The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 6: Panel Discussion

          In the panel-discussion and subsequent Q-&-A session (which was not attended by Keith, who had to catch a plane), all of the presenters were very cordial.  I got the sense that all the panelists were focused on Robinson’s theory.  Punch did not contribute much to this session.  Knust acknowledged that she was intrigued by Robinson’s theory, although not so much that she was ready to adopt it that very day.  Wasserman maintained that Robinson’s theory is possible but there simply is no evidence for the existence of a rudimentary lectionary-system in the 100’s. 

          Knust raised a question about how much time elapsed between the production of the Gospel of John, the use of passages from John as lections of major feast-days, and the subsequent loss of the PA.  Robinson responded by stating that he assigned a production-date for the Gospel of John prior to the year 70 (agreeing with John A. T. Robinson), so the loss of the PA could have occurred in the mid-100’s.  (I would argue that even with a production-date in the 90’s this is still entirely credible, and is more likely in a situation where the copyists are not very familiar with the contents of the Gospel of John.) 

          Knust also briefly mentioned the variety of detail in some patristic accounts (such as that of Mara of Amida) of the contents of the PA – a subject I would have liked to hear more about, since I consider it a real possibility that a story similar to the PA circulated in the early church.

          I raised a question about the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary, basically asking if its testimony implied that the PA was “floating” when the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary was made or not.  The panelists agreed that the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary echoes an ancestor-manuscript in which (part of) the PA appeared at the end of John.  They also agreed that the PA was never “floating,” and that the displacement of the PA, whether to the end of John (as in an ancestor of the Palestinian Aramaic lectionary, and in family-1), or to the end of Luke 21 (as in family-13), was an effect of lectionary-influence.  This was, in my view, a major point on which all the panelists agreed:  there is no evidence that the PA was ever floating until the 800’s, when its displacement was due to lectionary-influence.

          Each panelist, as Jacob Cerone has reported, affirmed that the PA should be preached, although for different reasons.  Punch said that he would preach the PA, provided that he made his listeners aware of the text-critical controversy about the passage.  Wasserman repeated his point that if Jude can preach from Enoch, preachers today can preach from the PA.  Knust was strangely evasive when answering a question about whether or not the PA described historical events (I was thinking:  How can one advocate that a text be preached, without affirming that it describes historical events?); nevertheless she agreed that the PA is canonical and should be proclaimed.  (I got the impression that although Knust and Wasserman do not want the PA to be turned into a footnote, they probably would not protest loudly if the PA were to be reformatted as a short 28^th book of the New Testament.)  Robinson, of course, advocated the use of the PA as canonical Scripture.      

          Then Dr. David Alan Black concluded the conference, and took a quick vote from the audience:  is the passage original?  A very large majority of the audience (some might even say an overwhelming majority) said yes – a verdict which opposes the conventional academic view.  Had the question been phrased differently – “Should the passage be proclaimed, or proscribed?” – the response might have been, if not unanimously in favor of the proclamation of the PA, very nearly so.
          I look forward to the book that is planned to be co-written by the panelists at the conference.

Some other resources: 

Jeff Riddle attended most of the conference and made a report about it.

Wilbur Pickering, who recently turned 80, has made aninteresting file about the PA.   

    

Jacob Cerone, a research assistant for Dr. Black, made a series of live-blogs from the conference, beginning at  .  (At Jacob’s blog, just keep clicking on the blog-entry-titles to the upper-right of the main title and the live-blog entries will keep on coming.  His pictures include a shot of Dr. Robinson and me together during one of the breaks.)

Dr. David Alan Black, in the entry for April 27 at his blog , described the conference as a very cordial and positive experience, and stated, “For what it’s worth, my own view is that the PA is original,” and “I would most certainly preach/teach this passage as Scripture.”

