What a Modern Movie Can Teach Us About How John 8:1-11 was Remembered

Not part of the Scriptural account.

With the popularity of programs like The Chosen, perhaps as many Americans get their impressions about what happened during Jesus’ ministry from what they see onscreen as much as what they read off the pages of their Bibles.  Which is why the depiction of Jesus’ interaction with the adulteress in the movie Son of God is a bit concerning.

Some scholars, such as James Hamilton, insist that we shouldn’t treat this episode, usually found in John 7:53-8:11, as part of the Bible at all.  I disagree in my book Jesus and the Adulteress and offer there a theory about how early scribes mistakenly removed the passage.  But today, as Easter 2026 approaches, I want to look into how Son of God re-imagines this episode.

The historical Jesus never did
what he does in this scene.

The adulteress is brought to Jesus in the 22^nd minute of the show – but in a scene that’s set in a wilderness, not in the temple as stated in the Gospel of John 8:2.  In Son of God, her daughter is with her, calling the adulteress “Mother” – an unnecessary embellishment that lacks any Scriptural basis whatsoever.

When questioned by a religious legalist, Jesus – already standing – does not put his finger to the ground.  Instead he picks up a stone from the ground and walks around.  Then he raises it over his head as if he intends to throw it at the adulteress – another unnecessary visual embellishment with absolutely no Scriptural warrant.

He says, “I’ll give my stone to the first man who tells me that he has never sinned” – a deviation from “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” in John 8:7 (EHV).  Then Jesus, instead of asking the adulteress about her accusers, simply tells her, “Go and sin no more” which accurately echoes part of what he says in John 8:11.  She says “Thank you.  Thank you.”  Jesus then kneels and kisses her on her head – another unnecessary an Scripturally unwarranted embellishment.

Then she stands and a young child runs to her and hugs her, and the scene ends.

Have you assumed that the scribes and Pharisees
were holding stones and dropped them?

            It occurs to me that if a modern-day screenwriter can start with John 7:53-8:11 and end up with what we see in Son of God, it is not difficult at all to picture the early writer of the Didascalia Apostolorum adding new details in the course of recollecting the interaction between Jesus and the adulteress in the course of critiquing the hard-heartedness of some church leaders.

            Let’s look at the seventh chapter of the Didascalia Apostolorum, a Syriac text which is generally assigned to the 200s:  “If you do not receive the one who repents, because you are without mercy, you shall sin against the Lord God; for you do not obey our Savior and our God, to do as he also did with her that had sinned, whom the elders set before him, and leaving the judgment in His hands, departed.  But he, the searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her, ‘Have the elders condemned thee, my daughter?’  She said to him, ‘No, Lord.’  And he said unto her, ‘Go your way; neither do I condemn thee.’  In him therefore, our Savior and King and God, is your pattern, O bishops.” 

Although this is far from a precise rendering of John’s account, when these words are entered into Google’s search-bar, Google’s artificial intelligence Gemini states, “The quote provided is a strong exhortation regarding mercy, repentance, and the forgiveness of sins, echoing the spirit of Jesus' interaction with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11).” 

            If it is granted that the Didascalia’s author was recollecting from the Gospel of John, we have here patristic testimony that is comparable in date – using Brent Nongbri’s re-dating of Papyrus 75 – to the earliest manuscript evidence of the non-inclusion of the pericope adulterae. Nongbri wrote (in 2016 in Journal of Biblical Literature, in the article Reconsidering the Place of Papyrus Bodmer XIV–XV (P75) in the Textual Criticism of the New Testament) that “we should seriously consider the possibility that p75 was also produced in the fourth century.”  Such an assessment overturns the popular view, held by the late Philip Comfort, that P75 was made in the late 100s or early 200s.  The catalogue of witnesses in the Nestle-Aland 27^th edition of NTG simple assigned a “III” to papyrus 75, which could be any time in the 200s.  Which tends to expose as lies or at least as exaggerations the claims of those who have said that the story of the adulteress originated as a late "floating anecdote."



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The movie Son of God directed by Christopher Spencer is copyrighted by ©Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation 2014 All rights reserved.  

