The Pericope Adulterae and Some Early Manuscripts

          The Greek manuscripts which are often cited as the primary external evidence against the pericope adulterae (John 7:53-8:11 – a passage which some evangelical seminary professors and influential preachers, including John Piper, do not regard as Scripture) are Papyrus 66, Papyrus 75, À (01, Sinaiticus), B (03, Vaticanus), A (02, Alexandrinus), C (04, Ephraemi Rescriptus), L (019, Regius), N (022, Petropolitanus Purpureus), W (032, Washingtoniensis), and Δ (038, Sangallensis).  None of these manuscripts has John 7:53-8:11 between 7:52 and 8:12.  However, the testimony of some of these witnesses is significantly nuanced by additional details.

Codex Delta's blank space.
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          For example, in Codex Δ (from the 800’s), the copyist provided a clear indication of his recollection of the passage, even though it was absent from his exemplar.  After John 7:52, the copyist wrote the first seven words of 8:12, but then left the rest of the page blank, and resumed writing after leaving three additional blank lines on the following page.  Then he restarted the text of 8:12, and proceeded on from there.  Thus, while Codex Δ attests to the absence of the pericope adulterae in its exemplar, it also attests to the copyist’s memory of the presence of the passage in some other manuscript.

          Similarly, in Codex L (from the 700’s), the copyist left a long blank space between the end of John 7:52, on one page, and the beginning of 8:12, on the following page.  This blank space in Codex L includes more than an entire blank column.  In codices Δ and L, the blank space is not sufficient to include John 7:53-8:11, but the copyists’ intention to leave “memorial space,” acknowledging their awareness of the absent passage, remains obvious.  It therefore seems somewhat selective when commentators such as Metzger, Wallace, and White (among others) mention the absence of John 7:53-8:11, but fail to mention these blank spaces, of equal age, which attest to the presence of the passage in the memories of these manuscripts’ scribes.

Codex Regius' blank space.

          Before we turn to some other interesting features in these manuscripts, it should be pointed out that of the 1,476 manuscripts that contain the pericope adulterae, about 60 manuscripts have it in a location other than between John 7:52 and 8:12.  One particular group of manuscripts, which includes the important minuscules 1 and 1582, has the passage after the end of the Gospel of John, preceded by a note stating that because most manuscripts did not contain the passage, and because it was not commented upon by venerable patristic writers (such as John Chrysostom), it was moved to the end of the book, having been previously found after John 7:52 (the end of which the annotator quotes). 

          Although the minuscules that contain John 7:53-8:11 after John are not particularly early, their agreements are considered to echo an ancestor-manuscript which was produced in the 400’s.  In addition, their distinct readings tend to have an affinity with readings used by Origen, a patristic author who died in 254. 

          The transfer of John 7:53-8:11 from the usual place in chapters 7 and 8 to the end of the Gospel of John thus did not begin when these manuscripts were produced, but centuries earlier, when their shared ancestor was made.  This raises a question:  could some of the manuscripts which have been cited against the pericope adulterae, and which do not have it in chapters 7 and 8, have had it at the end of the Gospel of John? 
          In the case of Codex N (from the 500’s), there is no way to verify if it contained the pericope adulterae after the end of John or not, because the manuscript is damaged; the last extant bit of John 21 is in verse 20, and so there is no way to know if 21:25 was followed by the pericope adulterae when Codex N was in pristine condition or not.

          In Codex W (from about the year 400), the Gospels are arranged in the order Matthew-John-Luke-Mark.  Commentator Wieland Willker has noticed that between the end of John and the beginning of Luke, there is a blank page – blank on both sides.  No such similar feature exists in Codex W between Matthew and John, or between Luke and Mark.  This might be an attempt, by a copyist aware of the existence of the pericope adulterae, to provide space where it could be added.    

