Book Review: To Cast the First Stone

            Last year, Princeton University Press released To Cast the First Stone, a book by Tommy Wasserman and Jennifer Knust about the story of the adulteress (John 7:53-8:11).  Tommy Wasserman (academic dean at Örebro Theological Seminary in Sweden, about 120 miles west of Stockholm) is perhaps best known to American scholars as the author of The Epistle of Jude:  Its Text and Transmission (2006), and as the General Editor of the online TC-Journal.  He is also involved in the International Greek New Testament Project.  Jennifer Knust is a professor of Religious Studies at Duke University, and is the author of Unprotected Texts.

            Back in 2014, Wasserman and Knust were among the participants in a symposium on the pericope adulterae (“section about the adulteress”) at Southeast Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina – a symposium which concluded with an affirmation by all of the participants that the pericope adulterae should be proclaimed in churches.  Instead of a Perspectives-style volume in which all symposium-participants present their views, we have, five years later, To Cast the First Stone:  The Transmission of a Gospel Story.

            This is not the text-critically focused volume that some readers might expect.  Nowhere in its 344 pages (440 if the bibliography and indices are counted) is there a straightforward list of Greek manuscripts in which John 7:53-8:11 follows John 7:52, and of Greek manuscripts which have nothing at all between John 7:52 and John 8:11, and of Greek manuscripts which move all twelve verses to another location (after John 21, or after Luke 21:38, for example), and of Greek manuscripts which have only part of the passage (either John 7:53-8:2, or John 8:3-11).  Readers must reach the table on pages 280-281 to find a presentation of how the passage is treated in uncial manuscripts.  In a book which Bart Ehrman has predicted to be “definitive,” this is a major shortcoming, especially when one notices how much of the book dwells upon minutiae.  The description of patristic evidence presented by Wasserman and Knust is likewise insufficient. (Prosper of Aquitaine?  Faustus?  These names do not appear.)

            Readers are sure to learn much, however, about a wide variety of peripheral subjects.  For example, Marcion (an infamous heretic of the second century) is thoroughly rehabilitated; Wasserman and Knust declare that he was actually “a modest rather than a radical redactor” (p. 113).  Several pages (pp. 185-191) address the question of the provenance of Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus – inconclusively.  Mark 16:9-20 comes up again and again, although Wasserman and Knust avoid going into much detail about the voluminous support this passage receives.  They affirm that the passage should be viewed as “unquestionably canonical” (p. 19). 

            Other subjects covered in the first half of the book include Julius Africanus’ rejection of the book of Susanna, singular omissions in early Greek manuscripts of John, the significance of asterisks and obeloi in Origen’s Hexapla, the story of Judith, the prayer of Sarah in the book of Tobit, an episode in the “Martyrdom of Peter,” the Roman story of the rape of Lucretia, the debauchery of Claudius’ wife Messalina, and even Cleopatra.  Readers may find the first half of the book rather padded.

            Things get better after the first 200 pages.  Chapter 6 begins with an account of fourth-century references to the pericope adulterae in Latin patristic writings.  Unfortunately, little care has been taken to differentiate between quotations and allusions and possible quotations and possible allusions.  A statement by Hilary of Poitiers is called an allusion although it may be a case of coincidental uses of the same common terms.  The authors describe the statement of the monk Gnositheos, including the phrase, “if anyone is without sin,” as “a brief allusion to the adulteress” (p. 203) although the similarity to John 8:7 may be entirely coincidental. 

            Wasserman and Knust go into detail about two pieces of evidence which will doubtlessly be of interest to many readers, for these important details have not been covered in popular materials such as Metzger’s Textual Commentary:  (1)  the Greek base-text of Ambrose’s quotations of the pericope adulterae, and (2) the support given to the pericope adulterae as part of the text of the Gospel of John following 7:52 and preceding 8:12, in the Old Latin capitula, or chapter-summaries.   

            Ambrose, the authors observe, “appears either to have translated directly from the Greek or to have consulted diverse Latin witnesses or, as is more likely, both options” (p. 220).   They point out that Ambrose’s term amodo, in his quotation of John 8:11, has no support in Latin manuscripts, and should be considered “a calque, that is, a new Latin word designed to match the Greek phrase ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν (or ἀπ’ ἄρτι)”  (p. 222).

            The Latin capitula – a subject I have visited previously – were collected, compared, and published by Donatien De Bruyne in 1914.  Wasserman and Knust present De Bruyne’s data showing that the Latin capitula exist in multiple forms that in one way or another mention the account of the adulteress.  Two of these forms of the capitula are especially interesting:  “Form Cy” (“Cy” stands for Cyprian) was assigned by De Bruyne to the time of Cyprian or shortly thereafter, that is, to the mid-200s.  It has the phrase ub adulteram dimisit at the beginning of a chapter-summary, stating that after Jesus dismissed the adulteress, He testified that He is the light of the world, speaking at the treasury in the temple, etc.  Wasserman and Knust also point out that another form, “Form I,” uses the Greek loanword moechatione; this may confirm that the Old Latin text(s) of the pericope adulterae was translated from Greek.           