Possible Witchcraft Influence in Ancient Gospels Manuscript

In the 800s in western France, as Charlemagne’s successors worked to eliminate paganism, the manuscript known as the Harkness Gospels was produced. The illustrations in this copy of the Vulgate Gospels are suspected to express pagan mockery of the holy evangelists.  Some specialists suspect that the original orthodox illustrations were replaced by an artist involved in “maleficium,” defiling holy materials with the exaltation of pagan deities. 

The frontispiece, depicting all four evangelists with Jesus Christ in the center, derides the authors in two ways: first, as if they are all casting an ancient Frankish spell against rocks and paper, and second, as if the evangelist Mark is represented by a duck rather than a lion. Similarly in the interior of the manuscript, Mark is depicted as a horse-headed creature, Luke is represented by a humanoid horned creature with wings, and John’s symbol, instead of being a majestic eagle, is a lowly vulture. 

This blasphemous imagery would normally have never been allowed to survive in Christendom, but the Harkness Gospels were protected intact in the collection of a distinguished family until ownership passed to the family of Edward S. Harkness in 1926. The manuscript is now in a collection in New York, USA.

No relation

Mark 7:2 - Polishing in the Byzantine (and Western) Text

A variant in Mark 7:22 illustrates the weight of intrinsic evidence – when textual critics ask, “What did the scribe probably have in  front of him in his exemplar?” and “Which reading accounts for the rise of its rivals?”  It may also illlustrate how reasonable people can interpret the intrinsic evidence in opposite ways. 

This contest consists mainly of the presence or absence of ἐμέμψαντο, represented in the NKJV by the words “they found fault.”   The word is not in the NA28, the UBS GNT, or in Mitchell’s GNT.   Although Swanson listed the majority text as support for non-inclusion, the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform and Hodges-Farstad both include ἐμέμψαντο, as does the Solid Rock GNT. 

The base-texts of the ESV, NIV, NLT, NASB 1995 and EHV do not include ἐμέμψαντο.

To most proponents of the Alexandrian text, supported in non-inclusion by 01, 02, 03, 011, 019, 037, 0211, 0274, and 19 minuscules (including 713 892 1424 and 2200), it is obvious that a scribe added ἐμέμψαντο to ensure that the meaning of the sentence would be understood.  The alteration had to have been early to affect witnesses which include 032, the Greek Byzantine stream and family 1, the Peshitta, and the Vulgate (vituperaverunt).

But it may seem equally obvious to some advocates of Byzantine Priority that an early scribe excised ἐμέμψαντο on the grounds that the Pharisees only thought that they found fault with the activity that Jesus permitted, and did not want to risk having readers misunderstand as actual what merely an impression.

The Western text of Codex D (05) may help.  If the Byzantine text originated as a blend of the Alexandrian and Western texts, as Hort proposed, we would expect to find, instead of ἐμέμψαντο, D’s unique reading κατέγνωσαν.   This indicates that the Byzantine text’s earliest layer of expansion did not depend upon the existence of the Western text, and (assuming that the shorter reading is original) that in both streams a scribal tendency to polish sentences that could seem difficult was at work. 

Interestingly, the primary scribe of minuscule 2 did not include ἐμέμψαντο, ending the sentence with ἄρτον (agreeing with À!); a corrector has added ἐμέμψαντο αὐτοῖς.

B. B. Warfield on New Testament Textual Criticism

B. B. Warfield

“I believe that Warfield is second only to Jonathan Edwards as America’s greatest theologian.” – R.C. Sproul

            Let’s look into B. B. Warfield’s 1886 An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament.       

            Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (1851-1921) is usually remembered by his intellectual heirs (such as Daniel Wallace) on account of his defense of the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.  Born in Kentucky, Warfield graduated from Princeton Seminary in 1876, studied briefly in Germany,  and served as pastor at First Presbyterian Church in Baltimore for two years.  He then taught New Testament at Western Theological Seminary for nine years.  In 1886 he left Allegheny and began his prolific career as Professor of Reformed Theology at Princeton, and served there until his death.   His writings include The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, The Significance of the Westminster Standards as a Creed,  Counterfeit Miracles, and  Revelation and Inspiration.

