page_title: Jesus and the woman taken in adultery
section_title: History of textual criticism on John 7:53–8:11
hierarchical_section_title: Jesus and the woman taken in adultery / History of textual criticism on John 7:53–8:11
caption_attribution_description: English: Folio 174 v; the end of John 7; the text lacks the Pericope Adulterae
context_page_description: Jesus and the woman taken in adultery is a passage found in the Gospel of John 7:53–8:11, that has been the subject of much scholarly discussion.
  In the passage, Jesus has sat down in the temple to teach some of the people, after he spent the previous night at the Mount of Olives. A group of scribes and Pharisees confronts Jesus, interrupting his teaching session. They bring in a woman, accusing her of committing adultery, claiming she was caught in the very act. They ask Jesus whether the punishment for someone like her should be stoning, as prescribed by Mosaic Law. Jesus first ignores the interruption and writes on the ground as though he does not hear them. But 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. The accusers and congregants depart realising not one of them is without sin, leaving Jesus alone with the woman. Jesus asks the woman if anyone has condemned her. and she answers no. Jesus says that he, too, does not condemn her, and tells her to go and sin no more.
context_section_description: The first to systematically apply the critical marks of the Alexandrian critics was Origen:
   In the Septuagint column [Origen] used the system of diacritical marks which was in use with the Alexandrian critics of Homer, especially Aristarchus, marking with an obelus under different forms, as "./.", called lemniscus, and "/.", 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. At this time, it was noticed that a number of early manuscripts containing John's Gospel lacked John 7:53–8:11 inclusive; and also that some manuscripts containing the verses marked them with critical signs, usually a lemniscus or asterisk. 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.
  Beginning with Lachmann (in Germany, 1840), reservations about the pericope became more strongly argued in the modern period, and these opinions were carried into the English world by Samuel Davidson (1848–51), Tregelles (1862), and others; the argument against the verses being given body and final expression in Hort (1886). Those opposing the authenticity of the verses as part of John are represented in the 20th century by men like Cadbury (1917), Colwell (1935), and Metzger (1971).
  According to 19th-century text critics Henry Alford and F. H. A. Scrivener the passage was added by John in a second edition of the Gospel along with 5:3.4 and the 21st chapter.
  On the other hand, a number of scholars have strongly defended the Johannine authorship of these verses. This group of critics is typified by such scholars as Nolan (1865), and Burgon (1886), and Hoskier (1920). 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).  Rather than endorsing Augustine's theory that some men had removed the passage due to a concern that it would be used by their wives as a pretense to commit adultery, Burgon proposed (but did not develop in detail) a theory that the passage had been lost due to a misunderstanding of a feature in the lection-system of the early church.
  Almost all modern critical translations that include the pericope adulterae do so at John 7:53–8:11. Exceptions include the New English Bible and Revised English Bible, which relocate the pericope after the end of the Gospel. Most others enclose the pericope in brackets, and/or add a footnote mentioning the absence of the passage in the oldest witnesses (e.g., NRSV, NJB, NIV, GNT, NASB, ESV).
caption: Codex Sangallensis 48 with the blanked space for the pericope John 7:53–8:11
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