            Somewhat surprisingly – considering that Wasserman and Knust repeatedly affirm their belief that the pericope adulterae is not original – the authors grant that if De Bruyne is correct in his dating of the Old Latin capitula forms, and also correct in his view that ub adulteram dimisit is not an interpolation (and Wasserman and Knust present nothing to support any other view), then “the pericope adulterae was present in John in a Latin context by the third century” (p. 263).  This admission – basically conceding that the Old Latin capitula constitute plausible evidence that the story of the adulteress was in the Greek text of John from which Latin translations were made in the 100s (“by the third century”) – renders the earliest evidence for the inclusion of the passage practically contemporary with the earliest manuscript-evidence for its non-inclusion.  (I see no way to reconcile this with the authors’ statement on page 268 that “It seems likely that the Johannine pericope adulterae was interpolated in the early third century.”)

            Other evidence is also covered:  the treatment of John 7:53-8:11 in Codex Bezae and its marginalia, Jerome’s reference to the inclusion of the story of the adulteress in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, the assignment of a chapter-heading to the passage in some medieval manuscripts, the support for the pericope adulterae in most Old Latin manuscripts, and corrections of some misinformation that has been spread about the passage.   Regarding this last subject, some readers may be shocked by the mercifully brief critique the authors supply as they test the accuracy of a paragraph from Metzger’s Textual Commentary on page 251.  For those who have trusted D. A. Carson’s claim that “All the early church fathers omit this narrative,” or Steven Cole’s claim that no early versions include the story of the adulteress, the data provided by Wasserman and Knust should be illuminating, the way being struck with a cattle prod is illuminating.     

           

            Some readers may be exasperated by the amount of information in this book that does not pertain directly to the text of the story about the adulteress; it pertains instead to what may be called “ancient Christian book culture.”  The tour of ecclesiastical treatment of the New Testament text is far too scenic.  Yet this may be advantageous to readers who might appreciate being told things such as the following:

            ● Codex Bezae might have been copied from a third-century bilingual exemplar (p. 236).

            ● Eighteen papyri manuscripts from the 100s and 200s with text from the Gospel of John have been found, but only two of them (P66 and P75) contain John 7:52 and 8:12. (p. 67)

            ● “In the case of the Gospel of John, a circle of friends added a series of postresurrection appearances to the end of the Gospel.” (p. 91, footnote, referring to John 21.)

            This last data-nugget may serve as a sort of model for the authors’ solution to the question, “What should be done with the story about the adulteress, and why?”.   It would have seemed heavy-handed if they had said, “The passage is not original, but it should be retained because the Council of Trent said so,” or, “The passage is not original, but it should be retained because it has been declared “inspired, authentic, canonical Scripture” by the Orthodox Church.”  Instead, Wasserman and Knust affirm that the pericope adulterae is not original, but offer a more nuanced basis for an argument for its inclusion:  on balance, ancient Christian book culture affirmed the passage and proclaimed its message.  Can a convincing case be made that John did not write the pericope adulterae as part of the Gospel of John?  Yes, say Wasserman and Knust – but similarly they are convinced that John, anticipating his death, did not write the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John; the embrace of the supplemented text in ancient Christian book culture may be considered a better guide, when it comes to defining the canonical text, than strict matters of authorship.

            Some readers (myself included) may be disappointed that Wasserman and Knust did not spend more time engaging Maurice Robinson’s theory (presented at the 2014 symposium) that the pericope adulterae is an original segment of the Gospel of John which fell out of the text in an early influential transmission-stream.   Robinson proposed that in an early lection-cycle, the annual reading for Pentecost was John 7:37-52 with 8:12 attached (as it is in the Byzantine lectionary).  An early copyist, either deliberately adjusting the text to make the lector’s job easier, or accidentally misinterpreting marginalia that told the lector to skip ahead to 8:12, omitted 7:53-8:11.  Thus, the theory goes, the pericope adulterae was dropped from the text – not due to anyone’s desire to suppress it, but as a conformation of the form of the text used in a rudimentary lection-cycle. 

            Wasserman and Knust attempt to refute Robinson’s theory by citing the Typikon of the Great Church – a ninth-century liturgical book in which, among other things, Gospels-segments are arranged for each day of the year.  The authors grant that in this source, the Gospels-segment for Pentecost was indeed John 7:37-52 with 8:12 attached.  They also observe that in this Pentecost-lection, there are no instructions to skip from the main segment (John 7:37-52) to the closing segment (8:12), although such skip-from-here-to-there instructions appear for other lections which consist of more than one segment of text.  “This evidence,” Wasserman and Knust state on page 298, “suggests to us that the Johannine pericope adulterae was simply missing from copies available in Constantinople when the Pentecost lection was assigned,” and (p. 299) “It seems fairly certain that the pericope adulterae did not enter Byzantine copies of John until the close of the fourth century, or even later.” 

