Pericope de Adultera: blog

Adam Clarke: New Collection Available at LOGOS

2011-12-08T01:48:00.000-08:00

The following notice has been approved by the PA website Moderators:

'A Collection has just been made available on our site (Logos Bible Software) called The Works of Adam Clarke (24 vols.). We offer it digitally and with all the perks of our advanced software, like extensive cross-referencing tools, powerful searches, and word studies, to name a few.

You can find it here:

The Works of Adam Clarke

If you find it interesting or feel that it might benefit any of your blog followers ...

Thanks, and blessings!
Laura Converse

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Apocryphal Gospel of Peter and Jn 8:1-11

2011-10-28T18:33:00.000-07:00

The following is an excerpt from the Article by Nazaroo on G-Peter.

Gospel of Peter:
& John 8:1-11

The Gospel of Peter does not quote John 8:1-11. Yet it provides an interesting piece of circumstantial evidence which, while by no means 'proving' its existance and placement in the 2nd century, can only be interpreted as a mild positive inference.
The 'Gospel of Peter' (GPeter) is agreed by most scholars to be a 2nd century production, secondary to the canonical Gospels. Nonetheless its existance in some form by the mid 2nd century is confirmed by its mention by early Christian writers, and some smaller found fragments.
The next significant fact regarding GPeter is that whoever wrote it appears to be familiar with the (real) Gospel of John. Of particular note is the detail given regarding the taunting of the soldiers:

'And they threw a purple robe round Him and made Him sit upon the Judgement Seat, and said, "Judge justly, king of Israel!".

- Gospel of Peter 3:2 (v7)

This appears to be a plain reference to John 7:24,

"Judge not according to (mere) appearance, but judge righteous (true) judgement!"

- John 7:24

This particular way of expressing things only appears in John. The concept is more developed and simplified in Matthew for instance:

"Judge not, that you not be judged: for with the judgement that you judge, you shall be judged; and with the measure you mete out, it shall be measured back to you again."

- Matt. 7:1-2

GPeter 3:2 (v7) then, seems most closely related to John 7:24, and appears to have been inspired by that Gospel. While this does not 'prove' a dependancy upon John, the evidence is in favour of this view and has some substance.
But if we accept this plausible and reasonable premise, something else becomes immediately of import:

Why does GPeter emphasize this?

GPeter records the soldiers actually mocking Jesus as a judge, a back-reference to something in His earthly ministry that relates to this theme.
If the Gospel of John contained only the terse saying in Jn 7:24, but no actual 'trial-like' incident such as the one immediately following (John 8:1-11), then this would be non-sequitous, and almost inexplicable.

'What's the big deal?' the reader might ask, upon reading GPeter. What is GPeter trying to say?

But if we assume that the Gospel of John was in the basic form we have it now, complete with the incident of John 7:53-8:11 in its traditional place, at least by the middle of the 2nd century A.D., then immediately the story detail in GPeter becomes obvious.
The "Judeans" (scribes and Pharisees) are furiously mocking Jesus because He had in fact 'acted as a judge', making a ruling which humiliated and defeated His accusers before all of Israel. And now both the motivation and specific reference to this unique act of revenge recorded in GPeter becomes clear.
Whether or not John 7:53-8:11 is authentic or was found in every copy of John is not the main point. Its simply this: GPeter may have known of it and had apparently accepted the story as an authentic tradition about Jesus in the mid 2nd century A.D., and his knowledge of the passage appears to have come from John's gospel.
While this evidence is only circumstantial and indirect in nature, its preponderance is in favour of the existance of John 7:53-8:11 in John's gospel, however slim this preponderance may be.

Remarkable New Linguistic Evidence

Of special significance is the unexpected testimony regarding grammar and style that GPeter unconsciously provides. It was formerly argued (by Samuel Davidson in 1848 and others) that as a matter of style, John the Evangelist preferred words like "πρωιας" for "early morning" and that the presence of "Ορθρου" in the Pericope de Adultera (v. 8:2) was a "Lukanism" (it also appears in Acts), indicating that John 7:53-8:11 was by another hand.
Yet the 2nd century Greek author of Gospel of Peter clearly used both expressions, ("πρωιας" 9:1/ v34 & "Ορθρου" 12:1 / v50 ) and had no stylistic preference for one or the other. Whether or not GPeter varies his vocabulary for reasons of style or for precision of meaning hardly matters. The point is that a near-contemporary of John the Evangelist found no difficulty in using both expressions, just as they appear together in the Gospel of John.
If someone were to object that GPeter must have copied this conflated stylism from John, then obviously the author of GPeter inadvertantly testifies of the presence of the Pericope de Adultera in John's Gospel.

