The primary issue concerning this passage is, “Is this account that was read for us part of John’s Gospel as John originally wrote it?” Our NIV puts a horizontal line on either side of this section and says, “The earliest and most reliable manuscripts and other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.” And it is true that our four earliest manuscripts don’t have this passage.
In the main, the Bible did not come down to us from heaven on stone tablets. There were very human processes of both writing and shaping the Bible books. And after they were written, there was also a process of copying it out over and over again.
The passage we read is found in what is called the ‘Received Text’ of Greek manuscripts, on which the King James and New King James Bibles were based. Before the printing press, the Bible was copied out by hand. And there is a history of transmission of how the bible was copied out. The fact is that this story is not in our four earliest copies of our Greek New Testament. [1] Now, many Greek manuscripts have this part of John’s Gospel, but they tend to be dated later. And often, even when this passage is included in the manuscripts, the scribes tended to put asterisks, showing that they believe that there is something ‘different’ about it.
In the Western Church, Jerome, the fourth century bible translator, said it was in many Greek and Latin Manuscripts he had access to. Ambrose and Augustine cited it and accepted it.
But in the Eastern Church there were fewer people who accepted it. [2] In the writings we have from Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and others, this little passage is not acknowledged. That might be because they didn’t know about it from their copies of John’s Gospel, or because all of their works and their opinions have not survived for us to study.
Moreover, there are more than the usual number of textual variants to this story. And while most manuscripts which have the account put the story here in John’s Gospel, a few others put the story in different locations in our manuscripts. Some have it after Luke 21:38, one after John 7:36, one after John 7:44, and some put it at the end of John’s Gospel.
However, even in the East, there are early and ancient testimonies to the story. Eusebius states that Papias, an early writer and bishop, who heard those who had heard the apostle John, knew about the story. Papias wrote around AD 125, probably within 40 years of when John wrote his Gospel. And Papias “told another story about a woman who was accused of many sins in the presence of the Lord, a story which is contained in the Gospel According to the Hebrews” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.17). There were many other Gospel accounts that circulated in the early church, as Luke said, and presumably not all of them survived, partly because some of them I guess weren’t very good, and partly because the ones we have are so very good—in fact, they are God-breathed!
Moreover, in the early 200s, bishops in Syria were exhorted to deal with repentant sinners as Jesus did with the woman in our story. So there is external evidence that in the East, Papias knew of this story at about AD 125, and bishops acted on it in the early AD 200s. So it was clearly an early story about Jesus, maybe even reaching back to the time of John himself.
Someone wrote it. The two possibilities are that John could have written it, or someone else wrote it.
One hypothesis is that John could have written it in his first edition of his Gospel, and it was taken out later. That was the opinion of Augustine. Augustine thought that harsh Christians, ‘rigorists’ like the Novationists or Donatists—Christians who said there could be no repentance from some sins after a Christian fell into them—might have taken the passage out because they thought it was too merciful to adulterers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novatianism; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatist). And that’s why some manuscripts don’t have it, according to Augustine. Not many people believe that now, though some did, and a few still do. [3]
Another hypothesis is that John could have written it later, as an after thought. We all know that good books nowadays run to second or subsequent editions. Why couldn’t John’s Gospel have a second edition? John could have published a second edition of his Gospel, and this later edition circulated along with earlier copies of John’s Gospel. [4] If he wrote the Gospel in AD 80-85, as some think, and he died in AD 96, as church history suggests, he had ample time to review and republish a second edition. This might explain why the vast majority of later manuscripts which we have actually have this passage in. On this hypothesis, our earliest manuscripts, those manuscripts which text critics believer are our best and most reliable manuscripts, may represent a text derived from what might have been John’s first edition. And the majority of manuscripts represent a second edition. An eminent text critic, F H Scrivener, suggested just such a possibility.
In fact, something similar seems to have happened to the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. The Book of Jeremiah circulated in two versions, a shorter one and a longer one. [5] Indeed, the book of Jeremiah itself says that there was a longer and a shorter scroll that was written. [6] And both of these versions of Jeremiah turned up among the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. [7] So my idea of the possibility of ‘two editions’ of John’s Gospel is not without precedent and support. But it is not a particularly popular theory.
Many scholars think the style of this little section seems more like Luke or Matthew than John. And I can see why. Nevertheless, it is not impossible for this reason only that John himself wrote it, or took it and adapted it, for his own good reasons.
