John 7:53-8:11
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It was January 2nd 1998 when I encountered my first Bible Salesman. I’m not sure if you have ever had an experience with this before but it was a moment that would change my life forever.
23 years later I still remember that moment because of how impactful it was to me.
Why was it impactful?
Did he tell me about my sins and my separation from God? Unfortunately, No
Did he tell me about Jesus and how Jesus came to rescue, redeem, ransom, and restore! Regrettably, No.
Did he tell me that if I buy this Bible all of my problems would vanish? Thankfully no.
So why did this encounter impact me so profoundly?
Because He asked if I knew that Noah was really a girl.
Now I know this may not be as shocking in 2021 as it was in 1998. But, let me tell you something -I paid attention.
It was a great sales tactic, if he could prove Noah was a girl, then I would prove that I had enough money to buy his bible.
So, one of the selling features of this Bible was that it has a huge encyclopedia at the beginning.
He turned to the name Noah and showed me that if I turned to Numbers 26:33 I’ll find that indeed Noah was a girl.
Numbers 26:33 (ESV)
And the names of the daughters of Zelophehad were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah.
I, and my pocket book, now realized there are two Noah’s in the Bible and one of them is a girl.
As you can see, 23 years later, I still have this Bible in my collection.
By the looks on some of your faces, you didn’t know that there were two Noah’s in the Bible either!
The more we know about the Bible and what is contained in the Bible, the stronger our faith can grow.
Also and the less chance that we would be hustled by someone who is trying to trick us or make us question what is really in here.
Today, I may shock you even more than saying that Noah was a girl.
Today may be a sermon that in 23 years from now, you’ll still remember because of the impact that it had on you.
However, I do not want you to think that I am deviating from our plan and goals.
The purpose of each week’s sermon in the Gospel of John is found in the 5 words: So that you may believe.
We get this from John chapter 20:30-31. Let’s look at verse 31 on the screen.
but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
So that is the goal of John in writing this Gospel that we are journeying through
And that is the goal that I have each week.
Through explaining and proclaiming the words of God, my hope is this:
If you do not believe, then through the heralding of the Gospel and the declaration of Jesus, you will believe He is the Christ, the Son of God
And if you do believe, my goal is that you would be strengthened in your faith through the power of the Spirit and equipped for the mission of God.
Actually it is that word, equipped that I want us to focus on today.
I was not equipped to know that there were two Noah’s in the Bible because I hadn’t read it or studied it very much at that point and easily fell prey to the sales guy.
There are many other aspects of the Bible, that if we are not aware of, and do not understand, can throw us for a real loop.
We can fall prey to those looking to disprove the Bible
Be tripped up by those looking to destroy your faith
And be without a defense for those who want to make a mockery of God.
Today we are going to look at a section of Scripture that is often used to disprove the Bible.
It just so happens to be one of the most beloved stories in the book of John, if not one of the top stories in all of the New Testament.
But doing so will be dangerous. So I am warning you up front.
One of three things will happen:
1.) Make you question everything you thought you knew about the Bible and wonder if it is even true any more.
2.) Solve a curiosity that you had but never had anyone explain it before.
3.) Strengthen what you already knew and equip you to better defend the Bible against those who would seek to disprove it.
What does all this have to do with the Gospel of John?
Well open your bibles or turn them on if that is your preference to the Gospel of John, Chapter 7 verses 53.
We find ourselves now at the story of the adulterous woman, or the pric-a-pay adult-er-ray as it is sometimes referred to in the Latin.
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Depending on what version of the Bible you use, you’ll see one of a few possibilities.
If you are using an ESV Bible like we provide and I preach from each week, you’ll see double brackets around verse 53 with a note above saying these words: [The earliest manuscripts do not include 7:53-8:11]
Some Bibles like the NKJV have an asterisk besides this text pointing you to the notes that will read something similar.
The King James Version does not have any notification at all about this text and the discussion about different manuscripts.
So, what on earth is going on here?
Is our Bible telling us that this wasn’t a part of the Gospel of John?
Is this beloved story of he without sins cast the first stone false?
Is every Christian movie about Jesus wrong for including this scene?
Do you even want to know the truth?
It is because of these brackets, these asterisk, that atheist, college professors, and other unbelievers will try to trip up believers.
This and other verses will be used to make you question your Bible and question your faith.
So what are we going to do about this?
I believe we can liken the next moment to the Matrix:
You take the blue pill—the sermon ends, you get up and leave the church and believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill—you stay in seat, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I'm offering is the truth.
Are you ready? Nobody leaving? Ok here we go.
What does Confessors of Christ believe about this passage?
The quick answer is this:
We believe that this story is an oral tradition passed down through the generations and could be an authentic scene from Jesus’s ministry.
Though it is well known, it is not in any of the early Gospel manuscripts and thus the belief is that copyist added this story and has come down to us today in the form we currently see it.