Eerie Parallels to Pericope De Adultera

The surviving passage from the Gospel of Peter provides even more eerie parallels to John 8:1-11:

In verse 1:1, GPeter refers to the "judges of Herod", an expression seemingly unheard of elsewhere. Why 'judges' rather than 'princes' or 'rulers', 'captains' etc.?
In 2:3 (v5) we find the unusual "For it is written in the Law..."...While the dialogue is suspiciously artificial, the expression is also similar to that of the Pharisees in John 8:5.
In 3:2 (7), 'they...made Him sit upon the judgement seat and said, "Judge justly, King of Israel!"' has already been mentioned. (John 8:2 etc.)
In 4:1 (10), "but He kept silent..." again stands out, as the phrases accumulate. (see John 8:6,8)
In 5:3 (17), "they ... brought their sins upon their own heads' is again remarkable, as the story builds.
In 5:6 (20), the mention of "the temple" is also striking. (John 8:2)
In 6:1 (21) we find Jesus' "hands" mentioned in close proximity to the phrase "on the ground", both rare expressions in themselves (e.g., John 8:6 etc.)
In 7:1 (25) we have repeated 'over-determination' in "Jews and elders and priests", and again in 8:1 (28) "scribes and Pharisees and elders". The inclusion of elders is unusual in passion accounts, and raises an eyebrow. 8:4 (31) also mentions "elders" (e.g. John 8:9)
8:1 (28) needs a second mention, for "all the people" (ho laos), and "He must have been innocent" (John 8:2, 7)
9:1 (34) is surely unique, mentioning "At dawn..." ('orthrou'), a phrase only appearing in John 8:2 and Luke 24:1. Later, GPeter also uses "early" ('proi') in 12:1 (50), just as John the Evangelist does (John 8:2, John 20:1)
7:1 (25) 'the elders and the priests, ...began to lament and say "Woe unto [us for] our sins! The judgement and the end of Jerusalem is near!"' The mention of the destruction of Jerusalem (c. 70 A.D.) makes the text relatively late, but the similarity to John 8:9 is striking, even if GPeter actually exaggerates and inserts anachronistically here.
8:6 (33) "they pitched a tent there" could ironically allude to the Feast of Booths, the occasion of John 8:1-11. It is an odd detail as well.
12:1 (50) "Early on the Lord's Day, Mary Magdala..." a woman with a dubious past takes the central stage for a moment. (see John 8:3)
12:5 (54) the "stone" and the verb "cast" are cleverly placed together, although the story hardly requires this embellishment. (compare John 8:7)
14:2 (59) is perhaps most remarkable of all, for each "went to his own home" (compare John 7:53!)

We honestly couldn't contrive more parallels if we deliberately set out to fabricate a passion account. Can so many coincidences really be accidental? No such similar parallel can be drawn from any other passion account. The best one can do is a few minor parallels here and there.
It seems from this evidence that something more than just "having the Gospel of John before him" was at work in the composition of this piece. Why so many seemingly superfluous insertions, all bearing a relation to John 8:1-11?

Luke and the PA

2011-10-14T15:07:00.000-07:00

"The Synoptic Problem becomes significant here:

Did John (or an interpolator) have access to Luke, or did Luke have access to John in writing Luke/Acts?

John appears to take great pains to maintain independance from the Synoptic Gospels, in regard to both style and content. He appears only to make direct reference to Mark, and makes no effort to use or even confirm the 'Q' material from Luke and Matthew.
Yet a handful of peculiar clauses and expressions are shared between John and Luke: Why would John insert these phrases into his own Gospel in such a random manner, with no apparent purpose?

If Luke made Use of John...