Alternatively, while it is an early story, perhaps an unknown writer wrote it down so that the story was not lost to us. It could have been a disciple of John, or some other Christian. And the early church thought it was just too good a story not to be written down and retold [8] wherever the gospel was preached. It could have been part of earlier writings or Gospels that we no longer have, as Papias said. We know that there were more Gospels than just the four we have, because Luke says that “many have undertaken” to write histories (Luke 1:1). And Luke seems to have written before John. [9]
So some, but not all, early Christians know about this story. [10] Some of the few earliest manuscripts do not have the story in, but it is arguable that the scribes, or later hands, know about the story, and indicate it with marks on the manuscripts.
But, many of the later manuscripts do know about this account, and include it, or indicate that they know about it in another ways.
While some receive it thankfully as part of John’s Gospel[11], and while I thought this once, what tips the balance against this passage being original to John's Gospel is that the earliest surviving testimony to the account provided by Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who was reputed to have heard from either John or those who heard John, says that the "story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord" was "contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews". This statement, together with what we know about Papias, make it highly likely that someone other than John inserted the account into John's Gospel. For Papias, being well acquainted with John's ministry and/or those who learned from him, cites the story as being from the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" rather than John's Gospel. If it was in John's Gospel at the time of Papias, surely Papias would not have made this comment--he either would have said nothing about it (because John's Gospel contained the pericope, and so the Gospel to the Hebrews would not have been distinctive by reason of its inclusion, and thus could not have been identified by its feature of having included it), or, if he wanted to highlight the story, he would have mentioned that a similar story would have been in a Gospel he was well familiar with and which arose from his circle. The comment simply doesn't make sense if at the time of Papias, the story was part of John's Gospel.
But even if someone thinks this little account does not belong in John’s Gospel, there is still the issue of ‘Did this actually happen?’ Is it historical? And there is no problem with it having actually happened. [12] The vast majority of people I read on this believe this story actually happened, even if they don’t think it belongs in John’s Gospel. After all, John himself says that Jesus did other things he did not record. So why should we disbelieve it, when many members of the early church accepted that it happened? And the story is in character and consistent with many of the things Jesus did. [13] It rings true. It seems like the Jesus we know and love from elsewhere in the four Gospels. It is the same, skillful, clever, merciful, sharp Jesus who silenced the Pharisees and scribes elsewhere. The church has frequently received it as coming from him. And it certainly illustrates the principle that Jesus spoke about in John 3:17:
3:17For God did not send his Son into the world so that he might judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.
Nevertheless, we cannot receive it as part of John's Gospel as originally given to us.
[1] It is not found in the “two 3rd century papyrus witnesses to John, P66 and P75, or the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus, although each may acknowledge the existence of the passage via diacritical marks at the spot. The first surviving Greek manuscript to contain the pericope is the Latin/Greek diglot Codex Bezae of the late 4th or early 5th century”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery.
[2] “It is quite clear that this story was unknown to the ancient Greek Churches. Hence some conjecture that it was inserted from another place. But it has always been received by the Latin Churches and is found in many Greek manuscripts, and contains nothing unworthy of an apostolic spirit, so there is no reason why we should refuse to make use of it.” Calvin Comm 8:1, T H L Parker (translator), John 1-10, 206. Calvin’s opinion must be qualified by the 1941 discoveries that show Didymus the Blind’s knowledge of the pericope.
[3] J C Ryle holds to the pericope’s genuineness, even when he has all the evidence before him except that of Didymus the Blind: Expository Thoughts on the Gospel of John, III, 73-6. One might say this is because of his loyalty to the AV. This is the best solution that Alford can offer, that it was included in the Gospel by John himself from contemporaneous tradition, and subsequently was dropped out for stylistic and other reasons: “Balancing all these difficulties, I am almost disposed, as a desperate resource, to adopt the following hypothesis; not as by any means satisfying or even recommending itself to me, but as really the only way one which seems at all to shew us a way out of the enigma: That the Evangelist may have, in this solitary case, incorporated a portion of the current oral tradition into his narrative: that this portion may have been afterwards variously corrected, from the Gospel of the Hebrews, or other traditional sources: that being seen in early times to be alien from John’s diction, it may have been by some replaced in the synoptic narrative, in its apparent chronological place, at Luke xxi. Fin. : or inserted variously in this Gospel from the mere fact of having dropped out here. Then again the contents of the passage would operate with the above causes to its exclusion”: Alford’s Greek Testament, Vol 1 Pt 2 p 785. For a modern advocate, refer to Zane Hodges, cited in Carson, John: Pillar, 333. Bibliotheca Sacra 136 (1979) pp 318-372; 137, 1980, pp 41-53. Accessible at http://textualcriticism.scienceontheweb.net/TEXT/Hodges1979.html, where Hodges asserts “the narrative suffered deletion from some very early Greek exemplar of John’s Gospel, was perpetuated by this exemplar’s many descendants, and that the excision has thus exercised much influence on later copyists, translators, and commentators.”