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 5: Robinson: Removal Elicited by Early Lectionary Usage

Maurice Robinson, the last presenter at the conference, argued that the PA is an original part of the Gospel of John, and that it was excised in the second century as a consequence of lectionary-influence.  Robinson’s presentation seemed to have been carefully composed, like a symphony, starting slowly and building to a crescendo.  At first he described how, following a suggestion from William Pierpont, he began investigating the PA.  Then he introduced an impressive army of data, drawn from his collations of the manuscripts that contain the PA (a printed copy of which he showed at the conference):  267 Greek manuscripts do not contain the PA; 1,476 MSS contain it; 2,285 lectionaries do not contain it (because it’s assigned to saints’ feast-days, not the main calendar-cycle), and 495 lectionaries contain John 8:3-11.  He also insisted that the question about whether or not the PA is Scripture is a technical issue, not a doctrinal one. 

            

The gist of Robinson’s theory goes like this:  in the 100’s, lections were assigned to the major feast-days of the church-calendar, such as Christmas, Easter-time, and Pentecost.  The lection for Pentecost consisted, as it does today, of John 7:37-52 plus 8:12.  The reasons for this unusual combination were (1) the subject-matter of the PA did not fit the general theme of Pentecost, but (2) the uplifting statement in 8:12 was added so as to not end the lection on the negative note that would otherwise conclude the lection at the end of 7:52 – the statement that no prophet arises from Galilee.  An early copyist, either deliberately adjusting the text to make the lector’s job easier, or accidentally misinterpreting lectionary-related marginalia that told the lector to skip from the end of 7:52 to the beginning of 8:12, omitted the PA.  A copy in which the PA was thus dropped from the text – not due to squeamishness, but as a conformation to the form of the text as used in a rudimentary lectionary-system – subsequently influenced the text in Egypt from which most of the early manuscripts (p66, p75, Aleph, B, T) are descended.

            

In the course of arguing his case for the genuineness of the PA, Robinson emphasized various internal features, describing the PA as part of a verbal tapestry which is inextricably linked to the surrounding text.  He listed direct links and indirect links.  Even if half of them are sheer coincidence (and some of them definitely are), this is something worth careful consideration.  His argument against the existence of the PA (in all its extant forms) as a “floating” story was efficient and devastating:  how does the PA start?  “And everyone went to his own house.”  Does anyone begin a story like that?  Imagine it:  “Once upon a time, everyone went home.”

            

Robinson also pointed out that Chris Keith, in his earlier work on the PA, had incorrectly claimed that kategrafein is the majority-reading in John 8:6.  Keith has already commented about this on his blog (at http://historicaljesusresearch.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-pericope-adulterae-conferencechris.html ), acknowledging that the majority-reading, by a score of 1,220 to 207, is egrafen.  (Keith wondered why he ever thought otherwise.  Perhaps as he read the RP-2005 Byzantine Textform, his line of sight drifted to the katē- of katēgorein on the preceding line, above egrafen.)  Aside from this relatively minor point, though, Robinson had high praise for Keith’s research, describing it, ironically, as the best defense of the genuineness of the PA based on internal evidence, if readers ignore the word “interpolation.”

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Some thoughts: 

           

Robinson showed how his theory works, but he did not show real evidence, aside from the elegance of his theory, that a rudimentary lectionary-system for major feast-days existed in the second century, or that its lection for Pentecost consisted of John 7:37-52 + 8:12.  Inasmuch as the Pentecost-lection goes without a pause from 7:52 to 8:12, why isn’t this evidence that the lectionary was based on a text of John that did the same thing? 

Robinson pre-answered that question (if I recall correctly) by pointing out that had the PA been adopted sometime after John 7:37-8:12 (without the PA) was assigned to Pentecost, nobody would dump the PA into the middle of the Pentecost-lection.  However, this assumes a very simple series of events.  If instead, the PA was inserted between 7:52 and 8:12 in a location where the Pentecost-lection was unknown, and this expanded text proceeded to infiltrate the locale where the Pentecost-lection had originated as a natural unit consisting of John 7:37-8:12 (without the PA), then as the expanded text prevailed, the logical reaction by copyists who wished to denote lection-readings in the margins of continuous-text manuscripts of the Gospels would be to add the symbol that precedes the PA in various manuscripts, instructing the lector to skip from the end of 7:52 to the beginning of 8:12.  Clearly, something happened here, but the lectionary-related evidence presented by Robinson does not say clearly that what happened was an excision, rather than an expansion.   