          In Codex A (from the early 400’s), the pages containing the text from John 6:50 to 8:52a have been lost.  Thus, we cannot see directly that in Codex A, John 7:52 was followed by 8:12; we have to rely on space-calculations.  Here, again, Willker’s commentary is very helpful:  he notes that the copyist accidentally omitted John 8:52, when his line of sight wandered too far down the page.  When this is accounted for, a reconstruction of the missing text, without John 7:53-8:11, fits the space that would have been on the absent pages, whereas if the pericope adulterae had been present, the space would not be remotely sufficient. 

Codex Alexandrinus -
The end of John,
and a blank column.

          At the end of the Gospel of John, the copyist of Codex A put the closing-title of the book at the end of the first column on the page.  The second column is completely blank.  One might argue that this is to be expected at the end of the Gospels – yet, at the end of Acts, there is no similar blank column; the column in which the book of Acts ends is followed immediately by a column in which the Epistle of James begins.  On the other hand, between the end of Philemon and the beginning of Revelation, there are two blank columns, that is, one side of the page is blank.  There is little way to discern, from this evidence alone, if the blank column at the end of John in Codex A is filler-space, or memorial-space.

          In Codex Sinaiticus (from the mid-300’s), after the Gospel of John concludes in the fourth column of a page, the next four columns are completely blank.  Once again, while it is probable that this is simply filler-space, it is not impossible that this feature represents copyists’ recollection of the presence of the pericope adulterae at the end of the Gospel of John. 

          In Codex Vaticanus (from the early 300’s), John 7:53-8:11 does not appear after 7:52, and there is no unusual blank space after the end of John (on page 1382 of the codex) – just the usual leftover space below the end of the book.  However, in the outer margin alongside that blank space after John 21:25, there is an interesting feature:  an umlaut, also known as a distigme.    Very many of these symbols appear in the margins of the New Testament books in Codex Vaticanus; researcher Philip Payne brought them to the attention of his fellow-researchers in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, and established that they were added to denote the locations of textual variants. 

          It has not been determined beyond reasonable doubt that these symbols were added in ancient times.  Payne has contended that most of the distigmai are contemporary with the production of the manuscript; Peter Head, however, has challenged this position.  My own suspicion is that these marks are all late.  However, because some scholars, including Daniel Wallace, have treated them as if they are ancient, let’s consider their possible significance in the case at hand:  the only known textual variant that would elicit the addition of a distigme in the blank space after the end of the Gospel of John is the presence of the pericope adulterae.   

          If the distigmai are as ancient as the manuscript itself, Codex Vaticanus testifies to a fourth-century copyist’s awareness of the pericope adulterae’s presence at that location in at least one manuscript older than Codex Vaticanus itself.  This would imply that the transfer of the passage to the end of John 21 was not initially due to its lack of use by Chrysostom and other patristic writers, but was caused by some other factor.

          Papyrus 75 (usually assigned a production-date in the early 200’s) is only extant in John up to 15:10, so there is no way to tell whether or not the pericope adulterae was present after the end of chapter 21.          

Papyrus 66 -
not much remains
of John 21:17ff. except
the page-number.

          Similarly, Papyrus 66 (which Robert Waltz describes as “a notably inaccurate copy”), also from the 200’s, is very fragmentary in John 21, and no text can be confidently reconstructed beyond 21:17.  Thus we cannot tell with certainty that Papyrus 66 did not contain the pericope adulterae after John 21. 

          A few things should be clear from this review of the major early witnesses for the non-inclusion of the pericope adulterae.

● First:  the evidence strongly supports the view that the text of John used in Egypt in the 200’s did not contain the passage after John 7:52.  

● Second:  codices L and Δ should be considered witnesses for non-inclusion and for inclusion.  

● Third:  the testimony of most of the major Greek manuscripts that support the non-inclusion of the pericope adulterae in chapters 7 and 8 is not nearly as clear or one-sided when they are asked to testify about the passage’s presence or absence following John 21; on this question, most of the early Greek manuscript-evidence is open to interpretation.   