[4] While Wikipedia cites that this is the opinion of Alford, it is not (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery), as shown in footnote 3 above. However, Wikipedia is correct to cite Scrivener in it’s favour:
“It is absent from too many excellent copies not to have been wanting in some of the very earliest; while the arguments in its favour, internal even more than external, are so powerful, that we can scarcely be brought to think it an unauthorized appendage to the writings of one, who in another of his inspired books deprecated so solemnly the adding to or taking away from the blessed testimony he was commissioned to bear (Apoc. xxii. 18, 19). If ch. xx. 30, 31 show signs of having been the original end of this Gospel, and ch. xxi be a later supplement by the Apostle's own hand, which I think with Dean Alford is evidently the case, why should not St. John have inserted in this second edition both the amplification in ch. v. 3, 4, and this most edifying and eminently Christian narrative? [MKPO: This sentence is probably why Alford is included as authority for the ‘second edition hypothesis’ in the Wikipedia article]. The appended chapter (xxi) would thus be added at once to all copies of the Gospels then in circulation, though a portion of them might well overlook the minuter change in ch. v. 3, 4, or, from obvious though mistaken motives, might hesitate to receive for general use or public reading the history of the woman taken in adultery. It must be in this way, if at all, that we can assign to the Evangelist chh. vii. 53-viii. 11; on all intelligent principles of mere criticism the passage must needs be abandoned: and such is the conclusion arrived at by all the critical editors”: F H A Scrivener, A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, 1894, Vol II, 364-5 accessed at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36549/36549-h/36549-h.html#toc25.
[5] Jeremiah has come down to us in two distinct though related versions: a longer one in Hebrew, the Masoretic Text (MT); the other known from the Septuagint (LXX), a shorter text by about one-eighth, it being the Greek translation of a text originally written in Hebrew. The shorter version ultimately became canonical in Greek Orthodox churches, while the longer was adopted in Judaism and in Western Christian churches. Equivalents of both versions were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, so it follows that the differences mark important stages in the transmission of the text. Most scholars hold that the Hebrew text underlying the Septuagint version is older than the Masoretic text, and that the Masoretic evolved either from this or from a closely related version: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Jeremiah. Compare Longman, who says “While the shorter text could conceivably represent an abridgment of the longer text, it is more likely that the longer version represents the later stage. … the end of Jeremiah indicates that there were multiple editions of the book during the lifetime of the prophet and we have speculated that there may well have been post-Jeremiah editions as well. … Longman says ‘While some might think that the earlier, shorter text should be considered authentic and in some cases canonical, on the basis of what we know about the development of the book, it is better to think that the longer, later text supersedes the earlier in importance”: T Longman III, Jeremiah, Lamentations : NIBC (Hendrickson/Paternoster: Peabody, 2008), 9.
[6] Jeremiah 36 narrates how Yahweh commanded Jeremiah to write down everything God spoke to him. Baruch wrote it out at the dictation of Jeremiah. When it was read to the King, he cut each portion off and threw it in the fire. Then after the King does this, God tells Jeremiah to do it again, and add some more. ‘And many similar words were added to them’ (verse 32). If the first scroll was copied before it was given to the King and circulated, and then God told Jeremiah to do it again with more words, that would account for ‘two editions’: http://garycottrell.wordpress.com/2011/08/09/the-shocking-secret-in-the-dead-sea-scrolls/.
[7] Farrell Till in The Sceptical Review online triumphantly places the inerrantist on the horns of a dilemma, that he must choose either the shorter or longer versions to be inerrant: http://www.theskepticalreview.com/tsrmag/4jerem90.html. To characterise it as an either/or choice doesn’t negate a situation which may well be in reality ‘both/and’. Why can’t BOTH be inspired and innerant? Both were given, and the original ‘givings’ were narrated to be at least ‘twice’ in the lifetime of Jeremiah. See also http://www.bibleandscience.com/bible/sources/deadseascrolls.htm.
[8] Whitacre, John: IVPNTC, 204
[9] It was believed that John was the last Gospel writer to write. Carson believes John could have been written at almost any date between 55 and 95 AD. Jerome puts John the Apostle’s death and about AD 98, and there is good evidence from the Fathers that John was the last of the Gospel writers to write his book, but this doesn’t prove John’s Gospel was written in the 90s. Carson tentativey puts the date of the Gospel’s publication at AD 80-85, and that 1 John is later than the Gospel: Carson, John: Pillar, 83, 85. It’s likely provenance was Ephesus: ibid, 87.