            

Also, I would like to know, since Robinson pointed out that Jonathan Borland, in his thesis on the Old Latin treatment of the PA, identified the form of the PA preserved in family-1 as being congruent to the earliest form supported by the Old Latin evidence (especially Codex Palatinus), whether or not Robinson regards the family-1 form of the PA as the original form, instead of the text read by the majority of MSS.

And, figuring that Luke 22:43-44 is another passage which is omitted from a lection (and which is placed in Matthew in family-13 in a way comparable to the way that the PA is similar to the way the PA is placed at the end of Luke 21 in family-13), and figuring that Burgon proposed that Luke 9:54-56 could be lost via lectionary-influence, it occurs to me that it might be worthwhile to investigate the possibility that early lectionary-influence elicited the early loss of several passages besides the PA.  An early copyist’s misinterpretation of marginalia in a lector’s copy could account for several short (or shortened) variants.     

  

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 4: Keith: Interpolation by a Mimic to Show that Jesus Could Write

Chris Keith, from St. Mary’s University College in London, regards the PA as an interpolation, but in his presentation, he opposed other commentators who reject the PA about as much as he opposed those who accept it.  He rejected the idea that the PA originated as a “floating” text:  he emphasized that until the 800’s, the only place where the PA is found is after John 7:52.  He rejected the idea that linguistic style (which is the bones and muscles of the internal evidence against the PA) is not a reliable guide.  What, one might ask, could make linguistic style an unreliable guide?  Keith answers:  the involvement of a mimic in the production of the PA. 

This instantly complicates the theory that Keith endorses, because two stages within the production of the PA are thus implied:  the first stage, in which the basic story is produced (and non-Johannine elements are dominant), and the second stage, in which the story is revised by a mimic (who deliberately adds Johannine elements) and is placed within the text of the Gospel of John.  One might ask, what motivated this mimic?  Keith answers:  the mimic was part of a Christian community in which the authority of Jesus was challenged on the grounds that Jesus never wrote anything, and the mimic’s goal was to create a form of the Gospel of John which would contain clear evidence that Jesus could write.

After reviewing, and setting aside, a couple of (improbable) theories based on internal evidence that have been proposed by Josep Rius-Camps and Kent Hughes, Keith used the Longer Ending of Mark i.e., 16:9-20) as an example of mimicry committed by a forger:  the author, he proposed, used material from passages such as Luke 24, Matthew 28:19, and John 3:15-16 to craft an interpolation that was designed for the end of Mark, deliberately imitating Mark and the other Gospels.  Someone else, Keith continues, made the PA, beginning with an already-existing story and finishing with a story with Johannine features, plus introductory verses created to graft the story onto the end of chapter seven of the Gospel of John.

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Some thoughts: 

My first thought was that if Keith thinks that Mark 16:9-20 was designed to complete the Gospel of Mark, he really, really, really needs to carefully read my book, Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20, in which I show that the non-transition between Mark 16:8 and 16:9, as well as the contents of verses 9-20, constitutes compelling evidence that Mark 16:9-20 was not written as a continuation from the end of verse 8.  I also point out the lack of real verbal parallels between Mark 16:9-20 and the concluding portions of the other Gospels, tension-causing differences between Mark 16:9-20 and the other accounts, and other features in Mark 16:9-20 that are problematic to the “pastiche” theory that depends for its survival on the idea that Mark 16:9-20 was written by someone aware of the contents of Matthew, Luke, and John.  For example, if the author of Mark 16:9-20 was trying to create an ending for the Gospel of Mark, why would he borrow verbiage from the Gospel of John at all, and why would he zero in on John 3:15-16 while completely ignoring John 21?  The “pastiche” theory about Mark 16:9-20, viewed up close, requires an extremely complicated individual using his sources in an extremely complicated way.

Second, although Keith showed that pagan critics of Christianity (specifically, Celsus) issued jibes about the apostles’ lack of formal education, no evidence exists that this charge was ever made about Christ Himself.  No evidence exists that anyone ever used the PA to rebut an objection that Jesus could not write.  In the Syriac text of the Story of Abgar, Jesus is depicted dictating, rather than personally writing, a letter; this indicates that the author of the story felt no special pressure to depict Jesus in the act of writing.  There is no evidence of the cause or effect of the motivation that Keith attributes to the person who, he claims, peppered the PA with Johannine elements, added the introductory verses, and grafted it into the text of John.