A Textual Mystery: The Case of the Adulteress and the Repeated Verse

          In a recent lecture given at the Escola Teológica Charles Spurgeon in Fortaleza, Brazil, Dr. Daniel Wallace encouraged his listeners to adopt and spread his view regarding John 7:53-8:11 (a passage known as the pericope adulterae, the segment about the adulteress) – the widely held view that these 12 verses are not part of the original text of the Gospel of John.    

Daniel Wallace, a professor at Dallas
Theological Seminary, delivering a lecture
at Escola Teologica Charles Spurgeon
in Brazil in early August 2015. 

          At several points in the lecture, Dr. Wallace – regarded by many as one of the leading New Testament textual critics in the USA – misrepresented the evidence.  For example, he claimed, “We don’t have any church fathers to comment on this passage until the tenth century,” and he stated that D, K, and Gamma are the only three uncials that have the passage. 
          Today I will not review the many patristic utilizations of John 7:53-8:11 by writers such as Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Prosper of Aquitaine, Peter Chrysologus, and so forth.  (I have done that elsewhere already.)  Nor will I sift through the fifteen uncial manuscripts that contain at least part of the passage, or the 1,360 minuscules that contain the passage, or other witnesses such as the chapter-titles in Codex Fuldensis.  Instead I wish to clear up a little mystery regarding the format of the text in minuscule 115, which Dr. Wallace described in his lecture.

            At the 20:50 point of his lecture, Dr. Wallace mentioned that in minuscule 115, the pericope adulterae appears after John 8:12.  He proposed the following explanation for this:  “Here’s what I think happened:  the scribe who’s copying this manuscript out believed that the pericope adulterae was authentic.  And as he’s copying the manuscript in front of him, he copies John 7:52, and then John 8:12, and he goes, ‘Wait a minute!  What happened to the story of the woman caught in adultery?’  So he probably put that manuscript down, and found another manuscript in the monastery that had the story, and that’s what he then copied.  And so at the end of the pericope adulterae we have John 8:12 again, and then the rest of John’s Gospel continues.”

In manuscript 115, John 8:12 appears after John 7:52,
and after John 8:11, thus formatting the lection for
Pentecost as one uninterrupted segment of text.

            That is not remotely the reason why the copyist of 115 put John 8:12 in the text twice.  The repetition of John 8:12 – that is, its appearance in the text after John 7:52 and again after John 8:11 – reflects the influence of the Byzantine lection-cycle upon the text.  (A lection is a Scripture-passage selected to be read in a specific annual sequence, or on a specific annual occasion.)  In the Byzantine lection-cycle, the lection for Pentecost consisted of John 7:37-52 + 8:12; the final verse concluded the reading on a positive note.  The story about the adulteress, having its own distinct theme unrelated to Pentecost, was not read on that day; instead, John 8:3-11 was typically the lection for the Penitent Women (usually represented by Saint Pelagia), read on October 8.

In MS 476 on fol. 173r, John 8:12
is added in the margin beside the
end of 7:52, to finish the lection
for Pentecost.

          When a lector was not using a lectionary, but was reading, instead, from a copy of the four Gospels, he had to depend on the supplemental index of lections and upon marginalia to know what passage was to be read on what day.  Sometimes, medieval copyists made the lector’s job on Pentecost a little easier by adjusting the format of the passage that was to be read at Pentecost.  In MS 476, for example, after the manuscript was made, someone wrote John 8:12 in the margin where John 7:52 ends, so that the final verse of the Pentecost-lection could be read by the lector without any need to search for the verse in the next chapter.

          The copyist of minuscule 115 (or the copyist of 115’s exemplar, or some ancestor-copy of 115) took things one step further, and inserted John 8:12 directly into the text after 7:52, so that the entire lection could be read as one uninterrupted piece.  In minuscule 2751, the same phenomenon may be observed:  we see John 7:52, followed by 8:12, followed by 7:53-8:11, followed by 8:12.  According to Dr. Maurice Robinson’s collations of all Greek manuscripts of the pericope adulterae, this is also a feature of MSS 1050, 1349, and 2620.  No one was exclaiming, “Wait a minute.”  The inclusion of John 8:12 between John 7:52 and 7:53 was a practical way to ensure that the lector would easily complete the lection for Pentecost.

