It appears in the King James Version but modern English translations note that it is not present in the 'most reliable early manuscripts' of John, and therefore suggest that it is unlikely to have been part of the original text.

[12] Until recently, it was not thought that any Greek Church Father had taken note of the passage before the 12th century; but in 1941 a large collection of the writings of Didymus the Blind (ca.

313–398) was discovered in Egypt, including a reference to the pericope adulterae (in Didymus' commentary on Ecclesiastes:7:21–22[3]) as being found in "several copies", and it is now considered established that this passage was present in its usual place in some Greek manuscripts known in Alexandria and elsewhere from the 4th century onwards.

In support of this it is noted that the 4th-century Codex Vaticanus, which was written in Egypt, marks the end of John chapter 7 with an umlaut, indicating that an alternative reading was known at this point.

Book II is generally dated to the late third century (Von Drey, Krabbe, Bunsen, Funk).

[16] Almost all modern translations now include the Pericope de Adultera at John 7:53-8:11, but some enclose it in brackets or add a note concerning the oldest and most reliable witnesses.

Jesus describes himself as "the Light of the World", revisiting a theme of the Prologue to the Gospel: Jesus' statement is discontinuous both with the narrative of John 7:53–8:11, everyone but the woman having left the Temple convicted by their own consciences, and with the preceding verse, John 7:52, where Nicodemus the Pharisee had been urged by the other members of the Sanhedrin to re-examine the scriptures on the issue of whether a prophet could come from Galilee.

Greek: ἐγὼ μαρτυρῶ περὶ ἐμαυτοῦ, (egō marturō peri emautou): the expressed ἐγώ indicates that Jesus is an exception to the rule, the reason being that "He knows whence He comes and whither He goes ...

[12] The tone of verses 31 to 59 is critical and argumentative with this group; the Pulpit Commentary finds them to be believers of "the most imperfect kind", who "accepted the Messianic claims [of Jesus], but persisted in interpreting them, not by his word, but by their own ideas of the theocratic kingdom, by their privileges as children of Abraham, by their national animosity to their nearest neighbours the Samaritans, by their inability to press behind the veil of his humanity to his Divine nature".

The Pulpit Commentary notes this phrase as "the only place [in the gospels] where the Lord speaks of himself as 'a man'",[28] although the threat to kill "a man" can also be read as indicating that the Jews threatened to kill those proclaiming the message which the evangelist identifies as the true gospel (John 8:32).

The Jews' response is that Jesus is not yet fifty years old, i.e. has not yet reached the age of "full manhood" [12] as indicated in Numbers 4:3, 4:39 and 8:24.

Alfred Plummer, in the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, states that "these words are apparently an insertion, and probably an adaptation of Luke 4:30.