Third, Keith’s presentation, like his work on the PA in general, was a rather effective demolisher of what have previously been regarded as consensus-views on a couple of points.  Writers such as Metzger, Aland, Carson, Comfort, and Fee have claimed that the PA was a “floating” story and this, they claimed, indicated its secondary nature.  Keith gently put that idea down, affirming that the PA was never “floating” until about the 800’s,  Likewise many commentators have insisted that the “style and vocabulary” of the PA constitute strong evidence against a Johannine origin, but Keith challenged that, arguing that special factors, such as an author’s borrowing of verbiage from the Septuagint, can throw off such calculations.  As Keith has stated at his blog, “Linguistic style cannot be a decisive criterion for authorial origin.”  (This is certainly true when a mimic is added to the equation:  everything consistent with the author’s style can be explained by the skill of the mimic!)  Alan Johnson’s analysis of internal evidence in the PA should be visited again and again.

Fourth, although I asked this question at the conference, I am still asking it:   Spyridon, a contemporary of Eusebius of Caesarea, walked out in protest when, at a gathering of bishops on Cyprus, another speaker used the word “skimpoda” instead of the word “krabbaton” when quoting a passage from the Gospels in which the word “krabbaton” appears.  And in the late 300’s, a congregation was thrown into an uproar when the story of Jonah was read from the Vulgate, because the new text referred to a “vine,” instead of to a “gourd” as they were accustomed.  Some Christian leaders and laity were vigilant against the adulteration of Scripture.  

In such a milieu, if the PA had suddenly appeared on the scene, a vigorous reaction and protest seems almost inevitable.  Yet we see bishops such as Ambrose and Augustine defending the PA.  And in an era when the penance-penalties for adultery were severe, this story in which Jesus forgives an adulteress – an adulteress who has not clearly expressed repentance – is supposed to have first appeared in the text of John around 250, and is supposed to have been meekly embraced wherever it went, without a note of protest by anybody.  In a period when Christians were risking imprisonment or death for refusing to hand over their copies of the Gospels, is it plausible that they would lightly and silently accept the sudden appearance of a new story in new copies of the Gospel of John, where no such story had previously existed?    

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 3: Knust: Against the Ecclesiastical Suppression Theory

Jennifer Knust, Wasserman’s co-author of some earlier work on the PA, directly challenged Punch’s theory of ecclesiastical suppression.  She reviewed some patristic statements which took non-Christians to task for (allegedly) altering the Scriptures.  This included a brief examination of the exchange between Origen and Julius Africanus regarding the question of the spuriousness of the book of Susanna.   Knust, like Wasserman, used a digital slideshow, which included, among other things, a picture of a page from Codex Marchalianus (displaying the use of asterisks and obeli for text-critical purposes (the same page, I think, that one can see at http://www.katapi.org.uk/BibleMSS/Q.htm ) and a page from Codex Basiliensis (E, 07) showing the beginning of the PA with asterisks in the margin. 

Knust emphasized Origen’s statement (in Contra Celsum 2:27), “I do not know of people who have altered the Gospel apart from the Marcionites and the Valentinians.”  This, she argued, shows that early Christian copyists did not make large excisions.  Additional evidence cumulatively shows that editors of non-Biblical as well as Biblical texts, when their exemplars disagreed, did not remove passages that did not possess uniform support, but included them instead, accompanied by marks such as an asterisk or obelus. 

The general implication of all this is that the theory that Christian copyists deliberately omitted the PA is improbable.  Scribal squeamishness about the subject-matter of the PA would not have elicited its removal.  Had there been a question about its genuineness, scribes’ default reaction would have been to include the PA, accompanied by asterisks, which is what we see in a significant number of manuscripts in which the PA is included.  This implies that the reason the early manuscripts do not include the PA at all is because it was not in their ancestor-manuscripts.     

