Church Hopping

Watching Seinfeld proves to us that we are indeed a strange species. Strangest quirk I’ve heard…a guy who cleans out his ears daily with his used underwear (you know who you are). If Jesus was fully human then He was probably quirky like the rest of us. Did he have some odd habits liking eating his peas one at a time or referring to himself in the third person? I was always confused by John 7:53-8:11. For some reason Jesus bends down and starts writing in the dirt. He does this twice in this passage, but the author sees no need to tell us what he wrote. Was he just filling time by doodling while he though up a rebuttal or did he write a zinger on the ground that helped put those guys in their place?

When researching this passage more, you’ll often find it referred to as the pericope adulterae, meaning “the passage of the adulterous woman”. This passage is an interesting one because more than likely it was not included in the original text written by John. As your parenthetical comments probably say, most of the very early manuscripts do not contain the pericope. Many of the manuscripts before the sixth century that do contain it, place it in a different location. Some have it after John 7:36 or John 7:44 or John 21:25. A few scholars believe the style resembles Luke’s writing more than John’s, which could explain one manuscript that places it after Luke 21:38. Still other manuscripts contain the passage where your Bible does, but mark it with an asterisk. You also might want to know that no early church father quotes it for at least 600 years after Christ and early verse-by-verse commentaries skip it and move on to 8:12. Try reading that part of John and omit the pericope. It actually seems to flow better since John 7:52 is some what of a cliffhanger.

The proponents of the pericope point out that over 900 newer manuscripts do include it. There is also speculation that the passage was written by John but removed early by insecure husbands who thought the passage might embolden their wives to commit adultery. After all, humans are historically very good at manipulating the Bible for their convenience (see basically all of church history). Giddy-up.

Most every smart guy today though recognizes that the evidence against pericope adulterae is too much. Of course the question we must then ask is, where did it come from and is it to be considered “inspired”? The overwhelming majority are of the opinion that this was not in the original text but perhaps was an accurate, yet oral tradition that never made it in writing. In an attempt to preserve this story, it was inserted into John’s gospel, which might explain the varied locations in different manuscripts. So what do you think…would you teach on this passage? It does (at least to me) show Jesus doing something quite unexplained and potentially quirky, but a good teacher can come up with a number of explanations why Jesus would write on the ground. After all, He had man hands.

References:

• John 7:53-8:11
• NET Bible Commentary
• A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament