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 (PBUH). 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 (PBUH); 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

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