Few stories about Jesus are better known. The scribes and the Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery and stand her in front of everyone. The Law of Moses, they say, commands that such women be stoned. What does he say? Jesus bends down and writes on the ground. When they keep asking, he stands up and says that whoever is without sin should throw the first stone. One by one, the oldest first, they leave. Jesus asks the woman whether no one has condemned her. “No one, Sir,” she says. “I do not condemn you either,” he answers. “Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”
The story is traditionally numbered John 7:53–8:11. It is also the largest passage in the New Testament whose place in the text is in doubt. Most modern Bibles print it, but set apart, with a note that the earliest manuscripts of John do not have it. This article looks at why, and at what that does and does not mean. For the method in general, see When the manuscripts disagree and How textual criticism recovers the text.
A gap in the oldest copies
The story is missing from every early manuscript of John that survives at this point. Two papyrus copies from around AD 200, known as P66 and P75, go straight from 7:52 to 8:12. So do the two great codices of the fourth century, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (see Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus). Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Ephraemi, from the fifth century, have lost their pages here, but scholars who have counted the letters that would fit on the missing leaves conclude that the story could not have been there. The early translations into Syriac and Coptic, and the oldest Latin copies, lack it too.
Read without the passage, John runs on smoothly. At the end of chapter 7 the chief priests and Pharisees argue about Jesus, and Nicodemus is told to search the Scriptures and see that no prophet arises from Galilee. Then 8:12 continues:
Jesus spoke to them once more: “I am the light of the world. Those who follow me will never walk in the darkness; they will have the light of life.”
Greek Christian writers for centuries, among them Origen in the third century and John Chrysostom in the fourth, say nothing of the story when they discuss this part of John. It seems not to have been in the copies they used.
Where the story first appears
The first manuscript known to have the story is Codex Bezae, a Greek and Latin copy of the Gospels and Acts from around AD 400. It puts it where most Bibles have it now. Jerome included it when he revised the Latin Gospels in the 380s, and he later remarked that it was found in many Greek and Latin copies. Ambrose and Augustine, in the West, knew and preached on it. Augustine suggested that some readers of weak faith had removed it from their copies, afraid that it would seem to excuse adultery.
The story itself seems to be older than any of these copies. A church order from Syria in the third century, the Didascalia Apostolorum, tells bishops to be merciful as Jesus was to a woman who had sinned, whom the elders set before him; he sent her away saying he did not condemn her either. Eusebius reports that Papias, an early second-century writer, told a story of a woman accused of many sins before the Lord, which Eusebius says was also in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Whether that is the same story is debated. In the fourth century, Didymus the Blind in Alexandria mentioned a story “in certain gospels” of a woman condemned for a sin whom Jesus saved from stoning.
So there is good reason to think that a story of Jesus and an accused woman was told in the second and third centuries. What the early evidence does not show is that it was part of John.
A story that wandered
Once the passage entered the manuscripts, it did not always enter in the same place. Most later copies have it after John 7:52. Others have it after 7:36, or after 7:44, or at the very end of John after 21:25. One family of manuscripts puts it in Luke, after Luke 21:38. Some copies that have it in John mark it in the margin with asterisks or other signs that copyists used for doubtful text.
The record for 7:53 sets out these placements. A text that floats like this behaves less like an original part of a book and more like a precious piece of tradition looking for a home. Each placement makes some sense. After John 7:52 it fits a chapter about Jesus teaching in the temple and the leaders trying to catch him. At the end of John it sits as a kind of appendix. In Luke it fits beautifully: Luke 21:37–38 says that Jesus taught in the temple by day, spent the nights on the Mount of Olives, and that all the people came to him early in the morning, which is almost exactly how the story begins.
Not quite John’s voice
Readers of John who come to this passage often notice, without knowing why, that it sounds different. The record names some of the reasons.
The story speaks of “the scribes” (8:3), who appear nowhere else in John. The record’s decision on that verse notes that this is the only place they appear in the Gospel, which elsewhere pairs the Pharisees with the chief priests. It names the Mount of Olives (8:1), which John does not otherwise mention, though the other Gospels often do. A decision on 8:2 notes that the word for “the people” is common in Luke but rare in John, who usually speaks of “the crowd”.
None of this proves anything alone. Authors vary their words. But together with the manuscripts it points the same way: this is a story about Jesus that came into John from outside.
Is the story true?
This is where many readers are worried, and where it is important to be careful. Showing that a passage was not part of the earliest copies of John is one question. Whether the events took place is another.
The record for 7:53 says so directly: “The evidence shows that the passage was not part of the earliest copies of John; it does not decide whether the events took place.”
