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."



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