But what if Luke was composed after John, and had access to it, or at least to traditions originating in the Johannine community? In fact, a remarkable number of passages in Luke appear to depend upon the Johannine tradition, such as Luke 9:55-56 (cf. Jn 3:16-17), Luke 10:1-24, especially 10:2-3 (cf. Jn 4:35-36), and 10:21-22 (cf. Jn 5:25-27, 8:42-43, 10:27-30 etc.), Luke 11:29-36 (cf. Jn 2:18 etc.), and Luke 12:14 (cf. Jn 8:15-16).
The parallels between Luke 11:20 (cf. Jn 8:6,8!), and especially Luke 21:37-38/Acts 5:21 (cf. Jn 7:53-8:2) become now become more explicable. Luke takes the Johannine traditions and works them into his compilation of previous written and oral tradition, modifying them extensively just as he has done with Mark. Luke openly confesses as much, in the first 4 verses (Luke 1:1-4).
Most importantly, now the amazing parallel in Luke 21:37-38 takes on a new meaning: Besides providing the authoritative background for Luke's following material, Luke carefully preserves together material from both sides of the apparent 'seam' between John 8:1 and 8:2. Could Luke have done this to prevent or combat the physical cutting apart of this seam and removal of John 8:2-11?
If so, Luke would become the earliest known witness to the authenticity of the Pericope de Adultera!

- Nazaroo

G.A. Clark on the PA and TC

2011-09-30T08:58:00.000-07:00


G.A. Clark

In 1986 (revised 1990) G.A. Clark issued a small book(let) entitled, Logical Criticisms of Textual Criticism (Trinity Foundation, Maryland; 70 pgs).

It is only an introductory view of the subject, but before dismissing it out of hand, a word or two about G. A. Clark is in order. He was a well-educated, highly respected Presbyterian theologian.

"He began teaching at the University of Pennsylvania after receiving his bachelor's degree and also taught at Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia. In 1936, he accepted a professorship in Philosophy at Wheaton College, Illinois, where he remained until 1943, when he accepted the Chairmanship of the Philosophy Department at Butler University in Indianapolis. In 1973, he retired from Butler University and taught at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, and Sangre de Cristo Seminary in Westcliffe, Colorado. ...Clark was a prolific author who wrote more than forty books, including texts on ancient and contemporary philosophy, volumes on Christian doctrines, commentaries on the New Testament and a one-volume history of philosophy. "

- wikipedia on G. H. Clark.

When approaching Textual Criticism, Clark was humble, but his extensive knowledge, scientific and linguistic training, should not be underestimated. In writing his booklet, his concern was always to clarify and assist the ordinary Christian layman, not pander to academics. He remained a firm believer in the traditional Bible and the Protestant faith. In his chapter on John's gospel, he faces the Pericope de Adultera head-on:

"This is the passage concerning Jesus' judgment of the woman whom the Pharisees caught in the very act of adultery. It is the longest and probably the most peculiar textual problem in all the New Testament; and though the liberal critics would not say so, the consevative scholars must admit that it is the most difficult also." ( - Gordon H. Clark, p. 37)

He is certainly right in recognizing both the size and difficulty of the textual problem. Dean John Burgon held the same view over 120 years ago:

"I have purposely reserved for the last the most difficult problem of all: namely, those 12 famous verses of St. John's Gospel (7:53-8:11) which contain ...the Pericope de Adultera ... It is altogether indispensable that the reader should approach this portion of the Gospel with the greatest amount of experience and the largest preparation."

( - John Burgon, the Pericope de Adultera)

On pg 39, Clark briefly reviews the so-called 'textual evidence' as typically presented, and remarks:

"On the basis of this evidence [alone], it is doubtful that the original contained the verses because it is unlikely that so many scribes would have deleted it. On the other hand, if it was not in the original , how can one explain so many manuscripts that include it?" (Clark , p. 39)

This is the other side of the same coin. The very 'textual evidence' that is held to be against the passage simply cannot be explained any better by just rejecting the passage. This is because the evidence itself is irrepairably split, and some other mechanism and/or explanation must be sought beyond textual evidence alone; that evidence is not only ambiguous, but self-contradictory, and self-condemning.

