Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 4. The Quest for Origins

The woman taken in adultery (John 7:53-8:11)

Handle with care. Do not use this passage to mock. It is loved, and scholars including Ehrman allow it may reflect a genuine tradition about Jesus. Attack the manuscript history, never the story's moral content.

In short

• 1.Absent from the earliest and best Greek manuscripts of John.
• 2.Unknown to the Greek Fathers who commented on John verse by verse.
• 3.Its vocabulary and style differ from the rest of the Gospel.
• 4.Some manuscripts place it elsewhere in John, and some after Luke 21:38 — a sign of a floating tradition.

The claim being examined

'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone' is among the best-known passages in the Gospels.

The Islamic position

It is also among the clearest examples of a beloved passage that was not in the book — which is exactly why it should be raised carefully and without triumph.

Analysis

Ehrman notes that the passage's manuscript displacement — appearing at different points in different copies — is a classic marker of an insertion, since scribes had to decide where to put it. He is careful to say that the story may well preserve an authentic memory of Jesus; the claim is about its place in John's Gospel, not about its moral worth. That distinction is worth reproducing exactly in conversation.

From the Bible

Sources

Bart D. Ehrman · Bruce M. Metzger · Bart D. Ehrman, *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), ch. 2 and 4, pp. 63-65

More in 4. The Quest for Origins

• John Mill's thirty thousand variants and the storm of 1707
• How scholars decide which reading is original
• The last twelve verses of Mark (16:9-20)
• Tischendorf and Codex Sinaiticus