            Explanations for the Typikon’s non-use of skip-from-here-to-there instructions for the Pentecost lection can easily be imagined, but the thing to see is that the authors’ proposal that the pericope adulterae was not in the text at Constantinople when the Pentecost lection was assigned does not really touch Robinson’s model, in which the basic Byzantine lection-cycle echoes an earlier lection-cycle in which the loss of the pericope adulterae had already occurred.    

            Wasserman and Knust do not adequate address Robinson’s point that it is difficult to picture a Byzantine scribe deciding to insert the pericope adulterae within the lection for Pentecost, when simpler options existed, such as putting it at John 7:36 (so as to immediately precede the Pentecost lection).  They simply acknowledge, “This aspect of Robinson’s argument is convincing.”  So how do they explain the presence of the pericope adulterae within the Pentecost lection in over 1,400 manuscripts of John?  Similarly they offer no explanation for the first sentence of the pericope adulterae:   as Robinson asked in 2014, what kind of freestanding story begins with “Then everyone went home.”???
            A more satisfying explanation is given for the migration of the pericope adulterae to a place after Luke 21:38 in family-13 manuscripts (et al).  As Chris Keith has already shown, the insertion of the pericope adulterae to follow Luke 21:38 is an effect of treating the passage like a lection; the movement to this location made the lector’s job easier; the lector could thus find the lection for Oct. 8 (the Feast of Pelagia) near the lection for Oct. 7 (the Feast of Sergius and Bacchus).  Everything you have read or heard to the effect that the pericope adulterae is shown to be a “floating anecdote” by its appearance after Luke 21:38 in family-13 manuscripts can be safely ignored.

            A few shortcomings of To Cast the First Stone may be covered briefly:

            ● There is no variant-by-variant treatment of the text of the pericope adulterae.  An opportunity has thus been missed to show readers the differences in the forms in which the pericope adulterae appears in various sets of witnesses.  The interesting distinctive readings in the passage in the family-1 manuscripts are never given a spotlight.  In a book that gives two full pages to the Lothair Crystal, this was neglectful. 

            ● Asterisks were discussed briefly but the authors seem to have given up any attempt to analyze their use by scribes producing Gospel-manuscripts:  “The precise meaning of asteriskoi in Byzantine Gospel manuscripts remains opaque,” they acknowledge on page 128.  But what would have been a better occasion to shine a strong light upon copyists’ use of asterisks and other marks than when investigating the pericope adulterae?

            ● Only slight attention is given to the pericope adulterae in the Armenian version; no attention is given to the Georgian version.  No explanation is offered for the treatment of the pericope adulterae in a small group of Georgian copies in which the passage appears after John 7:44.  This is unfortunate, inasmuch as the Christian Standard Bible has a footnote which mentions this dislocation; CSB-readers are bound to think (incorrectly) that the footnote describes Greek manuscripts.             

            ● Wasserman and Knust treat Jerome’s affirmation (in Against the Pelagians 2:17) that the story of the adulteress is found in many copies, both Greek and Latin, with unwarranted skepticism:   “The existence of many copies of John “in both Greek and Latin” with the pericope adulterae,” they write on p. 236, “though presupposed by Jerome, cannot easily be confirmed.”  This is certainly true once one no longer considers a statement (not a presupposition but an assertion) from the supreme scholar of his age to be confirmation.  It seems bold – not in a good way – to look back 1,600 years, squint, and say that Jerome’s claim “may have been an exaggeration.” 

            ● Too little attention is given to Codex Macedonianus; unless readers consults a detail in the footnote on pages 280-281, below the two-page table, they could get a false impression from the table.  Codex Ebnerianus should have been featured, and more attention should have been given to the Palestinian Syriac lectionary’s dislocation of John 8:3-11 to the end of the Gospel.  Also, readers could have benefited from some acknowledgement that dozens of the manuscripts in which the pericope adulterae does not appear are copies of the same medieval commentary, and thus boil down to a single relatively late source.

            ● Codex Fuldensis is erroneously assigned to 569 on page 230; the correct date (546) is stated in a footnote on page 4.  Also, it is difficult to explain the description of Codex Fuldensis as “a fifth-century Latin Gospel harmony” on page 260.

            ● No detailed analysis of the lacuna in Codex Alexandrinus was provided; this would have been helpful.

            ● Annotations found in 039 and in minuscules 34, 135, 1187, 1282, and 1424 should have been included in the discussion of critical notes on pages 279ff.

            ● The description of GA 1333’s secondary inclusion of John 8:3-11 between Luke and John is insufficient.

            ● Didymus the Blind stated in his commentary on Ecclesiastes that there had been found, “in certain Gospels” – ἔν τισιν εὐαγγελίοις – an account in which Jesus says, “Whoever has not sinned, let him take up a stone and cast it” regarding a woman the Jews had accused of sin.  The authors’ case for their view that Didymus was referring to some extra-canonical composition as “Gospels,” rather than to copies containing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, is not solid at all. 