          Occasionally the usual lection-cycle was influenced by local adaptations.  In MS 449 (a two-volume manuscript; the Gospel of John is in the second volume), on fol. 116r, John7:52 ends at the end of a page.  Usually the lectionary apparatus (the lection-names and numbers, and symbols embedded in the text and/or in the margins, often accompanied by incipits, phrases to use when beginning to read a lection) would instruct the lector at this point to jump to the beginning of 8:12, by means of a hyperbale (“skip ahead”) symbol, typically written in red.      

The lectionary-based adaptation in MS 2751
resembles the format seen in MS 115:
John 8:12 appears after 7:52, and after 8:11.

          In MS 449, however, the hyperbale symbol does not appear until after John 8:2, on the following page (which begins with 7:53).  That is not all:  before the hyperbale symbol, the text of 8:2 merges with the beginning of 8:12, so as to read, και πας ο λαος ηρχετο προς αυτον και καθισας εδιδασκεν αυτους λεγων εγω ειμι – that is, “and all the people came to him and, sitting down, he taught them, saying, ‘I am’” – and then the hyperbale symbol appears, instructing the lector to skip ahead to the arxou (“resume”) symbol on 117r, where 8:12 begins.          
          Apparently, in the lection-cycle where MS 449 was used, the Pentecost-lection included 7:53-8:2, so as to leave no material unused before the beginning of the lection for Saint Pelagia’s feast-day.

          (In case anyone is wondering, “Why would lectionary-influence cause 8:12 to be repeated instead of just being transplanted to follow John 7:52 in the passage assigned to be read on Pentecost?”, it should be noted that lections sometimes overlapped, and this is one such case:  John 8:12 concluded the lection for Pentecost, and also began the lection that was to be read on the fourth Thursday after Easter (typically identified in lectionary-related marginalia as Day 5 of Week 4); this lection consisted of John 8:12-20.)

MS 449, vol. 2, fol. 116v:  "hyperbale"
appears (in red) appears after John 8:2
(and part of 8:12) to instruct the lector
to skip ahead to 8:12. 

          Thus the mystery of the repeated occurrence of John 8:12 in MS 115 (and a few other manuscripts) is solved.  The factor that resolves this little puzzle – the influence of the lection-cycle – may suggest the resolution of some other mysteries that involve John 7:53-8:11:

           · If someone in an early church that used a basic lection-cycle (not a fully developed lection-series for every day of the year, but something limited mainly to Easter-time and other major holy days, including Pentecost) prepared a manuscript of the Gospels for a lector, with symbols intended to instruct the lector to skip from the end of John 7:52 to the beginning of John 8:12, and then such a copy was placed into the hands of a meticulous and mechanically-minded professional copyist who was unfamiliar with the lection-cycle, the copyist might misinterpret the symbols to mean that he, the copyist, ought to skip from the end of John 7:52 to the beginning of 8:12.  This would result in the instant loss of the 12 verses in between. 

          · If a manuscript were prepared in a locale where the Pentecost-lection included John 7:53-8:2, with symbols instructing the lector to skip from the end of 8:2 to the beginning of 8:12, and a professional copyist might misinterpret the symbols as if they were meant for him, the manuscript the copyist made would include John 7:53-8:2 but not 8:3-11.