How did we and biblical scholars come to this conclusion?
Let me share the brief answer below and will expound upon it more as we go further.
1.) This story was not found in any of our earliest manuscripts that we have discovered.
We have over 5,700 manuscripts of the New Testament and the oldest ones do not have this story in any of the Gospels
2.) It also did not appear in any extra biblical writings till much later.
What is extra biblical writings?
Along with the 5,700 manuscripts we also have all sorts of writings from the early church fathers that commentate on different passages of Scripture
We can compare these extra biblical writings when they quote the Bible to get an idea of what the manuscript was like that they were quoting from.
In reference to this story it isn’t until much later that we see this story as one of the ones referenced.
3.) In manuscripts where it is found, it has been discovered in 3 different places in John and 1 for sure and possibly two places in the Gospel of Luke.
This was a story that was looking for a home and thus put in different places by different copyist until it landed where we commonly see it today.
So am I saying that this is a false story?
No, I’m actually not saying that either.
There is very good evidence from the oral tradition that this very well may have happened.
1.) We see it widely accepted in manuscript history through the ages.
2.) I believe it found its way into the Gospel of John based on John 21 verse 25
Now there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.
3.) We see it does not contradict any other teachings of Jesus and also doesn’t offer any new teachings that we can’t already conclude from with other teachings of Scripture.
With this section of Scripture being our focus today two important questions must be considered.
1.) Did John write this section of Scripture?
2.) If he didn’t, which the evidence certainly points against him writing this, is it still inspired by God. Is it God breathed?
Let’s tackle the first question. Did John write this?
Forgive me for asking a question with a question, but, why does it matter?
You may be asking yourself, “Who cares if John wrote this or not?” It’s in the Bible!
I believe it will be helpful to show why I believe we must know whether or not John wrote this.
What Confessors of Christ Church believes about the Bible is found in our affirmation of faith and is defined like this:
“We believe that the Bible, consisting of the sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments, is the infallible Word of God, verbally inspired by God, and without error in the original manuscripts.”
What is key to point out here, is the phrase original manuscripts. It is sometimes stated as the autographs.
Meaning, we believe what John wrote in the Gospel of John is inspired by God, infallible and without error.
Therefore, our statement of faith is only true if we know what did John actually write.
Why is this important?
Peter helps us out in the following verse.
knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation.
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
So we see that Scripture doesn’t come from someone’s interpretation but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
But can it be just any man?
Well no, there were many letters and books that were rejected as fakes, frauds, or not authoritative.
The Gospel of Thomas is a good example.
But, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were universally accepted as Scripture very early on.
Some reasons why this book was universally accepted as Scripture is one: John was an Apostle
He was also the oldest surviving apostle and could verify his letter.
His teachings were in accordance with the other unquestioned books
His Gospel was read in churches all over the known world.
Even as early as 95 AD Clement of Rome acknowledged 8 books of the new Testament to be inspired Scripture.
13 years later Polycarp who was a disciple of John’s acknowledged 15 books of the New Testament.
Ear-ruh-nay-uhs speaks of 21 books by 185 AD (You guys thought naming my Son Spurgeon was going to be hard to pronounce)
The council of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397 AD solidified the 27 books that we have today.
We also have the role of the Holy Spirit in this work as well.
John Calvin wrote another important aspect of the Spirit’s work.
"These words [of Scripture] will not obtain full credit in the hearts of men, until they are sealed by the inward testimony of the Spirit. The same Spirit, therefore, who spoke by the mouth of the prophets, must penetrate our hearts, in order to convince us that they faithfully delivered the message with which they were divinely entrusted"
Now that we see the reason we need to know whether or not this was written by John
How do we know what John actually wrote?
Do we have the original manuscript or the original autograph?
No, no we do not.
We do not have the papyri that John wrote on with the ink from his hands.
This has been lost to time.
Matter of fact, we don’t have any of the original manuscripts or autographs of any of the books of our Bible!
Then how on earth can we be sure that we know anything at all that John wrote?
Are we just to have blind faith that everything in here is of God?
Are we to believe God supernaturally preserved every word that is in here?
The answer to both of these is no.
We are not to have blind faith. Blind faith is not Christian faith.
Christian faith is not believing in something in which there is no evidence at all to support it.
Christian faith is the sure and certain belief in what we cannot see but know to be true.
We also know that God did not supernaturally preserve every word because there are no two manuscripts of the Bible that are the same.
We are thus forced to answer this next question:
How are we to have sure and certain faith if we do not have the original and God has not supernaturally preserved every manuscript?
The answer is this.
Through the discovery of over 5,700 manuscripts we are able to put the Bible back together in such a way that we have great confidence in what John wrote through the process of textual criticism.
This is a key phrase that you would do well to remember and do some research on.
