Jesus and the woman taken in adultery

[4][5][6] Jesus begins to write something on the ground using his finger; when the woman's accusers continue their challenge, he states that the one who is without sin is the one who should cast the first stone at her.

John 7:53–8:11 in the New Revised Standard Version reads as follows: Then each of them went home,8:1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple.

"This episode and its message of mercy and forgiveness balanced with a call to holy living have endured in Christian thought.

", called a hypolemniscus, those passages of the Septuagint which had nothing to correspond to in Hebrew, and inserting, chiefly from Theodotion under an asterisk (*), those which were missing in the Septuagint; in both cases a metobelus (Y) marked the end of the notation.Early textual critics familiar with the use and meaning of these marks in classical Greek works like Homer, interpreted the signs to mean that the section (John 7:53–8:11) was an interpolation and not an original part of the Gospel.

During the 16th century, Western European scholars – both Catholic and Protestant – sought to recover the most correct Greek text of the New Testament, rather than relying on the Vulgate Latin translation.

It was also noted that, in the lectionary of the Greek church, the Gospel-reading for Pentecost runs from John 7:37 to 8:12, but skips over the twelve verses of this pericope.

Those opposing the authenticity of the verses as part of John are represented in the 20th century by men like Henry Cadbury (1917), Ernest Cadman Colwell (1935), and Bruce M. Metzger (1971).

[16] 19th-century text critics Henry Alford and F. H. A. Scrivener suggested that the passage was added by John in a second edition of the Gospel along with 5:3.4 and the 21st chapter.

More recently it has been defended by David Otis Fuller (1975), and is included in the Greek New Testaments compiled by Wilbur Pickering (1980/2014), Hodges & Farstad (1982/1985), and Robinson & Pierpont (2005).

Most others enclose the pericope in brackets, or add a footnote mentioning the absence of the passage in the oldest witnesses (e.g., NRSV, NJB, NIV, GNT, NASB, ESV).

The first surviving Greek manuscript to contain the pericope is the Latin-Greek diglot Codex Bezae, produced in the 400s or 500s (but displaying a form of text which has affinities with "Western" readings used in the 100s and 200s).

"[2] The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles Book II.24, composed c. 380, echoes the Didascalia Apostolorum, alongside a utilization of Luke 7:47.

[22] Among the early Greek attestations of the pericope adulterae are the 6th century canon tables found in the Monastery of Epiphanus in Egypt.

[27][28] Evidence of its existence within some Egyptian manuscripts additionally comes from two ivory pyxides dated to around the 5th or 6th century, which depict the story of the adulteress.

[20] The story of the adulteress was quoted by multiple Latin speaking early Christians, and appears within their quotations of the New Testament often.

The unknown author of the composition "Apologia David" (thought by some analysts to be Ambrose, but more probably not) mentioned that people could be initially taken aback by the passage in which "we see an adulteress presented to Christ and sent away without condemnation."

Later in the same composition he referred to this episode as a "lection" in the Gospels, indicating that it was part of the annual cycle of readings used in the church-services.

[b]Codex Fuldensis, which was produced in AD 546, and which, in the Gospels, features an unusual arrangement of the text that was found in an earlier document, contains the adulterae pericope, in the form in which it was written in the Vulgate.

More significantly, Codex Fuldensis also preserves the chapter-headings of its earlier source-document (thought by some researchers to echo the Diatessaron produced by Tatian in the 170's), and the title of chapter 120 refers specifically to the woman taken in adultery.

The subject of Jesus's writing on the ground was fairly common in art, especially from the Renaissance onwards, with examples by artists including a painting by Pieter Bruegel and a drawing by Rembrandt.

There was a medieval tradition, originating in a comment attributed to Ambrose, that the words written were terra terram accusat ("earth accuses earth"; a reference to the end of verse Genesis 3:19: "for dust you are and to dust you will return"),[c] which is shown in some depictions in art, for example, the Codex Egberti.

The Pericope Adulterae was never read as a part of the lesson for the Pentecost cycle, but John 8:3–8:11 was reserved for the festivals of such saints as Theodora, 18 September, or Pelagia, 8 October.

[47] As a result, based on Eusebius' mention that the writings of Papias contained a story "about a woman falsely accused before the Lord of many sins" (H.E.

Bart D. Ehrman concurs in Misquoting Jesus, adding that the passage contains many words and phrases otherwise alien to John's writing.

[48] There are several excerpts from other authors that are consistent with this: Fragment 1 (Eusebius - 4th century): And he relates another story of a woman, who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

[51]However, Michael W. Holmes says that it is not certain "that Papias knew the story in precisely this form, inasmuch as it now appears that at least two independent stories about Jesus and a sinful woman circulated among Christians in the first two centuries of the church, so that the traditional form found in many New Testament manuscripts may well represent a conflation of two independent shorter, earlier versions of the incident.

[37] According to Armin Baum [de], "the question of the [Pericope Adulterae]'s canonicity does not follow automatically from a literary historical judgment about its origin."

[56][57] In September 2020, the Chinese textbook《职业道德与法律》(Professional Ethics and Law) was alleged to inaccurately recount the story with a changed narrative in which Jesus stones the woman, while stating "I too am a sinner.