[10] The following early sources acknowledge the existence of the Pericope on Adultery:
Papias (c 125 AD): ‘He [Papias] also notes another story about a woman, who has been accused of many sins before the Lord, which the Gospel according to the Hebrews contains.’: Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3:39: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
Didascalia Apostolorum [Apostolic Teachings] (c 230 AD): A Christian treatise on church order originating from Northern Syria, possibly near Antioch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didascalia_Apostolorum. ‘But if thou receive not him who repents, because thou art without mercy, thou shalt sin against the Lord God; (p. 31) for thou obeyest not our Saviour and our God, to do as He also did with her that had sinned, whom the elders set before Him, and leaving the judgement in His hands, departed. But He, the Searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her:? Have the elders condemned thee, my daughter? She saith to him: Nay, Lord. And he said unto her:? Go thy way:? neither do I condemn thee [cf. John 8:3-11].? In Him therefore, our Saviour and King and God, be your pattern, O bishops, and do you imitate Him, that you may be quiet and meek, and merciful and compassionate, and peacemakers, and without anger, and teachers and correctors and receivers and exhorters; and that you be not wrathful, nor tyrannical [Tit 1.7; cf. 1 Tim 3.3]’: R Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/didascalia.html, accessed on 15/3/2014; http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
Constitutiones Apostolorum [Apostolic Constitutions] (c 375 - 380 AD): A collection of eight treatises on church order originating from Syria, probably Antioch, probably depending on the Didascalia Apostolorum: ‘And when the elders had set another woman who had sinned before Him, and had left the sentence to Him, and were gone out, our Lord, the Searcher of the hearts, inquiring of her whether the elders had condemned her, and being answered No, He said unto her: “Go thy way therefore, for neither do I condemn thee.”’: Book II.24, generally dated to the late third century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery.
Didymus the Blind (c 313- 398 AD): Manuscript discoveries of Didymus the Blind in 1941 established that the pericope was present in its usual place in some Greek manuscripts known in Alexandria and elsewhere from the 4th Century onwards: ‘It is related in some gospels that a woman was condemned by the Jews because of a sin and was taken to the customary place of stoning, in order that she might be stoned. We are told that when the Savior caught sight of her and saw that they were ready to stone her, he said to those who wanted to throw stones at her: Let the one who has not sinned, lift a stone and throw it. If someone is certain that he has not sinned, let him take a stone and hit her. And no one dared to do so. When they examined themselves and they recognized that they too bore responsibility for certain actions, they did not dare to stone her’: (Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 4.223.6–13): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_the_Hebrews; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery.
Jerome (347-420; c 415): ‘"[I]n the Gospel according to John in many manuscripts in both Greek and Latin, is found the story of the adulterous woman who was accused before the Lord."’, Jerome, The Dialogue against the Pelagians, (2.17), transl. John N. Hritzu, in Saint Jerome: Dogmatic and Polemical Works, (Washington D.C., Catholic U. Press of America, 1965), p.321: http://textualcriticism.scienceontheweb.net/TEXT/Hodges1979.html#f4; Also http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
Ambrose (338-397 AD;): Ambrose is reputed to cite the pericope several times, e.g. Epistle 25,7, Epistle 26,2: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
‘At the same time also the Gospel which has been covered, could produce extraordinary anxiety in the inexperienced, in which you have noticed an adulterous presented to Christ and also dismissed without condemnation … How indeed could Christ err? It is not right that this should come into our mind’: Ambrose (ca 397), ‘Apologia David altera’ (1.1, 3), in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, vol. 32: S. Ambrosii Opera, Part 2, ed. Carolus Schenkl (Vindobonae: F. Tempsky, 1887), pp 359-60 cited at http://textualcriticism.scienceontheweb.net/TEXT/Hodges1979.html#f49b.
Pacian of Barcelona (c 370-390): ‘Why delay ye, O Novatians, to ask eye for eye, tooth for tooth, to demand life for life, to renew once more the practice of circumcision and the sabbath? Put to death the thief. Stone the petulant. Choose not to read in the Gospel that the Lord spared even the adulteress who confessed, when none had condemned her.’: Epistle 3, 39, PL 13:1077): http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
Augustine (354-430 AD): ‘Certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if he who had said, Sin no more, had granted permission to sin.’: Augustine, De Adulterinis Conjugiis 2:6–7: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_and_the_woman_taken_in_adultery#cite_note-14.
