Woman Caught in Adultery

There’s a claim in the story of the woman caught in adultery (John 8) as well as an unresolved issue. The story was intended as a trap for Jesus which he managed to outwit (v 6) without violating the Law.

The claim was “she was caught in the act”. The requirement of the Law was that there must be multiple witnesses (Deut 17:6-7, 19:15). Yet when Jesus asked for witnesses, none were present or willing to say they were witnesses.

The unresolved issue was that under the Law both of the adulterers should be put to death (Lev 20:10). Yet, only the woman (not the man) were brought to Jesus.

It’s purely a hypothetical but if they had followed the Law they never would have brought her to Jesus to judge in the first place. Under the Law, He wasn’t the one to judge and the ones to throw the first stones had to be the actual eyewitnesses.

Implicitly though, it’s a witness that He is the Judge of the Universe. They just jumped the gun on the Day of Judgment.

We should all be thankful that God is plenteous in mercy and slow to judge. If we got what we deserved there’d be no man left on the Earth.

Manuscript Traditions

I looked at Blessed Theophylact’s Commentary on John and he didn’t include the story. I wonder if he was using the Alexandrian NT mss which do not include the story (our oldest text types). The Byzantine mss tradition did include the story.

The Pericope Adulterae is absent or marked with asterisks (indicating doubt) in some early Greek manuscripts, such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. However, it is present in the majority of later Byzantine manuscripts, which form the basis of the Orthodox Church’s New Testament text. As a result, the passage is broadly accepted in Orthodox liturgy and tradition.

The OSB footnote says “…[the pericope] is read on one of the two days when St Mary of Egypt, a reformed prostitute, is commemorated.”