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