Fathers Showing No Knowledge Of It: Several Fathers are silent about the Pericope, notably in the East Origen and Chrysostom, who wrote commentaries on John’s Gospel. In the West, Tertullian (ca 200-220 AD) never mentions it, though it would have militated against his treatise, On Modesty, where he complains against Episcopal willingness to forgive adultery and fornication. Likewise, Cyprian (died 258), while allowing the possibility of repentance and resumption, makes no mention of the Pericope, though he cites John 5:14, though the pericope would have been on point (To Antonianus, About Cornelius and Novatian, Epistle 51:21+26, also Epistle 61:3). This suggests the possibility that the pericope was written in answer to this controversy: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
The mention in Papias and the Didaskalia would therefore have to be discounted. Some would argue the reference in Papias is vague enough not to refer to the pericope, as it contains mention of ‘many sins’. Weilland Wilker, in his extensive essay, argues: ‘That Papias (ca. 125 CE) knew the story means that it existed ca 100 CE already. This again makes it quite probable that the story contains a genuine Jesus tradition.’: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
On Textual Evidence in the MSS: Weilland Wilker notes that ‘the earliest manuscripts that actually have the pericope are: D, b*, d, e, ff2, all from the 5th CE’ and concludes ‘The earliest external evidence shows no knowledge of the pericope in John. The earliest clear evidence for the PA in John is from the 4th CE. On the other hand a story of this kind was known from the earliest times (Papias, Didaskalia). The PA entered the Gospel of John somewhere in the 3rd CE, but remained in dispute. It took a long time until its universal acceptance. There is absolutely no convincing evidence that the PA was originally part of the Gospel of John’.
As to why the Pericope was added to John’s Gospel, Wilker says: ‘We have positive evidence that the PA was extant in manuscripts of John in the second half of the 4th CE. Church fathers in the 4th CE also quote it. We have earlier evidence of the story as such, but no evidence that it actually was in the Gospel of John. Why has it been added at all? The debate about forgiveness was a major one in the 2nd and 3rd CE (compare Tertullian above). It was probably difficult in the long run to argue here with a non-canonical Jesus story. The story has been accepted rather fast in the West, due to the authorities of Ambrosius, Augustinus and Jerome, but only very hesitantly in the East, where it found no advocates. The history of the PA remains largely in darkness. We have only occasional spots of light, but the connecting lines are unknown. It is very unusual that such a long passage has been added at so late a date. Perhaps one must look at it more in terms of the canonization of the NT books and not so much as a textcritical variant. Several NT books took very long to be ultimately accepted or rejected (compare Revelation or 2nd Peter). Perhaps one should see the PA as such a disputed "book".’: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/TCG/TC-John-PA.pdf.
[11] J Ramsay Michaels seems to do so in John: NICNT.
[12] Keener regards that many or perhaps most think that the story may reflect an authentic, perhaps oral, tradition, and lists for example, Montfiore, Derrrett, Hunter, Michaels, Watkins, Ridderbos, Whitacre, Burge, Beasley-Murray, Grayston, Borchet: C S Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Hendrickson: Peabody, 2003), 1:736.
[13] This is the conviction, among others, of Beasley-Murray, John: WBC 2nd Ed, 133-4; C K Barrett, John: SPCK, 491; R Brown, 1:335, cited by B Milne, John: BST, 124; L Morris says, ‘But if we cannot feel that this is part of John’s Gospel we can feel that the story is true to the character of Jesus. Throughout the history of the church it has been held that, whoever wrote it, this little story is authentic. It rings true. It speaks to our condition. It is thus worth our while to study it, though not as an authentic part of John’s writing. The story is undoubtedly very ancient’: L Morris, John: NICNT, 883. Carson says, ‘There is little reason for doubting that the event here described occurred, even if in its written form it did not in the beginning belong to the canonical books.’: Carson, John: Pillar, 333.
My Translation
8:1Now Jesus went to the Mount of Olives 8:2And when it was daybreak, Jesus again went to the temple, and all the people were coming to him, and he sat down and was teaching them.
8:3Now the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been seized for adultery, and standing her in his presence, 8:4they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was seized in the act of committing adultery. 8:5 Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such a person as she is. What do you say, then? 8:6 Now they were saying this to test him, so that they might have something with which to accuse him.
So Jesus stooped down, and wrote in the earth with his finger. 8:7And as they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to them, “The one of you who is without sin may throw the first stone at her”. 8:8And again he stooped down and wrote in the earth. 8:9And those who heard went away one by one, beginning with the elders, and he was left alone, and the woman was there in his presence.
8:10And raising himself up, Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are they? Does no one condemn you?” 8:11 And she said, “No one, Lord.” So Jesus said, “I don’t condemn you either. Go, and from now on sin no longer.”