The PA is, however, early material.  Is it earlier than Origen?  Knust mentioned that there may be good reasons to think that Origen was aware of the story, even though Origen does not comment on it in his Commentary on John, one of which is that in his Homilies on Jeremiah (19:15), Origen seems to take for granted that stoning was the prescribed penalty for adultery, and he pictures an adulteress desiring that the Word would intervene for her so that she would be spared.

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Some thoughts: 

A couple of points in Knust’s presentation were very questionable.  First, her claim that copyists did not make omissions would have been substantially shaken if one of her fellow panelists had pointed out Origen’s statement (in his Commentary on Matthew, 15:14) that “The differences in the Greek manuscripts have become great, either through the negligence of some copyists or through the perverse audacity of others,” who “in the process of checking, make additions or deletions as they please.”  That is a plain claim that copyists were doing exactly what Knust said they did not do.  Second, her theory that copyists treated New Testament texts in the same manner in which copyists treated the Iliad, or the Hexapla, adding asterisks or obeli alongside unstable passages, was posited rather demonstrated.

That asterisks were sometimes placed alongside passages in New Testament manuscripts to convey scribal doubt is not questioned.  What is questioned, specifically, is whether the asterisks that sometimes accompany the PA were intended to convey scribal doubt, or whether they served a completely different purpose.  The example that Knust provided of asterisks accompanying the PA was a digital slide of the beginning of the PA in Codex Basiliensis.  In the Q-&-A period after her presentation, we revisited that slide. 

The asterisks do not begin at the beginning of the PA.  They accompany 8:2-11.  The lectionary symbol that means “skip” appears at the beginning of 7:53.  Lectionary-symbols for “begin” (αρχη) accompany the beginning of 8:12 (in the text, and in the margin).  A cross has been added in the text within 8:12 immediately before εγω ειμι.  An “end” (τελος) symbol appears at the end of 8:12.  And, in the upper margin, in the same (though slightly smaller) uncial handwriting in which the main text is written, the lectionary-incipit is given for the lection for the fifth day of the fourth week after Easter (which = John 8:12-20); that explains the purpose of the cross before εγω ειμι:  after the lector had read the incipit, he was supposed to continue from that point.  All of which tends to indicate that the asterisks in Codex Basiliensis alongside John 8:2-11 were not intended to convey scribal doubt, but had something to do with the lectionary instead.    

Knust attempted to show that early copyists of the Gospels, when they encountered passages that were absent from some exemplars, athetized the dubious passage rather than remove it.  She did not present some readily available evidence that opposes that idea.  (And, one might ask, if copyists ordinarily included and athetized passages not found in all exemplars, why are the extant manuscripts not brimming with asterisks??)  She also attempted to show that the PA has been included and athetized, but the evidence she presented did not support that idea.  (One could also raise the question of whether copyists of any composition other than the Hexapla considered the act of athetizing a permanent solution, or a prelude to excision.  But an exploration of this subject would go beyond my purposes today.)      

(Small question:  Knust seemed to think that the non-inclusion of the PA was supported by the Eusebian Canons.  Can this really be confidently sustained?  Granting that the mutilated Canon-tables fragment analyzed by Nordenfalk implies that the PA was given its own section-number, is that necessary, or could the PA be considered part of a larger section in Canon 10?)

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 2: Wasserman: The PA as an Editorial Expansion

Tommy Wasserman, who came all the way from Sweden, argued that the PA is not authentic.  Wasserman’s lecture involved a digital slideshow, which resisted his efforts to make it work, but eventually surrendered after a valiant struggle with Dr. Black’s research assistant Jacob Cerone.  Wasserman reviewed the opposing views about the PA (mentioning that SEBTS professor Andreas Köstenberger rejects the passage), briefly surveyed some external evidence, including the testimony of Didymus the Blind, and proceeded to plunge into a comparison of the PA and some other disputed passages.  His purpose for doing so was to illustrate a couple of points:  (1)  in the early witnesses, textual alterations tend to be accidental, not editorially motivated, and (2) even where scribes took liberties with the text, the scribal activity was limited to individual words or phrases; no scribal omissions involve the omission of an amount of text anywhere near the size of the PA.