          · Some copyists, in the course of preparing copies of the Gospels that they expected to be used for lection-reading, being aware of the difficulties that were caused for lectors by the presence of John 7:53-8:11 embedded in the Pentecost-lection, might simplify things by removing the whole section and placing it at the end of the Gospel of John.
          · Some copyists, in the course of preparing copies of the Gospels that they expected to be used for lection-reading, might take a more drastic step, and remove the passage from the Gospel of John so that the Pentecost-lection would be uninterrupted, and transplant the passage into Luke, at the end of chapter 21 – a location chosen not only because of the similarity between Luke 21:38 and John 8:2, but also because the lection for the annual feast-day for Saints Sergius and Bacchus, on October 7, consisted of Luke 21:12-19, and it was convenient to have the lection for the next day – October 8, the annual feast-day for Saint Pelagia – at the closest subsequent break in the narrative.           

            Forms of the text which would result from these four hypothetical scenarios all exist in the extant manuscripts: 

            · In approximately 270 Greek manuscripts, John 7:53-8:11 is not in the text of John at all.  (These manuscripts include the best representatives of the Alexandrian text.) 

            · In 18 manuscripts, John 7:53-8:2 follows 7:52, but verses 3-11 are absent.  (In minuscule 105 (Codex Ebnerianus), John 7:53-8:2 follows 7:52 in the text of John; John 8:3-11 was added after John chapter 21 by a medieval monk).  Evidence from the Aramaic lectionary (formerly known as the Palestinian Syriac lectionary) demonstrates that this arrangement was in use when the exemplars of its extant representatives were made. 

            · In three chief members of the family-1 group of manuscripts (1, 1582, and 2193), John 7:53-8:11 is not in chapters 7 and 8 of John, but is present after chapter 21.  A note in MSS 1 and 1582 states that the passage was found in an exemplar after the part that says, “Search and see that a prophet does not arise out of Galilee,” that is, after John 7:52.

            · In the group of manuscripts known as family 13, some manuscripts (13, 69, 124, 346, and others) have John 7:53-8:11 at the end of Luke 21.  

            The influence of the lection-cycle (in some cases, a simple series of selections for the major feast-days, and in other cases the substantially complete Byzantine lection-cycle) accounts for the unusual treatments of John 7:53-8:11 that are observed in the extant manuscripts of the Gospel of John.  (For example, it explains why the copyist of minuscule 225 placed John 7:53-8:11 before the passage that consists of the Pentecost-lection.) 

            One mystery that remains unexplained is the mysterious silence from many commentators (and professors) about the influence of the lection-cycle upon the text of John 7:53-8:11.  Commentators – especially commentators who endorse the Alexandrian text of the Gospels almost entirely – typically mention that many manuscripts do not have the passage – but they do not mention the relationships of these manuscripts, as if suddenly, one should count manuscripts instead of weigh them. 

          Commentators mention that in some manuscripts, the passage is accompanied by asterisks – but they only rarely mention that in 130 manuscripts, the asterisks accompany only John 8:3-11 – the lection for Saint Pelagia’s feast-day – and not John 7:53-8:2.  The commentators then describe the asterisks as expressions of scribal doubt, without even mentioning the possibility that the asterisks are merely part of the lectionary-related marginalia, intended (when alongside John 7:53-8:11) to convey that the passage should be skipped in the course of the Pentecost lection, or (when they accompany John 8:3-11 (with variations:  in Codex E the asterisks begin at 8:2; in MS 685 curvy lines appear, rather than asterisks)) to identify the lection to be read on Saint Pelagia’s feast-day. 

          Why does it seem that some commentators want their readers to see only some of the relevant evidence regarding John 7:53-8:11?  Why do some scholars, when discussing this passage, avoid mentioning that Jerome stated that he found it in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin?  Why do scholars who advocate the Alexandrian text almost 100% seem so timid about allowing all the evidence to be displayed, and even more timid about allowing it to be seen in clear detail?

          Perhaps it is not such a mystery after all.  In any event, I think that researchers should refrain from proposing that the story about the adulteress should not be in the Bible until they have studied the evidence much more, and much more carefully, so as to be able to describe the relevant evidence thoroughly and accurately, and recognize the influence of the lection-cycle when it is right in front of their faces.  When they can do that, they might no longer want to make such a proposal.