            What exactly is the New Testament text that Warfield considered inerrant?  He almost answered that question in the same year that he began his professorship at Princeton, at age 35, when he published An Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament preparing students to engage the compilations made by Tischendorf (his eighth edition, which due to the impact of Codex Sinaiticus differs from his seventh edition at 3,572 points), Tregelles, and Westcott & Hort.  

            Warfield’s approach to New Testament textual criticism closely echoed Hort’s.  He had a direct and down-to-earth writing style, and presented the case for Hort’s ideas with practical candor in four chapter:  (1) The Matter of Criticism, (2) The Methods of Criticism, (3) The  Praxis of Criticism, and (4) The History of Criticism.

            After sampling Tischendorf’s textual apparatus in Mark 1:11, Warfield lists and briefly describes the major witnesses to the text of the New Testament – uncials, minuscules, lectionaries, versions, and patristic quotations.   He acknowledged the lack of papyri, observing that “No very early papyrus manuscripts of the New Testament have come down to us,” with trivial exceptions.    

            Like John Burgon, Warfield knew the shallowness of the research done on these materials.  He lamented that “A critical edition of even the Vulgate is, however, still a desideratum” and acknowledged that “the versions are not even critically edited.”  And he knew how relatively novel the foundational discoveries were on which Hort’s transmission-model depended, observing that “À was not published until 1862; no satisfactory  edition of B existed until 1868;  C, Q, D, D₂, N, P, R, Z, L, X, E₂, P₂, S, have all been issued since 1843.”   Unlike Burgon, though, Warfield embraced Hort’s approach enthusiastically.     

            Warfield believed that the Peshitta had existed in 250 and went through a standardization process that ended around 350, suggesting that a “late third or early fourth century revision” is likely because of its non-inclusion of Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation.   He was misinformed about the age of some Ethiopic manuscripts, stating that the Ethiopic version’s earliest extant MSS “appear to be as late as the fifteenth century.”  The first chapter closes with a consideration of the textual contest in John 7:8 between ουκ and ουπω.  But he declined to declare a winner, using the data to illustrate the precariousness of  simplistic reliance on the mere quantity of witnesses, and on the age of the witnesses, and moves on.

            In chapter 2, Warfield very openly dismisses traditionally accepted readings despite their appearance in a super-majority of manuscripts in Matthew 6:4, Matthew 6:13, Mark 9:29, and Luke 8:31.    He highlights the importance of internal evidence, both intrinsic and transcriptional, which he summarizes beautifully on page 84:  “We are making use of two separate methods of inquiry; one of which deals with the probability that the author wrote this reading, and the other with the probability that the scribe began with it.”

            Warfield’s  claims in the second chapter are initially startling, but he follows  up with reasonable qualifications.  He shows his willingness to reject the reading favored by a super-majority of Greek MSS in Matthew 6:1.  Intrinsic evidence is likewise decisive in Luke 15:21.  Additional examples are drawn from Acts 12:25 and 11:20.  He states although internal evidence “is very easy to abuse,” “no conclusion to which it does not give at least its consent can be accepted as final in any case of textual criticism.”   On one hand, this is normal caution; on the other it guarantees that his New Testament text is perpetually tenuous where reasonable critics reach opposite verdicts. 

            Although Warfield repeatedly expresses his admiration for Codex Vaticanus as the best manuscript of the New Testament, when investigating Matthew 27:49 he rules against ÀB.   

            In the course of illustrating transcriptional evidence, Warfield raises issues about “the famous  reading Θεος in I Tim iii. 16,” Romans 12:11, Acts 17:25, Acts 13:23, and even mentions that “Perhaps the form Ἀσάφ in Matt. i. 7 has so come into the text from the influence of the Ἰωσαφάτ which stands immediately beneath it.”  After touring various categories of transcriptional errors, following a list of errors drawn from Codex Sinaiticus’ text of Hebrews, he reminds readers (p. 107) that “All “canons of criticism” are only general averages.”  Within this frame of caution he proceeds to posit – as “general guides,” to which exceptions should be expected, three valuable rules:  (1)  “the more difficult reading is to be preferred” (2) “the shorter reading is to be preferred” and (3) “the more characteristic reading is to be preferred” and above all these, he dictates that “That reading is to be preferred from which the origin of all the others can most safely be derived.”  