Textual criticism is fascinating.
But what is Textual Criticism.
First let me tell you what Textual criticism is not.
Textual Criticism isn’t taking a piece of text and criticizing it.
“Why are you the way that you are text.”
“This is why nobody likes you, text!”
No we don’t criticize the text in that way!
So what is textual criticism? Here is our definition:
Textual criticism is the science and art that seeks to determine the most reliable wording of a text.
Paul Wegner explains further: Science because specific rules govern the evaluation of various types of copyist errors and readings, but it is also an art because these rules cannot be readily applied in every situation.
Through textual criticism we are able to analyze the manuscripts and see where errors were made through misspellings, copy errors, and the like, in order to see what the text originally stated.
In order to understand textual criticism we really need to understand how we got our Bibles in the first place.
Let’s begin:
It all starts with God. God is our Divine Author
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Our Bible is breathed out by God, it can be said that it is exhaled out by God. The very words of God.
In the greek it is called Thay-on-ew-stas.
Why do we care what word this is in the greek?
Because the New Testament was written in Koina Greek.
We start with God who then chooses Human authors.
Human through the Power of the Holy Spirit write out our original manuscript or the autograph.
Which if we remember is what is infallible and inerrant.
What happens next is simply incredible.
Copies were made
What is incredible about copies being made?
They didn’t have a printing press back then, everything was done by hand.
Who copied them? Whoever wanted them.
A person visits another church, they see the Gospel of John and do not have it, he will copy it and take it back to his church.
This happens over and over and over again.
The church was under great persecution during the early stages of Christianity.
Often these manuscripts were copied very quickly in order to get them out as much as possible.
Thus copies of copies expanded like wildfire all through the early middle east.
Not by trained copyist but by anyone who had the means to do so.
I must pause again now to make another important point.
It is important to note that it may sound like this is an awful idea to do it this way because all sorts of craziness and errors happen doing this.
But, something that would be way worse is avoided.
Because of this nobody had control over the text. No human, no group, no church government. Nobody could take the text and corrupt it.
Why? Because there were way too many copies going around by way too many people that it was impossible to gather them all up in order to corrupt them or change them in any way.
This is actually really really good.
Take The Koran for example:
Its text was gathered up early and controlled by one group who could do whatever they wanted with it.
The Book of Mormon
Controlled by one group who changed it to fit the changing doctrine and the changing culture.
Here is a quick example: The mormon’s first believed that if you were black it was because you sinned. Thus their scripture praises white people. After the civil rights movement they changed the word from white to pure.
But the Bible is unable to be corrupted in this way.
It’s because of how many texts that were copied so quickly due to persecution.
Even if someone were to try, we would be able to quickly figure that out based on comparing it with other manuscripts.
Ok I’m done with that rabbit trail let’s get back to the chart.
Through archeology and discoveries in libraries across the world we catalogue these manuscripts and take all of them and put them into one greek text.
Check this discovery out:
Codex Sign-e-at-i-cus It was discovered at Mount Siana(Siniaticus) 325 AD Oldest New Testament that we have that is complete
Check this next piece out:
Papyrus 52 or commonly called P52 is the oldest NT parchment that we have found to date.
3.5 inches by 2.5 inches. Ryland Library, Manchester, United Kingdom.
Gospel of John 18:31-33 and verses 37-38 on the back. 123-125 AD
This piece was about 30 years away from the original.
It is through compiling these two and thousands of other greek text that our English translation is created.
Here is common thought that is worth taking a moment to debunking:
Many wrongly say that our English bible is a translation of a translation of a translation and so forth
That it has been translated over and over and thus not accurate.
But this statement is not accurate.
Our English Bible is a direct translation from the original greek, the critical text.
Thus, all of the greek manuscripts are compiled into the critical text and the critical text is used to create our English Translation
The first critical text by a man named Erasmus is what was used to Translate the King James Bible.
Now let’s see how close you are paying attention.
Remember earlier when I said the only one that doesn’t have an asterisk in it pertaining to John 7:53-8:11 is the King James text?
Do you know Why?
Erasmus’s greek new testament was based on only a few greek manuscripts.
Of those manuscripts, they were later editions and all not only included this story in them but also the location.
Thus, the translators had no reason to question the story at the time.
Only later as more manuscripts were discovered and used that we now have a better understanding of this text.
But here is something amazing.
Even with limited manuscripts the KJV is remarkably accurate!
There are certainly more accurate ways to translate a few verses.
But what is absolutely incredible is the very same Gospel that we preach today is the very same Gospel in the KJV.
The very same doctrines on the Trinity, on the Doctrines of Grace, and so forth are the same in the KJV. That is incredible.
So let’s get back to the chart.
All of the manuscripts are compiled into the critical text.
But what happens when we discover more manuscripts?