Scholars hold a range of views:
- An authentic memory, preserved outside the Gospels. Many think the story is an old and true account of Jesus that circulated orally, or in other writings, and was later written into John at a fitting point. The early hints in Papias and the Didascalia, and the way the story fits what we know of Jesus elsewhere, support this. The record says that many hold this view.
- A deliberate insertion with a purpose. Some have argued that the passage was placed into John at a particular time for particular reasons. Chris Keith, for example, has argued that its picture of Jesus writing was valued at a time when Christians were defending their teacher against the charge that he was uneducated.
- Part of John from the start. A minority of scholars, especially those who give most weight to the majority of later manuscripts, hold that the passage is original and was removed early, perhaps for the reason Augustine gave. Most textual critics find the silence of the earliest witnesses too strong for this.
Open Word Bible’s records do not decide whether the events happened. They decide what was in the earliest text of John, and they translate the passage with the same care as any other.
How Open Word Bible prints it
The record for 7:53 considered three options and wrote down all three:
- leave the passage out of the text and give it only in a note;
- print it without any mark, as if it were plain John;
- print it in its usual place, set off in brackets as a passage whose place in John is disputed.
It chose the third, the course the SBL Greek New Testament also takes with its double brackets. In English this is a pair of square brackets: one opens at the start of 7:53, and one closes at the end of 8:11. At the Literal level square brackets also mark words supplied in English, so the records say that inside the passage they keep that use and only the outer pair marks the passage itself.
The reader goes one step further. On the chapter pages, the whole passage is set apart in a block of its own, under a short note: the earliest manuscripts of John do not have it, and most Bibles print it, as here, set apart in brackets. A link from the note opens the reasoning behind it.
The record joins 7:53 and 8:1 into one sentence, because they are one sentence in the Greek:
[Then each of them went home. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
The verse numbers put a chapter break in the middle of it. That is a reminder that chapters and verses were added more than a thousand years later. See Chapter and verse numbers.
The manuscripts that have the story also differ among themselves more than usual, which is common for a passage that travelled. The records note some of these differences. In 8:9 the words about the accusers being convicted by their conscience are in the SBL text but missing from some manuscripts, and a footnote gives the shorter reading.
Reading the story closely
The records treat the passage as Scripture to be understood, not only a problem to be explained. A few of their decisions:
The trap. The accusers bring the woman but not the man, though the Law named death for both (Leviticus 20:10; Deuteronomy 22:22). The record marks its reading of the trap as uncertain but sets out its outline: if Jesus says to let her go, they can accuse him of setting aside the Law of Moses; if he says to stone her, he goes against the mercy he was known for, and could perhaps be accused before the Roman governor.
The writing on the ground. People have long guessed what Jesus wrote: the accusers’ sins, a verse of the Law. The record’s decision is plain: the verb means to write, and the story does not say what he wrote. Guesses go beyond the text. An allusion to Jeremiah 17:13, or to the Law written by the finger of God, is listed as possible but uncertain.
The first stone. The Law said that at an execution the witnesses were to throw first (Deuteronomy 17:7). Jesus asks those who claim to be witnesses to take that first step, if they are without sin themselves.
”No one, Sir.” The word the woman uses is the one later used of Jesus as Lord, κύριε, kyrie. It was also the ordinary polite way to address a man. Nothing in the story shows that she knows who Jesus is, so the translation says “Sir”, and a footnote gives “Lord”.
Mercy and a call. The last words of the passage are:
Then Jesus said, “I do not condemn you either. Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”]
The record’s theology decision says that Jesus neither denies her guilt nor approves of it. He sends her away without sentence, and he tells her not to sin again. Both parts belong to his answer. The same command, “do not sin any more”, is what Jesus says to the man he healed at the pool in John 5:14.
Why it still belongs in the Bible we read
Some readers would remove the passage; others feel that questioning it at all is an attack on Scripture. The approach of Open Word Bible, like most modern Bibles, is between the two. The passage is printed, because it has been read by Christians for more than fifteen hundred years and very likely preserves a true memory of Jesus. It is marked, because readers have a right to know what the manuscripts show.
What the story teaches is not in doubt anywhere else in the Gospels. Jesus’s mercy toward sinners, his refusal to be trapped by his opponents, his call to a changed life: these run through all four Gospels. The story of the woman is one of their most vivid expressions, whoever first wrote it down.
For the other large passage that most Bibles set apart, see How does Mark end?.
Open John 8 to read the passage, set apart in the reader, with the reasoning behind it.
Sources
- Michael W. Holmes, ed., The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition (Society of Biblical Literature and Logos Bible Software, 2010).
- Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994).
- Chris Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus (Brill, 2009).
- Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story (Princeton University Press, 2019).