            In his presentation of external evidence, Warfield repeatedly cautions against oversimplifications, such as assuming that preference should always be given to what is more ancient, or always to the reading with the most abundant pieces of independent evidence in its favor.  He opposes the notion that if a witness is late, its text must therefore be bad, and affirms candidly (like Burgon) that “There is reason to believe that the very grossest errors that have ever deformed the text had entered it already in the second century.”

            He leans heavily on Tregelles’ analysis of the variant-unit in Matthew 6:4 (the presence, or absence, of ἐν τῷ φανερω), and follow up with a less detailed rejection of the doxology in Matthew 6:13.  Then he revisits John 7:8 –and again declines to issue a verdict.

            Warfield observed (p. 126) that “The discovery of a single manuscript (À) revolutionized  Tischendorf’s text.”   Certainly:  according to Eberhard Nestle, Tischendorf’s eighth edition differed from his seventh edition at 3,572 points, due primarily to the impact of Codex Sinaiticus.  Nevertheless Warfield seems entirely undisturbed by the prospect of another major discover destabilizing the compilation he supports (the readings about which Tischendorf, Tregelles, and Hort agree). 

            On page 132-133 Warfield expresses his position very clearly:  he endorses Hort’s approach, stating that “his results may be safely accepted as sound,” and regards Vaticanus as “plainly the best single codex known.”  Little by little, he reveals his confident adherence to Hort’s transmission-model, including the Lucianic recension.   At the same time he rejects the reading of ÀBCLUΓ at Matthew 27:49.    

            His definition of internal evidence of groups is worth remembering:  “Internal evidence of  groups is, therefore, simply internal evidence of documents applied to lost documents, a list of the readings which has come down to us, and nothing more.”

            Another pithy statement emphasizing the importance of considering evidence in terms of groups, on p. 139:  “MSS agree together nor by accident but by inheritance.”  And then Warfield proceeds to consider, in more detail than Hort, genealogical evidence – concluding that Hort was justified to set aside all that is distinct in the Syriac (i.e., the Byzantine) text.  What Warfield writes on p. 157-170 is essentially a summary of what Hort’s introduction presented more verbosely.  Warfield helpfully offers diagrams to illustrate the how the text of the Gospels has been transmitted.  He even utilizes Hort’s slanted nomenclature without question.

            By the time he has finished summarizing Hort, Warfield says that “The proper procedure” for settling textual contests involves, as its first step, “Sift out all  Syrian evidence from the mass of witnesses.”  He states outright (p. 171) “Any reading supported only by the Syriac class is convicted of having originated after A.D. 250.”

            When facing Hort’s theory of “Western non-interpolations,” Warfield bypasses Luke 24, and merely treats the “Neutral and Alexandrian” reading in Matthew 27:49 as an error.  He moves on to small variant-units such as μᾶλλον in Second Corinthians 2:7 and διο in Second Corinthians 12:7 and the contest between ᾖλθεν versus ᾖλθον in Galatians 2:12.  A hint of frustration seems to peek out in his brief discussion of Hebrews 10:11 where he laments, “We long for B,” and he admits that as far as the text of Revelation is concerned, “genealogical evidence can as yet be scarcely employed at all, without the greatest doubt and difficulty.”   How the same mind could make such an admission, and expect his readers to confidently regard their newly printed compilations simultaneously as inerrant and tenuous, is mystifying.

            In his third chapter, The Praxis of Textual Criticism, Warfield focuses on Acts 20:28, John 1:18, First Timothy 3:16, John 7:53-8:11, and Mark 16:9-20, and in each case he rejects the Syrian reading, “sifting out the Syrian evidence.”  He favors Θεου in Acts 20:28 and fails to mention Hort’s conjecture that υιου has dropped out of the text.   Warfield does, however, briefly delve into the subject of conjectural emendation, stating that “The only test of a successful conjecture is that it shall approve itself as inevitable” and mentioning proposed emendations in Colossians 2:18:  Lightfoot’s ἐώρᾳ or αἰώρᾳ κενεμβατεύων and C. Taylor’s  ἀέρα κενεμβατεύων.  (In the same verse Hort proposed ἐθελοταπεινοφροσύνῃ where θέλων ἐν ταπεινοφροσύνῃ.)