            ● No foundation is given for the recurring claim that Eusebius “omitted the passage” (see p. 11, p. 23, 176ff. 181, 284) when preparing his Canon-tables.  However reasonable it may be to assume that Eusebius preferred a form of John that did not have the passage, Section 86 looks the same in the Eusebian Canons with or without the pericope adulterae.  

            ● The index is somewhat spotty.

            In closing:  Wasserman and Knust have provided a fascinating and valuable portrait of the ancient Christian book culture in which John 7:53-8:11 was accepted as a canonical part of the Gospel of John.  Their proposal that a non-original reading – one which, they argue, was not part of the text of the Gospel of John until a century after John’s death – should be considered canonical because of that ecclesiastical acceptance invites some problems.  For instance, if widespread ecclesiastical acceptance can veto text-critical analysis, why not simplify the text-critical enterprise by accepting all readings upon which the Vulgate, the Peshitta, and the Byzantine Text agree?  Or, even more simply, if ecclesiastical acceptance is decisive, why not accept, as a matter of course, all readings in the Byzantine Text which are supported by over 85% of the extant manuscripts?  

             To Cast the First Stone contains a lot of helpful data; nevertheless, important aspects of the evidence have been overlooked.  This is far from what a definitive book about the story of the adulteress ought to be. 


To Cast the First Stone:  The Transmission of a Gospel Story is Copyright © 2019 by Princeton University Press. 

P.S. I have written a book, A Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11, maintaining that the pericope adulterae was originally part of the Gospel of John.  It is available as an e-book on Amazon.

Early Latin Evidence for John 7:53-8:11

          Many commentators reject John 7:53-8:11, echoing Bruce Metzger’s well-known comments.  The NET, for example, states that this passage (the passage about the adulteress, also called the pericope adulterae) “is not contained in the earliest and best MSS and was almost certainly not an original part of the Gospel of John.”  Yet all major English Bible translations include it.  It may seem difficult to account for this friction as a result of any factors other than ecumenical or financial priorities, but there is another consideration:  recognition of the possibility that the vast consensus of commentators are wrong, and that the 1,495 Greek manuscripts which contain the passage are right. 

          But in that case, how does one account for the early manuscripts which do not have these 12 verses between John 7:52 and 8:12?  My basic answer is that very early in church history, John 7:37-52 was read in some churches as the annual Scripture-passage for Pentecost-day, and that 8:12 was used as the conclusion of the reading, skipping the 12 verses in between.  A lector marked his manuscript to signify that those 12 verses were to be skipped during the Pentecost-reading – but when his manuscript was later used as an exemplar, the copyist misunderstood the marks as if they meant that he, the copyist, was to skip those 12 verses, and that is what he dutifully did, and thus they disappeared in all subsequent copies descended from manuscripts of John made by that particular copyist.       

          Another possibility is that instead of merely skipping the passage, a copyist simplified the Pentecost-lection by transplanting these 12 verses to the end of the Gospel of John – where indeed the passage is found in the best representatives of the Caesarean text of the Gospels (minuscules 1 and 1582 among others).  (Via this step, the Pentecost-lection became one uninterrupted block of text.)  Although these manuscripts are medieval, their line of descent is traceable to an ancestor-manuscript made in the late 400’s, the text of which has some affinities with a form of text used by Origen in the 200’s.  (For instance, Origen mentioned that he had manuscripts which called Barabbas “Jesus” in Matthew 27:16-17, and this rare reading tends to be supported by the leading members of this group of manuscripts.)

          If, in earlier manuscripts, John 7:53-8:11 was transplanted to the end of the book, we would have no way to know it from the earliest Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of John.  Due to damage, the text of Papyrus 66 cannot be confidently reconstructed after 21:17.  Papyrus 75 is in even worse shape; incidental damage has caused its extant text of John to end in 15:10.  Due to damage, the Lycopolitan Codex of John (an early Coptic manuscript) has no more text after 20:27.  Codex N, too, is damaged, and its last extant text of John is in 21:21, leaving it an open question if anything followed after 21:25.  As for Codex L and Codex Δ, their copyists testified to the presence, as well as to the absence, of the passage, as I have shown previously. 

          These six Greek manuscripts – P66, P75, N, L, and Δ – constitute five of the first ten Greek manuscripts that are typically listed as evidence against John 7:53-8:11; however, on the question of whether or not they retained the passage after John 21:25, they appear to be silent.  Similarly, we cannot discern with certainty that the blank spaces after the end of John in Codex Sinaiticus, Codex A, and Codex W are merely examples of filler-space, or of space reserved for the pericope adulterae by copyists whose exemplars lacked the passage but who revertheless recollected it. 

          But I want to give you more today than just a reminder of the tentative and incomplete nature of the testimony of most of the major Greek uncials which are often described or listed by commentators as if they speak uniformly and without qualification against the inclusion of the pericope adulterae.  Regarding the often-asked question about why the account appears in different locations within John 7-8, and even at the end of Luke 21, I will simply refer you to my book, A Fresh Analysis of John 7:53-8:11, so that we may focus today on something else which I am confident you will find interesting.

