John 7:53-8:11 (a
passage known as the pericope adulterae – the section about the adulteress) is in 1,495 Greek manuscripts, in whole or in part. The inclusion of the passage is
also supported by 495 lectionaries (books containing Scripture-selections for annual worship services). In
1982 when the New King James Version was made, its footnote about these 12
verses stated, “They are present in over 900 manuscripts.” One would think that the footnote-writers
would have written “over 1,400 manuscripts” or “almost 1,500 manuscripts” if
they had been fully informed about the evidence. That suggests that even scholars in the upper echelons
of academia do not possess adequate information about the pericope
adulterae.
As I write this, the Holman Christian Standard Bible is in
the final stages of a revision; it is about to be re-issued, with many textual changes,
as the Christian Standard Bible. A new footnote
about John 7:53-8:11 in the CSB
says, “Other mss include all or some of the passage after Jn 7:36 ,44,52; 21:25 ;
or Lk 21:38 .”
When I read
that, it provoked a question in my mind: How did the footnote-writers keep Bruce Metzger’s Textual Commentary opened to page 221 as
they wrote? The reason why I wonder is
that Metzger wrote, “Most copyists apparently thought that it would interrupt
John’s narrative least if it were inserted after 7:52
(D E (F) G H K M U Γ Π 28 700 892 al). Others placed it after 7.36 (ms. 225) or
after 7.44 (several Georgian mss.) or after 21.25 (1 565 1076 1570 1582 armmss)
or after Lk 21.38 (f13).”
But for
most readers, such a footnote elicits a different question: “Why was this
passage moved around?”
That is precisely the sort of
conclusion, for instance, that James White wants his listeners and readers to
arrive at: “Such moving about by a body
of text is plain evidence of its later origin and the attempt on the part of
scribes to find a place where it “fits.””
D. A. Carson, likewise: “The
diversity of placement confirms the inauthenticity of the verses.” Daniel Wallace has written, “The pericope adulterae has all the earmarks
of a pericope that was looking for a home,” and recently proposed that because
it is a “floating” text it is probably inauthentic. Such claims are descended from Metzger’s
confidently worded claim in his obsolete handbook, The Text of the New Testament:
“The pericope is obviously a piece of floating tradition which
circulated in certain parts of the Western
Church . It was subsequently inserted into various
manuscripts at various places.” (Metzger
never explained why this supposedly freestanding account begins with the words,
“And everyone went to his own house.”)
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MS 2404 (The Barnabas Gospels) - At the beginning of John 7:37, the red lectionary-notes convey that this is where the lection for the Sunday after Pentecost begins. (The section-number is also written in the margin.) |
However,
that is far from the truth. Chris Keith’s insightful 2009 essay The Initial Location of the Pericope Adulterae in Fourfold Tradition describes some of the evidence for the following points which other researchers have deduced:
● The pericope adulterae’s position between
John 7:52 and 8:12 was well-established
when the Old Latin version spread throughout Western Christendom.
● The
transplantation of the passage to other locations was a secondary development, and
● The
movement of the passage to other locations was mainly an effect of how it was treated
in lection-cycles and in lectionaries.
The CSB ’s footnote unfortunately does not share the answer to the questions which it
seems designed to elicit: why is the pericope adulterae found in some
manuscripts after John 7:36? Why is it
found in some witnesses after John 7:44?
Why is it found in some manuscripts after John 21:25? And why is it found in some manuscripts after
Luke 21:38?
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MS 2404 - After John 7:52 is the red "Skip forward" symbol. In the lower margin the chapter-title is written, "About the Adulteress." Four dots beside John 8:3 signify the beginning of the chapter. |
(First,
let’s clear up the vagueness which is characteristic of every textual footnote in the CSB New Testament. The number of known Greek manuscripts in which the pericope adulterae is found between John 7:36 and 7:37 is exactly two.)
Readers who
take the time to familiarize themselves with how the Byzantine lectionary
arranged the text that was to be read annually on Pentecost will be well on
their way to answering that question.
The Pentecost-lection consisted of John 7:37-52 combined with John
8:12. Numerous medieval manuscripts of
the Gospels were prepared to be read in churches, and in their margins are the
names of various lections, and the assigned days on which they were to be
read. Typically, within the text itself,
or in the adjacent margins, symbols represent the words αρχη and τελος,
that is, “begin” and “stop,” signifying where the lector was
to start reading the day’s lection, and where the lection stopped. Sometimes a lection was not one continuous
block of text; in that case, the symbols for υπερβαλε and αρξου were also added
– the equivalent of “skip forward”
and “resume here.”
As a lector read the Pentecost-lection from a manuscript of the Gospels, when he came to the end of John 7:52, he needed to jump ahead to 8:12 in order to finish
the lection. As a practical means
of simplifying the lector’s task, two copyists moved John 7:53-8:11 backward in the text, so that it
would precede the Pentecost-lection.
That is why, in minuscules 225 and 1128, we find these 12 verses between
John 7:36 and 7:37 , that is, immediately before the beginning of the
Pentecost lection. The text in these two
manuscripts was adjusted to make the lector’s job on Pentecost a little easier,
by turning the Pentecost-lection into one uninterrupted block of text.
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MS 2404 - After John 8:11, the red lectionary notes convey that the lector should resume reading here on Pentecost. (The section-number is also written in the left margin.) |
I will continue to explain why copyists moved the pericope adulterae in Part 2.
1 comment:
Informative! Thanks for sharing.
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