Comparative Theology · Additions & Interpolations

The Woman Caught in Adultery (John 7:53-8:11)

Handle with care. Never use this card to imply the story is immoral or invented to deceive. Many scholars think the tradition is old; the issue is its place in John.

In short

• 1.Missing from every early Greek manuscript of John
• 2.In later manuscripts it wanders: after John 7:36, at the end of John, even into Luke
• 3.Its Greek style is closer to Luke than to John

The claim being examined

One of the best-loved passages in the Gospels — 'let him who is without sin cast the first stone' — is absent from the earliest manuscripts of John.

The Islamic position

Islam affirms the mercy of God and does not object to the sentiment of the story. The point is textual: a passage universally cited as the words of Jesus is a later insertion.

Analysis

The passage is unknown to the earliest witnesses of John and is not commented on by the Greek Fathers who worked verse by verse through the Gospel. When it does appear, copyists were unsure where it belonged, placing it at four different points across the manuscript tradition — a classic marker of a floating oral tradition later fixed in writing. Scholars generally regard the story as ancient and possibly authentic as a tradition, while agreeing it was not part of John as written. Modern Bibles set it off with brackets and a footnote.

Side by side

From the Qur'an

From the Bible

Sources

Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus · Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament

More in Additions & Interpolations

• 1 Corinthians 14:34-35: The Silence of Women
• Fairness Check: What This Argument Does and Does Not Prove
• John 5:4 and the Angel at the Pool
• The Bloody Sweat and 'Father, Forgive Them'
• The Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7-8)
• The Long Ending of Mark (16:9-20)