            Chapter Four is brief and Warfield’s history adds nothing that later authors such as Bruce Metzger have not presented other than to notice more prominently the work of Simon Colinaeus (1534) and Edward Wells (1709-1719) (whose annotated Paraphrase of the New Testament is available in Part One and Part Two).  Warfield recognized that he was in a generation of pioneers, not street-pavers; yet he was confidently optimistic enough to state, “We have at least attained the position of having evidence enough before us to render the sketching of the history of the text possible, and to certify us that new discoveries will only  enlighten dark places, and not overturn the whole fabric.”  He closes not by declaring that the text of the New Testament has been established, but by point to Tischendorf’s 8^th edition (1864-1872), Tregelles’ compilation (1857-1879) and Westcott & Hort’s compilation (1881) as “the high-water mark of modern criticism, and states that where they differ, “future criticism may find her especial task.”  It does not seem to have bothered him that he could never show exactly what was the New Testament text that he considered inerrant.         

 

 

 

Mark 5:21 - "In the Boat" - When Trusting the Science and Trusting the Church are Different Things

             Relying on the most up-to-date scholarship can have its drawbacks.  Case in point:  the scholarship that questioned the authenticity of the words “in the boat” in Mark 5:21.  Once, the words were universally accepted as part of the original text – affirmed in the Vulgate (Latin), the  Peshitta (Syriac) and in the Byzantine and Alexandrian transmission-lines of the Greek text of the Gospel of Mark.  

            By 1970, though, according to Bruce Metzger (in Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament) “a minority of the Committee regarded the phrase ἐν τῷ πλοιῳ [in the boat] as an early scribal insertion,” and so the decision to include the words was ranked as a “D” – meaning that “there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text.”  The words were absent from UBS2 and were bracketed in UBS4 and NA27.  Translators using the most up-to-date authority in 1966 (UBS1) or 1968 (UBS2) would have omitted these words, and with a “B” difficulty-rating in the apparatus at the time, they would not have considered it controversial to do so.

            Do you remember the TEV, Today’s English Version, popularly issued as Good News for Modern Man?  It was a paraphrastic version made by Robert G. Bratcher (1920-2010) with line illustrations by Annie Vallotton published by the American Bible Society.   Bratcher is still remembered for his vigorous and vocal rejection of the doctrine of inerrancy.  In 2026, his version of the New Testament is still included in the list of English versions on Bible Gateway.  In Mark 5:21 it reads “Jesus went back across to the other side of the lake. There at the lakeside a large crowd gathered around him.”  It’s missing these words in Mark 5:21 that are in major English versions such as the KJV, NKJV, ESV, NIV, NLT, NRSV, WEB, EHV, etc.

            Bratcher probably thought in 1966 that he was safely following the science.  Advocates of the Byzantine Text, the Textus Receptus, and other more stable editions of the New Testament immune to the filter of the scholarly minds on the UBS compilation committee can only say in retrospect, “Told you so.”  Compilers and translators must be weighed, not counted.

 

Mark 5:22 - Who's That Guy? (How to Spell "Jairus")

             The character known as Jairus appears on one occasion in the Gospels, in an episode described in Matthew 9:18-26, Mark 5:22-43, and Luke 8:40-56.  Matthew did not provide his name, but both Mark and Luke do so – except in Codex 05 the name is not included in the Gospel of Mark.  Usually the name “Jairus” appears as  ̓Ιάειρος.  That was the spelling in Mark 5:22 in the Textus Receptus, in the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Textform,  in the solid Rock Greek New Testament, in the Hodges-Farstad GNT According to the Majority Text, and in earlier printed Greek Gospels such as those issued by Tregelles, Westcott & Hort, and Baljon.  The Tyndale House GNT echoes Tregelles.  The UBS GNT has always printed ̓Ιάιρος in Mark 5:22, and so do Michael Holmes’ SBL GNT and Wayne A. Mitchell’s Greek New Testament (4^th edition).