            

Wasserman reviewed some readings which reflect editorial activity; these include the incident in the Diatessaron (≈ Luke 4:29-30) in which Jesus flies, the “fire in the Jordan” mentioned by Justin, the incident of Jesus’ bloody sweat and strengthening angel (Luke 22:43-44), Luke 9:54-56 (the “Shall we call down fire?” incident), Luke 23:34a (“Father forgive them,” etc.), the Syriac expansion of Luke 23:48 (“Woe unto us,” etc.), the Freer Logion, John 5:4’s description of the angel moving the water at Bethesda, and the expansions of Luke 6:4 and Matthew 20:28 in Codex D and some other Western witnesses.

Wasserman also mentioned that Hugh Houghton has discovered that in an early form of the Old Latin chapter-lists (capitula), there is a chapter-title for the story of the adulteress that includes the term moechatio.  This loan-word seems to imply that in the branch of the Old Latin tradition that produced this form of the capitula, the PA was inherited, in its normal location following John 7:52, from a Greek source.  This implies that the PA was present in a Greek copy of John’s Gospel in the 200s (or was it the 300s?   It wasn't clear to me which century Wasserman meant; Houghton seems to put the origin of the Old Latin capitula in the 200s); nevertheless Wasserman argued that this only implies that the PA is an early interpolation rather than a late interpolation.

What, then, should be done with the PA?  Wasserman proposed that instead of rejecting the PA, the church should consider enlarging its effective canon, imitating the churches in Ethiopia.  Jude, he noted, used the Book of Enoch, even though it was not written by Enoch, so why shouldn’t Christians feel free to use the PA even though it was not part of the original text of the Gospel of John?  If we do not want to criticize Jude for using the Book of Enoch, then doesn’t the same principle preclude the criticism of those who use the PA? 

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Some thoughts: 

Wasserman’s list of passages which display editorial activity cuts both ways:  while one could argue that it shows that scribes tended not to remove large portions of text, it also shows that scribes tended not to add large portions of text.  So, while the excision of the PA would be a special case, its insertion would be a special case too.  If Wasserman has shown anything via this comparison, it is only that the PA is a special case, a point which is granted by all sides.

Also, Wasserman’s list of proposed editorial expansions seems problematic in two ways. 

First, it included some very isolated readings.  For example, Justin’s “fire in the Jordan,” the Sinaitic Syriac’s “Woe unto us” insertion, Codex D’s Man-on-the-Sabbath episode at Luke 6:4, its extra saying after Matthew 20:28, and its comment about the size of the stone in Luke 23:53, and Codex W’s Freer Logion, all have extremely limited support among Greek manuscripts.  (One could add to this list the expansion in Luke 11:2.)  The reception of those readings is so limited that they are not really analogous to the reception of the PA; rather, they are contrary to it:  the very limited attestation of these expansions shows the opposite of what Wasserman proposed; that is, they show that editorial expansions that spread much beyond their origination-point tended to be rejected.  That’s why their Greek manuscript support is teensy-tiny. 

Second, it included some passages which may have been editorially omitted rather than added.  If the rejection of Luke 9:54-56 (regarding which Burgon mentioned the possibility of loss due to lectionary-influence), and the rejection of Luke 22:43-44, and the rejection of Luke 23:34 (regarding which see Nathan Eubank’s 2010 JBL article) are necessary for Wasserman’s case, then his case is precarious.                                

Dr. Wasserman does not recommend that the church should stop using the story of the adulteress, but I strongly suspect that his line of reasoning will bounce off those who both reject the PA and subscribe to the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.  That is, if one maintains that (a) the church regards Scripture as authoritative because it regards Scripture as inspired, and (b) the text that the church recognizes as inspired is the original text, not a form of the text that includes material of scribal origin, then it follows that if the PA is regarded as material of scribal origin, then it will not be regarded as authoritative Scripture.  Jude’s use of Enoch will be placed alongside Paul’s use of the writings of Epimenides as a quotation made to illustrate a point, not to endorse its source.