          It is not unusual to find, in ancient Gospels-manuscripts, book-divisions, often marked by chapter-numbers, chapter-titles, and sometimes brief chapter-summaries.  (These divisions are different than the Eusebian Canons and Sections, which I have described elsewhere.)  Latin copies contain a variety of chapter-lists, or capitula, and chapter-summaries, or breves.  (The terms are practically interchangeable.)  One of the earliest examples of Latin capitula is in Codex Fuldensis (produced c. 546), in which the Vulgate Gospels-text was formatted to correspond to an exemplar which bishop Victor of Capua thought might have been a Latin version of the Diatessaron made by Tatian around 172.  The chapter-numbers and list from Victor’s lost exemplar were preserved in Codex Fuldensis – and they include a chapter-summary which covers the pericope adulterae – #120:  “De muliere a Iudaeis in adulterio deprehensa.”

          As old as Codex Fuldensis is – and its exemplar must have been older yet – another form of Latin chapter-summaries is assigned to the 200’s – the Cy form, so-called to signify that it was created by a contemporary of Cyprian.  This is one of several forms of Latin chapter-summaries which were collected in 1914 by a researcher named Donatien De Bruyne.  His book, Sommaires, Divisions et Rubriques de la Bible Latine, written in French, is helpfully available online at the Gallica website as a free download.  When one turns to page 320, one can find the relevant chapter-summary, #30, that is, in Roman numerals, XXX: 

“Ubi adulteram dimisit et se dixit lumen saeculi et de testimonio suo et patris; ibi ait :  si me nossetis, et patrem meum nossetis, loquens in gazofilatio et quod non eum inuenientes in peccatis suis morituri essent, et quod illi essent de isto saeculo, ipse non esset et quod quaerentibus quis esset respondit : initium, et de patre locutus est non cognoscentibus quia cum illo est qui eum misit.” 

Click here to see the full-color page-view of this chapter-summary.

          As far as the pericope adulterae is concerned, the opening words of this chapter-summary are very significant, because they refer to the dismissal of the adulteress before summarizing the other contents in the thirtieth portion of John.  The beginning of this chapter-summary runs something like this in English:  “Wherein he dismissed the adulteress, and said that he was the light of the world, and described his testimony and the testimony borne by his Father.  He said, If you knew me, you would have known my Father also.  And he was saying in the temple-treasury that those who did not find him would die in their sins, and that they were of this world, but he was not.”
          The Cy form of the chapter-summaries, though initially created to accompany an ancient Old Latin text, has survived – barely – by being grafted onto a standard Latin text.  The Cy chapter-summaries are extant primarily in only two known manuscripts:  Vatican Barberini 637, and Munich BSB Clm. 6212.  (They are partly preserved in the British Library in Harley 1775.)  

          Happily, digital images of both of these two manuscripts are accessible online.  The Vatican’s page-views are under strict copyright, but once you arrive at the Vatican Library’s website, it is easy to find Barberini 627, and to turn to page 99r, looking for chapter-summary #30 in the left column of the page.  Similarly, to view the full-color page-view of the same chapter-summary at the top of page 131v of the other manuscript, visit this embedded link.  Hugh Houghton has noted that the Munich manuscript was thought by McGurk, who studied it, to have been copied from a much earlier exemplar produced in the 500’s.  

          You may be asking, why is this form of Latin chapter-divisions, extant in just two manuscripts from the 800’s and 900’s, associated with Cyprian?  Basically this is a conclusion drawn from cumulative evidence in the form of special repeated points of correspondence between the text that is used in the chapter-summaries (especially where rare terms are used, and when quotations are included) and Cyprian’s Gospels-quotations.  Hugh Houghton, in a 2011 article in Revue Benedictine, noted that the text embedded in this form of chapter-summaries has affinities “to the citations of both Cyprian and Tertullian.”    

          As Hugh Houghton has reported, De Bruyne also noted the antiquity of the chapter-summaries known as Type I; Houghton has placed this form in the 300’s.  In John, Type I’s chapter-summary #16 says, “Adducunt ad eum mulierem ‘in adulterio deprehensam,’ and in one form of this chapter-summary, found in six manuscripts, the text continues, “in moechatione ut eam iudicaret.”    The form of the chapter-summaries which De Bruyne lists as Type D also has these words, followed by “quod nemo miserit super illam manus.”  (See page 264 of his book.)  An interesting feature of this particular chapter-summary is that it contains the loan-word moechatione, suggesting that this chapter-summary was based on an Old Latin text which someone had translated from Greek rather literally, at least at this point.

          Type I of the chapter-summaries tends to accompany a distinct form of the Old Latin text which is basically a form of the Gospels-text which was used by Ambrose of Milan in the 370’s-390’s.  According to Houghton, this was also, in general, the form of the Latin text used by Zeno of Verona (c. 300-371).  