            But why the change?   Swanson’s list of witnesses for Ιάιρος consists of merely 01 and 33, while Ιάειρος is supported by 02 03 019 032 038  and all other Greek witnesses except C (which reads Ιάερος) and 28 (which reads Ιάιαρος).  032 and 038 and 565 and 700 together support  ᾧ ὀνόμα ̓Ιάειρος, harmonizing with Luke 8:41.  Considering what a notoriously bad speller the main scribe of Sinaiticus was, the decision to print ̓Ιάιρος instead of Ιάειρος seems incredibly tenuous and arbitrary.  Future editions should adopt Ιάειρος, both in Mark 5:22 and in Luke 8:41 (a verse for which the UBS compilation has zero support, exposing its “frankentext” nature).

            Finally, a more subtle question:  was Jairus’ name originally in Mark 5:22?   It’s missing in 05 and in some Old Latin copies – specifically, a (Codex Vercellensis) e (Codex Palatinus )  ff² (Codex Corbeiensis secundus) and i (Codex Vindobonensis).  Bruce Metzger spent nearly two pages on this question in his Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, and both Vincent Taylor and J. K. Elliott suspected that non-inclusion is original here.  No major English version has failed to include Jairus’ name in Mark 5:22 – a sign of ecclesiastical resistance to the idea that the mere shortness of shorter Western readings commends them as original.  Mysteries they may be, but arbitrary brevity is no more of a sign of authenticity than arbitrary verbosity.  

Notice the absence of "named Jairus" 

The Mystery of the Nomina Sacra in Second Peter in Papyrus 72

            If Papyrus 72 (Papyrus Bodmer VII and VIII) is correctly dated to 250-300, it is our earliest copy of Second Peter.    Here we have a document that is early enough, possibly, to give some insight on how scribes used nomina sacra instead of the full words God, Lord, Jesus, and Christ, and how soon the nomina sacra were expanded to include words such as spirit, mother, father, son, man, savior, heaven, David, and Jerusalem.  Since the Biblical portions of P72 are online at the Vatican Library’s website, it is easy to investigate. Let’s see what we can find out when we focus on P72’s text of Second Peter.

            The first occurrence of nomina sacra in Second Peter is not unusual – in both occurrences in verse 1, “Jesus Christ” is presented in three-character suspension,  ΙΗΥ ΧΡΥ.

            Verse 2 in P72 is unique and rather remarkable:  instead of the usual reading ἐπιγνώσει τοῦ θυ καὶ Ἰυ τοῦ, P72 reads επειγνωση του θυ ιηυ του κυριου – a rare example of κυρίου being written out in full.    

            In 1:8, the content is not unusual but the format is. In καθειστησιν εις τη του an overline appears over τη του.  It is tempting to think that the scribe initially wrote τη  and added the του while proofreading, having initially written the overline to represent a final ν.

            In 1:11, κυ appears as usual and the verse concludes with σωτηρος ιηυ χρυ.

            In 1:14, κς and ιης χρς appear.

            In 1:16, κυ and ιηυ χρυ appear.

            In 1:17, θυ πρς appears – and thus we have here evidence that πρς is as early as the other four nomina sacra, at least where in appears alongside θυ.

            In 1:21 πνς appears, and thus we see evidence that the contraction of πνεύματος was as ancient as the other four nomina sacra.  We also see θυ.

            In 2:4 θς appears where expected.

            In 2:9 κυριος appears written in full.

            In 2:11 κυ appears both overlined and underlined.

            In 2:20 κυριου is written in full and overlined and after σωτηρος, ιηυ χρυ appear.

Second Peter 2:18-21 in P72

            In 3:2 κυ appears as expected.

            In 3:5 θυ appears.

            In 3:9 κω and κς appear.

            In 3:10 κυ appears.

            In 3:12 θυ appears.

            In 3:15 κυ appears.

            In 3:18 κυ appears and so does ιηυ χρυ.

            The mystery - which as far as I know remains unsolved - is, why is κυριος written out in full in these specific places, and not elsewhere?  One thing is clear though:  it would be commendable for future printed Greek New Testaments to offer an archetype of all witnesses with the nomina sacra presented in their earliest extant form, not artificially uncontracted (as is currently this case).