It was remarkable to hear, from a presenter who had already stated his view that the PA is an interpolation, the review of a substantial amount of external evidence in favor of the early date of the passage.  The evidence presented by Wasserman practically requires the existence of a manuscript of John with the PA in the early 200s, contemporary with P66 (the earliest Greek manuscript that does not include the PA).  As Keith (I think) quipped at one point during the conference, we don’t see the fire – i.e., the manuscripts have not survived – but we see a lot of smoke – i.e., we see evidence that there were Greek manuscripts in the 200s that included the PA.

The 2014 Pericope Adulterae Symposium: Part 1: John David Punch: Ecclesiastical Suppression of the PA

On April 25-26, I had the pleasure of attending the conference on John 7:53-8:11 (the Pericope Adulterae) that was held at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina.  Five scholars answered the following questions and explained their answers: 

            (1)  Is this passage original to John’s Gospel, or is it a later interpolation?

            (2)  Should it be proclaimed or proscribed?

This conference was very timely, because earlier in 2014, calls for the removal of John 7:53-8:11 from the text of the Gospel of John were made online by Dr. Jim Hamilton (of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky), Dr. Owen Strachan (of Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky), and Dr. Denny Burk (also of Boyce College).  Daniel Wallace, of Dallas Theological Seminary (where Hamilton studied), has been expressing the same sentiment since 2008.  Andreas J. Köstenberger (of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary), in his 2004 commentary (in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament series), likewise declared that these 12 verses “should not be regarded as part of the Christian canon.”

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John David Punch went first – which is always a tough position, since the first presenter can’t easily react to the others, but they can respond to him.  His view is that that pericope adulterae is genuine and that it was ecclesiastically suppressed by some pious church-authorities who felt that the story was likely to cause simple-minded readers to view adultery as a minor and easily overlooked offense. 

Punch offered several pieces of internal evidence to support the Johannine character of the PA, or, at least, to answer charges that it is non-Johannine.  Rather than interrupting the surrounding text in chapters seven and eight, the PA is consistent with its context.  The imagery of Jesus writing with His finger, as a prelude to the dispensing of divine mercy, is just the sort of contrast with Moses (who gave the Law written by the finger of God; cf. Exodus 31:38) that one might expect from John.  Jesus’ instruction to “Sin no more” is very similar to His words in John 5:14.  

Punch also pointed out that (as Alan Johnson as observed) the charge that the vocabulary used in the PA is non-Johannine is greatly reduced when one considers, first, that John 2:13-17 has roughly congruent proportions of once-used words and Lukan words, and, second, that the PA has several Johannine features, and, third, that 8:12 does not (contrary to the claims of some commentators) smoothly interlock with 7:52:  the scene at the end of 7:52 is a gathering of the chief priests and Pharisees and their officers, without Jesus present, whereas Jesus is present with them (and the rest of the crowd) in 8:12.  Punch also briefly reviewed the external Greek evidence, noting that the evidence for the omission of the PA is early but is mainly limited, textually, to the Alexandrian text and, geographically, to the vicinity of Egypt.       

            

Turning to patristic evidence, Punch pointed out that the non-use of the PA by some patristic writers may be an effect of their (or their predecessors’) reluctance to preach about the passage in church-services.  Ambrose and Augustine, both of whom accepted the passage, convey that some individuals regarded the story of the adulteress as a risky passage to entrust to those who might be looking for an excuse for sin.  The loss of the PA in the early Alexandrian transmission-line was probably initiated by a bold editor who was similarly motivated.

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Some thoughts:

I felt that Punch’s case would have been more forceful if he had selectively utilized some of Burgon’s (and Ehrman’s) points about orthodox corruptions (see Burgon’s “Causes of Corruption,” pages 211-231), so as to show that some orthodox individuals boldly removed theologically difficult words, phrases, and verses from their exemplars so as to protectively prevent misunderstandings or misapplications; while the removal of the PA would be (if Punch is correct) the largest such orthodox excision, it would thus be special only in terms of its size.  Another point that might favor his theory is that in the early churches, if forgiveness was granted to a Christian who, after baptism, committed adultery, it was only after a long period of penance.  If, sometime in the 100’s, opponents of such a strict standard appealed to the PA as a basis for leniency, a ruthless bishop might react by removing the passage. 

