus as “Teacher” (didaskale, 8:4) is not used elsewhere in John except as a definition for the term “rabbi” (cf. John 1:38). Accordingly, the story would be better aligned with one of the Synoptic contexts where Jesus met people regularly in the temple and taught them during the closing days of his ministry, such as in Luke 20–21. It is not surprising to me, therefore, that some manuscript copyists chose to place this story in Luke 21 in a conflictual teaching setting.
Before turning to the meaning of the pericope itself, one more matter of introduction should be mentioned. Although this pericope per se does not seem to be mentioned by early Christian writers, there is an intriguing reference by Eusebius in Ecclesiastical History to a story from Papias about a woman who in the presence of the Lord was charged with committing “many sins.” This story was said to be “contained in the Gospel to the Hebrews.” Can this allusion be related in any way to the present pericope? The answer to that question unfortunately is unavailable.
[The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53–8:11.]
The statement then reads: “Every man went unto his own house. Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.” Jesus is thus, by the Holy Spirit, set in another contrast with them. Everyone else went home