          So, to sum up:  various forms of Old Latin chapter-summaries, the earliest of which has been deduced via the detection of shared readings to have been based on a form of the Latin text of the Gospels used by, or at approximately the same time as, Cyprian in the 200’s, are a cluster of significant witnesses for the pericope adulterae.   To those who may want to locate where the pericope adulterae is summarized in the forms of chapter-summaries of the Gospel of John which are presented by De Bruyne, here they are:

A:  (none)

B:  (none; this is a shorter form of Type A.)

B^r:  VII:  Iesus supra mare ambulat . . . . [and after several sentences] De muliere adultera.  Iesus lumen mundi se esse non credentibus Iudaeis in gazophilacio docens praedicat.

Ben:  XXI:  De muliere in adulterio deprehensa.

C:  XX:  Mulierem in adulterio deprehensam atque ad se adductam nec ab accusatoribus condemnatam ipse sub condicione qua ulterius non peccaret absoluit.

D:  XVIII:  De muliere in adulterio depraehensa. [in moechatione u team iudicaret, quod nemo miserit super illam manus].  

I:  XVI:  Adducunt ad eum mulierem in adulterio deprehensam.  (See above for expanded form.)

W:  XVI:  De muliere in adulterio deprehensa.

Cat:  XVI:  Adducunt ad Iesum mulierem deprehensam [in adulterio], et ego sum lux mundi, et uos secundum carnem iudicatis, et neque me scitis neque patrem meum, et si non credideritis quia ego sum moriemini.        

I^for:  (none) 

Pⁱ:  XVI:  De muliere in adulterio deprehensa.       

Cy:  XXX:  Ubi adulteram dimisit et se dixit lumen saeculi . . .  (See above)

In:  No mention of the adulteress, but XVI:  Iesus autem ascendit in montem Oliueti.

Vich:  VII:  (at the end of the summary) Mulierem adulteram liberans lucem mundi se dicit.

Z:  XVIII:  De muliere in adulterio deprehensa.

  

          The pericope adulterae is not supported by forms A and B (which are the same in John), or by form I^for; however, even this is conceivably an effect of the conciseness of these summaries rather than evidence that the passage was absent in the texts accompanied by the chapter-summaries.  In any event, we have here twelve witnesses (much more, of course, if we were to count each manuscript individually instead of the chapter-lists themselves, but less if we were to group together four similar forms) for the inclusion of the pericope adulterae.  

          Furthermore, none of them show any signs of deviation regarding the sequence in which the episode occurs in the text of the Gospel of John.  This is quite strong evidence that the passage was in its usual location following John 7:52 before it was moved to the back of the book.  This should motivate those who treat the pericope adulterae’s dislocations as anything other than the effects of lection-cycles and special formatting of the Pentecost-lection to reconsider their position.  In addition, claims that convey that no early versions included John 7:53-8:11 should be withdrawn.

Cyprian and the Comma Johanneum

An iconic representation of
Cyprian, bishop and martyr.

        Few textual variants in the New Testament have received more attention than First John 5:7-8, where the  Textus Receptus – the printed base-text of the New Testament in the King James Version – reads, οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τω ουρανω ο πατηρ ο λογος και το αγιον πνευμα και ουτοι οι τρεις εν εισιν και τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες εν τη γη το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν, which is represented in English as, “There are three witnesses in heaven:  the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.  And there are three witnesses in the earth:  the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one.”  The base-text of most modern translations is significantly shorter and different:  οτι τρεις εισιν οι μαρτυρουντες το πνευμα και το υδωρ και το αιμα και οι τρεις εις το εν εισιν, that is, in English, “There are three witnesses:  the spirit and the water and the blood, and these three agree in one.”

          The longer reading – technically known as the Comma Johanneum – is well-known from the KJV.  It is also in the text of the NKJV and Modern English Version (with a footnote).  The English Standard Version, on the other hand, does not contain the Comma Johanneum and the ESV has no footnote in First John 5:7-8.  The NIV2011 and the Holman Christian Standard Bible do not have the Comma Johanneum in the text, but each contains a footnote acknowledging its existence in manuscripts of the Vulgate and in a few late manuscripts.

          I am not going to review all the evidence about the Comma Johanneum here, but a few points should be covered to set the stage for what I am going to say about the testimony from the third-century writer Cyprian. 

● The support for the Comma Johanneum in Greek manuscripts is staggeringly poor.  Out of about 500 extant Greek copies of First John, four of them have the Comma Johanneum in the text:  629 (a manuscript in which the Greek and Latin texts appear side-by-side), 61 (Codex Montfortianus, which was brought to the attention of Erasmus when this passage was discussed in the early 1500s after Erasmus had not included the passage in his first edition of the Greek New Testament), and 2473 and 2318 (both of which are extremely late – later than 1611).  Six other manuscripts have the Comma Johanneum (“CJ” from here on) written in the margin, but these margin-notes appear to have been added much later than the production-date of the manuscript itself.  (In the case of minuscule 177, made in the 1000s, the CJ was added in the margin after 1550; the margin-note mentions the verse-number.)

