This Sunday we’re continuing our series through John’s Gospel. If you are reading this in the NIV, then you’ll no doubt see the marginal note, ‘The earliest manuscripts, and many other ancient witnesses do not have Jn.7:53-8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36; John 21:25; Lk.21:38 or Lk.24:53’. The NIV has also put a line above and below this text, and printed it in smaller and italic font.
All of which raises the question of whether we should see this as part of the Bible or not. The impression created by the NIV is one of suspicion. You’re left with the feeling that mostly it wasn’t included, but some versions sort of did - wholly or in part - but weren’t really sure where to put it. Other conteomporary versions are more circumspect, and most simply have a shorter note explaining that some early texts don’t have this passage but make no alteration to the font in which it is printed. So, is this part of the Bible or not? The fact that we like the story doesn’t justify us including it in the text of the Bible, or our preaching from it as if it is the Word of God (as it will be confessed to be in our service).
The first thing to say is that there is a genuine question here. That there are some ancient texts of John’s Gospel that don’t include this passage is a simple matter of historical fact. The question is: What does that fact mean?
Are we to conclude that the orginal text of John’s Gospel (i.e. the one written by John!) didn’t include the passage, but that at some point later (several centuries later apparently) someone remembered or (re-)discovered that this had happened, and edited the text of John’s Gospel accordingly. Possibly the change wasn’t universally accepted for a long time, but eventually it was, and it found it’s home here at the start of the what we now call John 8. On such an interpretation, while it isn’t impossible for the story of the woman caught in adultery to be considerd as inspired Scripture in the same sense as the rest of John, it is pretty difficult to avoid a sense that it isn’t at quite the same level!
Of all possible interpretations of the evidence, this is - by far - the least plausible. As a way of constructing the history of the text it is staggeringly unlikely. And it is interesting that very few even of the most liberal scholars advocate its removal from John’s Gospel, accepting the story as a genuine event in Jesus’ life, even if not originally part of the Gospel.
What are we to make of this?
The first thing to remember is that the Early Church had an immensely high view of the nature of the Bible. Today, we are quite used to Christians suggesting that the Bible isn’t really inspired. There are a number of different ideas floating around the Church these days that suggest that bits of the Bible are inspired, but others are more human (and therefore less trustworthy); or that the Bible becomes the inspired word of God when it is read; or that it ‘contains’ the Word of God; or that it is merely the evolving human awareness of God charted over time (and therefore not really isnpired at all); or that it only inspring, rather than inspired. And a host of other ideas that one way or another call into question the historical catholic belief that the Bible is the inspired word of God in that what the Bible says God says.
There are any number of ways of demonstrating this fundamental fact of Church history, both from simpy reading how Jesus, the Apostles and other early Christians viewed the Bible as the direct speech of God, to citing a number of the Early Church Fathers and early Bishops, who are unanimous in their testimony. Just in case you’re interested:
Clemens Romanus (90-100) speaks of the Scriptures as ‘the true utterances of the Holy Ghost’;
Clement of Alexandria (150-211) affirms that the Christian faith is ‘received from God through the Scriptures’;
Origen (185-254) holds that the Holy Spirit is the co-worker with the evangelists in the compiling of the Gospels, and that therefore lapse of memory, error or falsehood was impossible to them;
Irenaeus (c.200) describes Scripture in terms of its ‘perfection’ as God’s spoken words;
Polycarp (69-155) describes Scripture as the voice the Most High, and condemns as ‘the firstborn of Satan’ all who would pervert its words;
Tertullian (160-225) refers to Scripture as ‘the writings and the words of God’
Augustine teaches that since Scriptures is God’s word, the human authors could not and did not err at any point.
I explore this in a sermon here: https://www.mie.org.uk/nicene-creed (He has spoken through the Prophets)
There is a separate discussion about how the Church came to recognise the Canon of Scripture, but that is a separate discussion and one that would make this blog-post even lengthier than it threatens to be. The Church had a strong sense of recognising the Scripture as the actual Word of God, and of treating it with such reverence, that Bishops and clergy who in times of persecution handed over copies of the Bible to the authorities were stripped of their office. The idea that a Church that held such a high view of the Bible as the Word of God would countenance someone adding a passage centuries after the Canon was set simply beggars belief. One early theologian (Marcion) tried to permanently remove parts of the Bible was ex-communicated for his troubles!
The second thing to observe is that there are (very) early - likely the earliest - editions of John’s Gospel that do include this passage. Papias, a disicple of John in the first century, certainly knew the story and preached from it, and indeed in the West (the ‘Latin Fathers’, including Jerome who had no hesitation about including it in the Vulgate translation of the Bible at the end of the 4th Century) it has always featured. It is also found in ‘The Apostolic Constitutions’ (a sort of early Church equivalent to the Book of Common Prayer dating from the 200’s).
The actual question seems to be: What was going on in the Eastern, Greek speaking Churches, where the evidence is more ambiguous, and the texts which omit this passage are found. The answer is in fact an open secret. Augustine and Ambrose both speak to and explain the Church’s retiscense to go public with this passage. The story had been used by those arguing against the Christian faith to claim that Jesus condoned sexual immorality; and as such it was ‘hidden’, or withdrawn from the Church’s public writings. It makes more sense of the evidence to think of it as being part of the original text, but that it was ‘hidden’ from (some editions of) John’s Gospel, because the explosive reality of Jesus’ grace was so scandalous, so open to misinterpretation and abuse that some parts of the Church felt it should be withdrawn from the public domain and taught only within the closed parameters of the faithful; where it could be safely explained at length. We may judge this to have been an unhelpful decision, but in the context of a beseiged Church that prized asceticism, and that saw their sexual purity as a powerful missional distinctive, it can be at least understood.
This isn’t as strange as it first sounds. In parts of the Early Church, even passages like Matt.6 (including the Lord’s Prayer) weren’t taught to converts until they had passed through a 3-year discipleship programme. There was a great deal more secrecy in a Church that was persecuted and that faced significant anti-Christian propoganda. Non-Christians weren’t allowed to be present at a Communion service; and in fact Christians were also excluded until they had completed the Catechumenate. They were often completely ignorant of the nature of the Lord’s Supper (even of the fact that it consisted of bread and wine) until that time.
As it is, the concensus of the universal Church for centuries has received this passage as an authentic part of John’s Gospel. There are good arguments for seeing it’s place as integral to the original Gospel of John. The whole epsiode makes complete sense in the light of Jesus having declared Himself to be the Fountain of Life, and the Source / Spring of Living Water the previous day; and seems necessary as providing the context of time and place for what is happening from 8:12 onwards. It also fits the rhythm and structure of John’s Gospel, which uses a story to introduce and to set up the themes of the teaching that follows (e.g. feeding of 5,000, followed by Jesus teaching He is the Bread of Life). In this case, John is using the story to set up Jesus’ teaching on being the Light of the world (see John.3:19-21); His teaching on being the Judge, and the danger of dying in sin etc.
So… When we read this passage tomorrow and say' ‘This is the Word of the Lord’, we have every confidence in responding: ‘Thanks be to God’.