In the Q-&-A time, I asked Dr. Punch why those who found the PA offensive to pious sensibilities would be offended by the opening verses 7:53-8:2, and remove those three verses along with the rest.  He acknowledged that this is not easy to explain.

The Pericope Adulterae: A Tour of the External Evidence

John 7:53-8:11 -- the story about the adulteress -- is in the process of being rejected as Scripture by many evangelical seminary professors.  They want it out of the text.  They say it must go.

For those who keep up with the currents of New Testament textual criticism, this is not news.  The RSV, when it first came out, did not have these verses in the text of John.  The NEB moved the entire passage to the end of the Gospel of John, presenting them as a separate text.  That was 1946 and 1961 -- and the theological hue of the translators of the RSV and NEB was not distinctly evangelical.  But the influence of the scholars responsible for those translations has trickled down.  Now it is 2014, and evangelical seminary professors such as Daniel Wallace and James Hamilton are calling for the removal of John 7:53-8:11 from the text of the Gospel of John. 

It's a complicated textual subject.  But to a lot of folks, it seems so simple:  Bruce Metzger said that the evidence against these 12 verses is overwhelming, and Metzger -- and the commentators whose research on the subject consisted mainly of reading Metzger -- must be right, since he was an expert, right?  And if you want to retain the passage in the text, you must be stuck in a "tradition of timidity," and nobody wants to be stuck in a tradition of timidity, right?

Of course not!  We want to boldly follow the evidence.  But somehow, when it comes to describing the evidence in an even-handed and balanced way, the scholars calling for the removal of John 7:53-8:11 from the text of the Gospel of John seem . . . timid.  They convey that the KJV has these verses because of half a dozen Greek manuscripts.  They do not tell their readers that the pericope adulterae is in over 1,300 Greek manuscripts.  They tell their readers that the passage is found in some manuscripts after Luke 21:38, as if it floated there from some unknown source -- as if "some" is the most precise estimate the commentators can muster, and as if they have no inkling why the passage would be in that location.  They say that no Greek commentator until the 1100s comments on these verses -- but they don't say exactly how many complete Greek commentaries on John were made in the period before that, and they say nothing about Latin commentators.

Look through Dan Wallace's online article "My Favorite Passage That's Not In The Bible," (you might notice that the 2008 form of the article is not identical to the identically titled article that appeared in 2007) and find where he tells his readers what Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome were saying about the Pericope Adulterae in the 300s and early 400s.  What's that you say?  There's nothing about any of their statements?  Hmm.  He recommended that you consult the text-critical note about this passage in the NET, so let's try there.  What's that you say?  They are not mentioned there either?  Hmm.  Maybe look, instead, for some mention of the Didascalia, or Pacian, or Ambrosiaster.  Can't find them?  Hmm. 

Try James Hamilton's recent blog-post about the Pericope Adulterae from March 30, 2014, in which he calls on preachers not to preach from this passage.  Did you find the references to Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine yet?  No?  Instead you found a repetition of Metzger's claim, and the ESV's vaguely worded footnote, and strained arguments based on cherry-picked internal evidence, didn't you.  Hmm.  Were these writers aware of the testimony of Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine?  Of course they were.  They wouldn't be so negligent and irresponsible as to advocate the removal of 12 verses without carefully looking into the evidence.  Then why didn't they mention it? 

Perhaps, when looking for a "tradition of timidity," you will find it among writers who have been timid about presenting the evidence about the Pericope Adulterae in an even-handed way.   As an antidote for that timidity I offer a small book:  The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) - A Tour of the External Evidence.      

http://www.amazon.com/The-Pericope-Adulterae-John-External-ebook/dp/B00JL6JDHA

I don't aspire to answer every question about John 7:53-8:11 by means of this book.  It does not explore the internal evidence (which Alan Johnson has done, in some detail), and the analysis offered in it is brief.  But at least it might help level the playing field, so to speak, which for some time has been tilted by commentators who, when it comes to describing numerous pieces of evidence about John 7:53-8:11, seem to have been very timid indeed.