● The Latin support for the inclusion of the Comma Johanneum is plentiful, and its earliest components are only slightly later than the earliest manuscript-evidence for non-inclusion.  The author of a composition called Liber Apologeticus (either Priscillian, or one of his associates) used the CJ in the 380’s, in Spain:  “Tria sunt quae testimonium dicunt in terra:  aqua caro et sanguis et haec tria in unum sunt.  Et tria sunt quae testimonium dicent in caelo:  Pater Verbum et Spiritus et haec tria unum sunt in Christo Iesu.”  It should be noticed, however, that this varies considerably from the contents of First John 5:7-8 as known from the TR and KJV.  Priscillian lists the earthly witnesses before the heavenly witnesses.  Priscillian’s list of earthly witnesses is different:  instead of referring to “the spirit, the water, and the blood,” Priscillian refers to “water, flesh, and blood.”  He also adds the phrase, “in Christ Jesus” at the end.

● A Latin writer in North Africa named Victor Vitensis attended the Council of Carthage in 484, after the Arian Vandal king Huneric had instructed the Trinitarian bishops of North Africa to meet there with Arian bishops to discuss the subject of the Trinity.  The Trinitarian African bishops, who numbered over 100, were led by Eugene of Carthage.   The Council of Carthage itself was unproductive and brief.  Eugene of Carthage, the leader of the Trinitarian bishops, had intended to present a statement of faith at the council, and this manifesto was incorporated into Victor Vitensis’ account.  It includes the following statement:  “Et ut luce clarius unius divinitatis esse cum Patre et Filio Spiritum Sanctum doceamus, Joannis Evangelistae testimonio comprobatur.  Ait namque:  Tres sunt qui testimonium perhibent in coelo:  Pater, Verbum et Spiritus Sanctus et hi tres unum sunt.” – which means, in English, “And as a shining light teaching the unity of the divinity of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, the testimony of John the Evangelist demonstratively testifies:  ‘There are three who bear witness in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one.’”  This indicates that the CJ was so well-circulated in Latin in North Africa in the late 400s that a prominent bishop was willing to utilize it at a theological conference.

● A composition called Contra Varimadum Arianum (conceivably written by Idacius Clarus in Spain in the late 300s, but perhaps more probably by Vigilius Tapsensis in North Africa in  the late 400s) includes the following statement:  “John the Evangelist, in his Epistle to the Parthians (i.e. his 1st Epistle), says there are three who afford testimony on earth:  the water, the blood, and the flesh, and these three are in us; and there are three who afford testimony in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one.

● Eucherius of Lyons, c. 440, in his composition Formulas of Spiritual Knowledge (Formulae Spiritualis Intelligentiae), in chapter 10 (On Numbers), stated that the number three represents the Trinity, “in the epistle of John: three are those who bear witness: water, blood, and spirit.” 

● Cassiodorus, in the 500s, utilized the CJ in his composition Complexiones in Epistolis Apostolorum, as follows:  “Cui rei testificantur in terra tria mysteria:  aqua sanguis et spiritus, quae in passione Domini leguntur impleta:  in coelo autem Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus sanctus, et hi tres unus est Deus.”  In English this yields:  “And the three mysteries testify – on earth:  water, blood and spirit.  The fulfillment of which we read about in the passion of the Lord.  And in heaven:  Father and Son and Holy Spirit.  And these three are one God.”

   

● In Codex Fuldensis, which was produced in 546, the CJ is mentioned in the Preface to the Canonical Epistles (by “Canonical Epistles” the General Epistles are meant).  The author of this preface specifically mentioned the CJ, and stated that “much error has occurred at the hands of unfaithful translators contrary to the truth of faith, who have kept just the three words ‘water, blood and spirit’ in this edition, omitting mention of Father, Word and Spirit.”  The text of First John in Codex Fuldensis does not contain the CJ; similarly, the order of the three witnesses in the text is different than the order cited in the Preface to the Canonical Epistles – in the text of First John, Codex Fuldensis refers to “spirit and water and blood” as the three who testify.

          With all this in the background, we now come to today’s main subject:  the testimony of Cyprian of Carthage.  In his Treatise on the Unity of the Universal Church (1:6), Cyprian says: “Dicit Dominus, ‘Ego et Pater unum sumus,’ et iterum de Patre et Filio et Spiritu sancto scriptum est:  ‘Et tres unum sunt.’”  In English:  “The Lord says, ‘I and the Father are one,” and again, it is written of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, ‘And these three are one.’”

          The issue here is (as Dan Wallace has pointed out) whether Cyprian quoted (or slightly misquoted) the CJ when he refers to the Father and Son and Holy Spirit, or whether he merely quoted the words, “And these three are one.”  