Clark then turns to the pre-textual situation (the extant manuscripts only go back to about 250-300 A.D. with Papyri P66 and P75). Since all critics are in the same boat, Clark proposes an alternate conjecture:

"...it will be at least a possibility [that] just perchance the Apostle John himself wrote a second edition of his Gospel, adding a paragraph. [second editions often have additional material added]. ...Could not John have don similarly?" ( - Clark, p. 39)

Its an interesting idea. Many critics have felt this both a necessary and plausible solution to the fact that there are two very divergent versions of the book of Acts (i.e., 2 editions released by Luke). But as Clark himself acknowledges, this is not a necessary hypothesis.

Instead Clark prefers to turn to internal evidence, like Hodges and Farstad do (Majority Text, etc.), to seek additional evidence that could tip the scales in one direction or another. Both find evidence of John's linguistic style in John 8:6 of the passage: τουτο δε ελεγον πειραζοντες ('this they said tempting him'). Similar phrases are found in: John 6:6, 7:39, 11:51, 12:6, 33, and 21:19. Hodges and Farstad mention other keys also, but Clark is happy not to insist too strongly on those evidences:

"the [presence of] favorite introductory phrases is far from proving that someone else could not have used it occasionally. The most that can be concluded is that the phrase does not destroy authenticity.

The authors add three other, less striking items. At least the second is less striking: It is the argument that the passage fits nicely in its place. This can hardly be contested, though their evidences are slightly too many [i.e., overstated].

But if the authors have not demonstrated authenticity, their argument is quite satisfactory in undermining any counter claim. There is also a third argument, a very complex genealogical argument, too difficult to reproduce here. The data are important, but the whole requires further investigation." (p. 39-40).

Given G. H. Clark's state of knowledge in 1990, his position is a most reasonable compromise, worthy of and similar to F.H.A. Scrivener's position in the 1880s.

We now know that there is substantive additional structural evidence for the authenticity of the passage, far stronger, and more reliable than mere linguistic or stylistic evidence. We recommend reviewing this additional material below:

1997	M. Schneider	MORE internal evidence
1998	R. A. Culpepper	NEW internal evidence!
1999	J. Staley	Chiasm, Unity of ch 7-8 new!

2000	J. M. C. Scott	MORE internal evidence
2007	A. W. Wilson	MORE internal evidence

Nor should one miss the following new findings:

Moses and John 8:1-11 - Thematic Structure discovered!
O.T. Quotation Structure in John - powerful new evidence
CHIASTIC Structure (2008) & Jn 8:1-11 - new evidence!
Mount of Olives CHIASM - English Version!
Mount of Olives CHIASM - Greek Unicode

All in all, Gordon H. Clark's position on the PA has indeed held up over time, in an era of many new discoveries and advances in the study of the Holy Scriptures.

John's Connection to Mark and the PA

2011-09-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

Mark as a Base Outline for John

Mark and John are also similar in size and in the arrangement of their contents. And there seems to be a much stronger correspondence than would be indicated by the strictly 'parallel' material between the Synoptics and John.
At the same time, we can expect any Gospel to have a significant body of common material, with a (practically forced) standard arrangement /order (e.g. triumphal entry, passion, resurrection). And certain major events will act as a backbone against which the rest of the material is chronologically arranged.
We can see this basic structural outline in the position of several key events and sequences:

Shared Backbone

Its from this shared backbone that all the other elements find their relative chronological placement and correspondence between the two Gospels, Mark and John.
Although a few items are clearly displaced (e.g. the Temple Cleansing, the Annointing etc.), most other items have a surprising correspondence and connection between the Gospels. Some sections, although displaced, are only slightly and locally rearranged. One may discover that most of these minor oddities seem to have an additional structural purpose of their own.
Before assuming that diverse material is completely unrelated, we are obligated to examine the possibility that various segments which are chronologically parallel (relative to the Gospel frameworks) are related in other more subtle ways. Three obvious relations are:

(1) that parallel but divergent material is supplementary, and expands upon the (previous) narrative/discourse with which it has been paired off.
(2) that the alternate material is complimentary in some sense or function, such as for didactic purpose or ritual use.
(3) that this material is meant to create a larger wholistic 'meta-picture' which is only partially seen in individual Gospel accounts, or is even non-existant in fragments themselves.

It is only when avenues like these are exhausted, that we should probably abandon the idea that there may be a deliberate relation between the opposing passages in each Gospel. Opening up these lines of investigation allows us to consider many ways in which the Gospels may have been composed, and designed to work together.