The critical text changes over time as we find more manuscripts.
The standard for today is Called the Nestle-Allan 28th edition. Greek Text.
It has gone through 28 editions to include all of the latest manuscript evidence.
As more manuscripts are discovered, more is added and weighed out and then bible translations are updated based on the latest scholarly work.
But here is what is important.
The updates are so minor that no doctrine is ever changed.
It is maybe a word order, or a variant becomes clearer of which was what John wrote.
And that brings us back to the whole purpose of having the critical text.
It is through analyzing the thousands of manuscripts, discovering the spelling errors, the copy errors, understanding human errors in general that we can piece back together with great confidence the exact words of John.
The greek critical text of the New Testament is then translated into our Modern English.
I don’t have time to get into why we have a bunch of different english translations.
But briefly the translations differ depending on the goals of the Bible.
Do you want an easier to read Bible?
Well it is then translated to make it easier to read using a lower vocabulary while still trying to stay as close to the literal meaning as possible.
Do you want a literal translation?
Then there are going to be aspects of it that are more difficult to read due to how greek translates to English.
The ESV is the most literal english translation that we have on the market right now, right beside the NASB, and the KJV.
This is why I preach and study the ESV because of it being a literal translation.
The CSB is my favorite reading bible because it is translated on a 5th grade reading level and very enjoyable to read while still being a literal as possible without jeopardizing the readability.
My younger kids all have CSB bibles.
I believe that the Bibles we hold in our hands, say the ESV, or say the CSB, or NASB, modern translations includes what John actually wrote into the English.
Why? Modern translations do not hide anything.
You may notice that as your reading a digital bible or a paper bible you’ll come across foot notes.
Sometimes they will share a variant reading of that text.
This means while we are not 100% sure what John wrote in that spot we have it narrowed down to these two options and the one that is written is the one that we believe it is.
But just in case we include the other variant so you can have both.
And that is our Bibles and this is why we can trust our Bibles are the very words of God.
So all of that was done to answer the question, did John write verses 7:53-8:11.
Based on the evidence before us we would say no.
John did not write this story.
Whether this story is true or not, that is a different debate and one that we truly do not know.
But we can thankfully say that even if it is not true, it does not change any doctrine, any understanding, and does fit within the over all understanding we have of Jesus.
So now to answer the question, is this story inspired by God. Is it they-ah-new-stas?
Here again, I would say no based on what the standard that we have to go by.
We know what John wrote is God Breathed, but an oral tradition handed down, we do not have the same clarity on.
Let me close with this:
Why must we take a stance like this?
Because we must have clarity to what is God Breathed and what is not.
What is inspired Scripture and what is not.
Today, more than ever we have people claiming that God is speaking to them.
If we are receiving the very words of God today then we must continue adding to Scripture.
But we have a closed canon.
This means we are not adding anything else to the Bible.
We have everything here that we need to have and the ending has already been written.
Hebrews 1 reminds of something we must remember:
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,
but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
God speaks to us know through His Son and we hear from Jesus through our Bibles.
Today we have such a strong desire to hear from God but a very weak desire to read our Bibles.
One of my favorite quotes reminds us of this truth:
Do you want to hear from God today, read your Bible.
Do you want to hear God’s audible voice? Read the Bible out loud!
Do you want to hear God’s still small voice? Read the bible in a whisper.
And recently I heard this one: When I hear God speaking to me, it is because I left my audio Bible on.
So what are you going to do with this information?
The goal is that you would be challenged and encouraged to really understand how we got our Bibles and why we can truly have faith in God’s Word.
The goal is that you are now equipped to better handle objections and statements that would try to disprove God’s word.
Let me close our Bibles with this verse:
So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
If you checked out and took the red pill earlier, then this will mean nothing, you may be slightly concerned about this church, and go about your day.
If you paid attention and took the blue pill, my hope is that you see beyond what is in front of you to the incredible reality that is this Bible.
The greatness of God’s Word has been preserved. And I would go as far as say supernaturally preserved.
But not through perfect copies, not through the original manuscript, but through the small and great evidence that we have.
Whether through few manuscripts like the KJV or the incredible vast manuscripts we have for the ESV, the message of the Gospel is still the same.
The greatness of God is on full display through our Scriptures.
The depths of man’s sin and how we have been separated from God is made clear
Our only hope is presented to us in Jesus.
Through his life, death, burial, and resurrection we can be brought from spiritual death to life.
How can we know if that is you or not?
By testing ourselves to see if we are in the faith.
Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God?
Have you repented of your sins? Is your faith now placed upon Jesus as your only hope for this life and the next?
These are the marks of a true believer.
This is what the entirety of the Bible is about. God’s story.
God’s story is before us today and we can have full confidence in it.
Trust in God’s Word, Believe what God’s Word says, and be transformed by God’s Word. Amen?
Let’s pray.