          The idea that Cyprian possessed a copy of First John that contained the CJ is not as unlikely as some commentators have made it seem.  Against the point that none of the early Greek manuscripts of First John contain the CJ, the counterpoint may be submitted that Hort, in 1881, argued for six readings in the General Epistles which are likewise supported by no ancient Greek manuscripts – and in 2013, the Nestle-Aland compilers adopted a reading into the text of Second Peter 3:10 that is found in no Greek manuscripts.  Clearly, at least among some highly influential textual critics, the lack of early Greek manuscript support does not rule out the plausibility of a textual variant.

          In addition, it is possible to explain the early loss of the CJ as a consequence of two simple scribal errors.  If a copyist were to copy the longer reading in a narrow column, and transpose the words “εν τη γη” (“on the earth”) so as to appear before the word “τρεις” (three) in verse 8, the text would look like this:   

A page from a Latin commentary
by an Irish author in the 600s.

     οτι τρεις εισιν

     οι μαρτυρουντες

     εν τω ουρανω

     ο πατηρ ο λογος και

     το αγιον πνευμα

     και ουτοι οι τρεις

     εν εισιν και εν

     τη γη τρεις εισιν

     οι μαρτυρουντες

     το πνευμα και το

     υδωρ και το αιμα

     και οι τρεις εις το

     εν εισιν·           

And if a subsequent copyist were to lose his line of sight and jump from the words οι μαρτυρουντες at the end of the second line to the identical words at the end of the ninth line, accidentally skipping the intervening words (in bold print), the resultant text would be:

     οτι τρεις εισιν

     οι μαρτυρουντες

     το πνευμα και το

     υδωρ και το αιμα

     και οι τρεις εις το

     εν εισιν·          

which is the text found in almost all Greek manuscripts of First John. 

          So those who defend the CJ may have an answer to Dan Wallace’s charge that they are denying history.  They are proposing that early scribal errors resulted in the corruption of all of the early Greek manuscripts, just as advocates of the Nestle-Aland compilation implicitly propose that early scribal errors have repeatedly resulted in the corruption of all the early Greek manuscripts except three, or two, or one, or (at Acts 16:12 and Second Peter 3:10) all of them. 

          But let’s not get distracted from that comment by Cyprian.  When one considers the theory that Cyprian was merely applying the final phrase of First John 5:8 to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a question presents itself:  what sort of interpretive alchemy starts with “the spirit and the water and the blood,” and manages to conjure from that a representation of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?   

          Enter Scotti Anonymi – an anonymous Irishman who wrote a commentary on the General Epistles in the late 600s.  He does not comment on the CJ.  He does, however, put a distinctly Trinitarian spin on the three witnesses – which he lists, not as “the spirit and the water and the blood,” but as “water, blood, and spirit.”  This is a conformation to the order in which the water, blood, and spirit appear in First John 5:6.  A change in the order of the witnesses in First John 5:8 was an easy change for an early copyist to make.  And when we look at the early citations of First John, it becomes clear that early Latin copyists did indeed make this alteration in the text of First John. 

          That is why, in the commentary of Scotti Anonymi, the text of First John 5:8 elicited thoughts about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  As researcher Shane Angland has observed, Scotti Anonymi used Jeremiah 2:13 – where God describes Himself as “the fountain of living waters” – as the basis on which to interpret “the water” as a proxy for the Father.  Blood represents Christ.  And of course the reference to the spirit was interpreted to represent the Holy Spirit.  Even a fan of allegorical, or symbolic, interpretation, might not naturally or readily see a reference to the Trinity in the words, “the spirit and the water and the blood,” but when these nouns are rearranged as “the water and the blood and the spirit,” a symbolic interpretation becomes much more natural.

          I propose that the arrangement of the witnesses in First John 5:8 was adjusted – not with any intent to model the Trinity, but simply to conform to the order in which the water, blood, and spirit are introduced in 5:6 – very early in an Old Latin transmission-stream.  Let’s look again for indications of this in the patristic evidence:

● This was the text used by the author of the Preface to the Canonical Epistles in Codex Fuldensis;  he mentioned “the three words ‘water, blood and spirit.’”

● This was the text used by Eucherius:  “water, blood, and spirit.” 

● This was the text used by Cassiodorus:  “water, blood, and spirit.” 

● Two-thirds of this reading is supported by Etherius of Osma in the 700s in Adversus Elipandum (“the water and the blood and the flesh”), and by the author of Contra Varimadum (“the water, the blood, and the flesh”).

● Priscillian similarly put water first in the list of earthly witnesses (“water, flesh, and blood”).

          From this evidence it may be deduced that in the North African Latin text of First John (or at least in one form of it), by the time Cyprian ever read the text, the order of the earthly witnesses in 5:6 had been transposed to “water, blood, and spirit.”  Due to this transposition, Cyprian interpreted the passage as a reference to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  With the transposition in the equation, Cyprian’s interpretation of First John 5:8 as a model of the Trinity is not puzzling.  There is thus no reason to assume that he was referring to the CJ in his Treatise on the Unity of the Universal Church.

[Readers are invited to check the data used in this post.]