In a recent interview at Apologia TV, James White (of Alpha
& Omega Ministries) offered some comments about John 7:53-8:11 which
reflect a common misunderstanding of some evidence pertaining to that
passage. White, who does not believe
that these 12 verses belong in the Bible, turned his attention to them about 52
minutes into the interview, stating that he was going to explain why most scholars are confident that the passage is not genuine.
White proceeded to explain that although most manuscripts contain the pericope adulterae between John7:52 and 8:12 , it is also found in four other
places: “In manuscript 225, it’s found
after John 7:36 . In manuscript 1, it’s found after John
21:25. And here’s the important
part: in a group of manuscripts called
family 13, it’s not in John. It’s after
Luke 21:38. And in manuscript 1333, it’s
after Luke 24:53.”
White proceeded to explain that although most manuscripts contain the pericope adulterae between John
These multiple locations, White stated, constitute “absolute
evidence” that John 7:53-8:11 was
not originally part of the Gospel of John, but was instead “a story, very
popular, looking for a place to call home.”
(This remark from White is very similar to a sentence in a 2007 essay by Dan Wallace: “The pericope adulterae
has all the earmarks of a pericope that was looking for a home.”)
In White’s 1995 book, The
King James Only Controversy, the same evidence was cited, and in this
respect White’s comments closely resemble the contents of Bruce
Metzger’s 1971 Textual Commentary on the
Greek New Testament. White, like
Metzger, has omitted important aspects of the evidence, probably because the
depth of White’s research on this subject did not go much further than reading
Metzger’s work. The improbability of
White’s idea that the pericope adulterae was “a story looking for a place to
call home” should already be obvious to anyone who ponders the contents of
the first sentence of the account: “And
everyone went to his own house.” That is
simply not how one begins a story.
Before we look in detail at some aspects of the evidence
that White did not share in his Apologia TV interview, there is something we
should know about the Gospel-lection for Pentecost – that is, the
Scripture-selection that was read annually at the Feast of Pentecost (one of
the major feast-days of early Christianity, celebrating the coming of the Holy
Spirit as related in Acts chapter 2).
This lection began at John 7:37 and continued to John 7:52 , at which point the lector (the person
designated to read the Scriptures in the church-services) was to skip to 8:12 . In
many Gospels-manuscripts that are supplemented by what is known as the
lectionary apparatus in their margins, symbols and notes instruct
the lector to read the lection in this way.
The Pentecost-lection, in other words, consisted of John
7:37-52 plus 8:12 . In lectionaries, the passage is presented in
precisely that form, making it easy for the lector to read the entire passage
without having to pause and jump forward in the text to find the final
portion. The same motivation that led to
the development of lectionaries – a desire to simplify the lector’s task – also
led some copyists to reformat the passage that contained the
Pentecost-lection in continuous-text manuscripts of the Gospels, with the
result that John 7:53-8:11 was transplanted to other locations.
Which means that a copyist moved it so that it would appear
immediately before the Pentecost-lection.
In manuscript 225, John 13:3-17 – the lection for the annual
foot-washing commemoration on Maundy Thursday – is likewise moved; it is found
not only in its usual place but also is embedded in the text of Matthew,
following Mt. 26:20, conforming to the sequence in which it was read on Maundy
Thursday. If one knows nothing
about lection-cycles, one might start imagining that John 13:3-17 was a very
popular story that was looking for a place to call home, but the more one
learns about lection-cycles, the less plausible that becomes.
“In manuscript 1, it’s found after John 21:25.”
Thus, according to this note, a copyist did not find this
passage in most of his copies of the Gospel of John, and he also noticed that
it was not commented upon by several patristic writers, so he removed it from
where it had been found – after John 7:52 – and placed it at the end of the Gospel. It had not been “a story in search of a
home.” According to this note, it had already had a home, following
John 7:52, before it was moved to the end of the book.
In the Argos Lectionary, the lection for Saint Pelagia's feast-day is listed for October 8. |
“And here’s the important part: in a group of manuscripts called family 13,
it’s not in John. It’s after Luke 21:38.”
The text of the pericope adulterae has been altered in the family-13 manuscripts; in 8:2-3, instead of reading “and all the people came to him,
and he sat down and taught them. Then
brought the scribes,” they read, “And the scribes presented to him,” in order
to avoid repeating material similar to the contents of Luke 21:37 -38.
Once again when we notice details which White did not mention (not due to any malevolent intent, of course, but due to plain ignorance of the evidence), the picture changes significantly.
What has happened here is that
someone who had a manuscript in which John 7:53-8:11 had been transferred to the end of John took things a step
further to simplify things for the lector. When transferred to the end of Luke 21, the passage would be easy to
find in the cycle of readings for feast-days in the Menologion: the lection for October 7, for Saints Sergius
and Bacchus, was nearby, in Luke 21:12-19.
Almost all of the remainder of Luke 21 is discourse, making the end of
the chapter the nearest convenient place in which to insert the narrative that
constituted the lection for the next day, namely, October 8, for Saint Pelagia/the Penitents.
Once again when we notice details which White did not mention (not due to any malevolent intent, of course, but due to plain ignorance of the evidence), the picture changes significantly.
“And in manuscript 1333, it’s after Luke 24:53.”
When we consider the details which the
shallowness of White’s research prevented him from detecting, the implications of the evidence drastically change from what he misrepresented them to be. In manuscript 1333, John 8:3-11 is written on
the page that follows the page on which the Gospel of Luke concludes, before
the chapter-list for the Gospel of John.
What has happened is that after the text of
John was written in 1333 without John 7:53-8:11, someone noticed that the passage used for Saint Pelagia’s feast-day was missing, and this person added it, preferring to use the blank
page after the end of Luke instead of writing the passage in the margin alongside
the end of chapter 7. According to
Maurice Robinson, in manuscript 1333, the verses are accompanied by abbreviated
rubrics in the margin; one says, “The Gospel-reading for October 8, for Saint
Pelagia,” and the other one says, “From the Gospel according to John.”
So instead of weighing in as evidence that
the pericope adulterae was “a story
looking for a place to call home,” as White has claimed, 1333 simply shows that
John 8:3-11 was a lection designated to be read annually on October 8, and that
even after someone made 1333 based on an exemplar that did not contain John
7:53-8:11, the lack of the lection for St. Pelagia’s Day was so problematic
that someone saw fit to add the lection on a blank page of the manuscript.
James White has asked, “If it was original,
why, why, why? If it was original, why
would there be all this chopping-up of it?
It doesn’t make any sense” – I
interrupt to mention that he seems to have asked that question out of sincere
perplexity. But one’s perplexity should not be regarded as a platform from which to jump to a conclusion. Nevertheless that is what White has done; his statement concludes: – “unless it wasn’t
original.” Such a text-critical method
is highly dubious. It would be better to
investigate the evidence more thoroughly, in order to answer the questions, as we
have done here.
This is, of course, not all that could be said about the pericope adulterae. (I intend to say much more soon in a book on the subject.) It should, however, justify a measure of concern when one encounters the claim that the transference of John
2 comments:
Good job on the research! Experts need to do their homework better than those who have the view you are refuting have done. For someone to cast doubt on a passage as important as this one is a serious thing, if in fact it is genuine. Thanks for helping us out!
If only viewers could see my face as I read this article. I'm not a James White fan (have never really been, actually) so this article isn't all THAT surprising. But daaaaang, it went hard, lol.
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