Mark / John
Interconnections: Part I

Having accepted the possibility that John for instance has used Mark as a blueprint or structural basis for his own outline, the investigation is straightforward. Let us take the first third of the Gospel(s) and see what can be plausibly connected.

Stunning Parallels
Relaxing the requirement for strict literal parallelism gives a dramatic result: It is clear that a large portion of John interconnects with Mark. But most importantly, John is clearly meant to act as a kind of commentary or 'midrash' on Mark.
Many of the once puzzling Johannine Discourses, thought by some to have been virtually made up by John, are seen to be direct verbal interpretations of physical acts in the public ministry of Jesus. Its as though while Jesus is traveling through Galilee and Samaria, he is simultaneously debating with the Judaean authorities in Jerusalem.
We can see for instance how the Third Discourse (the Son of God Discourse, Jn 5:19-47) follows closely the narrative events in Mark 5:21-6:29. Both the chronological order of events is matched by the Discourses and the thematic content also is strongly connected, emphasized, and expanded.
Perhaps some of this exchange was historically carried out in a kind of long distance 'correspondence' between representatives from Jerusalem and Jesus/John during their public activity among the Lost Tribes of the North.
John has been written not only to function as a complete Gospel in itself, but also as a detailed commentary on Mark. This is now so evident that trying to write a commentary on Mark without consulting John appears foolish.

A Door Closes
The first Third of Mark's Gospel fittingly begins and ends with John the Baptist's ministry and testimony. What is left ringing in our ears, because of details only provided by Mark is that the Herodians (Mark 3:6) were actively behind the plot to kill Jesus. We recall that Herod had appointed and controlled the 'puppet priests', and his will was behind their organized activity, supported by the powerful Pharisees.
The Herodian party had already murdered John the Baptist, and John the Baptist's indictment against them was headed by the blatant "Accusation of Moses"(Jn 5:45) against their 'king': ADULTERY (Exod. 20:14) -

"It is not lawful for you to have her." (John Baptist, in Mark 6:18). And so this large section of the Gospel closes.

Mark / John
Interconnections: Part II

Now examining the next section, we are able to see again the same remarkable connections across both Gospels:

While some material undergoes a significant rearrangement locally, the main backbone remains full and solid, and the ADULTERY connection is glaring.
It seems quite plain that the confrontation between the Herodian religious authorities and Jesus in John's account (Jn 8:1-11) is meant to illustrate and resonate loudly with Jesus' teaching in Mark on ADULTERY and DIVORCE.
But the most powerful and remarkable feature of the whole correspondence, is that the two very difficult, almost impenetrable mysteries in John taken alone, the seemingly random "Jesus went to the Mount of Olives",(Jn 8:1) and the equally weak, almost disconnected Jn 8:12, "I am the Light of the World", suddenly jumps out at us and hits us over the head with a hammer:
John is calling to rememberance the Transfiguration on the Mount, but does not speak of it openly (he was under oath not to discuss it - Mk 9:9, but this no longer holds: yet there may be danger to parties still living in Jerusalem). Mark, writing in Rome from Peter's intimate testimony, is not under any such restriction, and happily reports the amazing event that transpired on the Mountain, including the discussion with Moses and Elijah.

Conclusion

Of course all study of Holy Scripture is a rewarding endeavour in itself.
We are content at the moment however, with revealing to the reader the remarkable evidence from the Gospel of Mark itself, as to the Authenticity of the Pericope de Adultera .
Even though we happily concede that Mark was probably written before John wrote his own Gospel, the fact that John used Mark as a base for his own supplementary historical and teaching material exposes for us the remarkable feature that John intended his story of the Woman Taken in Adultery to resonate with Mark's report.
Jesus' teaching regarding the Accusation of Moses exposed by John the Baptist against the Herodians, His teaching regarding Divorce and Adultery, is aptly contrasted with His tender mercy toward a woman caught in the middle of this epic battle between the corrupt Religious authorities of Jerusalem and the King of Kings.
Mark has become the earliest textual witness for the authenticity of John 8:1-11, being acknowledged to be the first gospel written, and penned some 150 years before the oldest known copy of any gospel.
Some may think it must end here. For how could there be an even earlier witness to the existance and authenticity of John 8:1-11?
We can only remind our brothers and sisters in Christ, that with the Lord, anything is possible. And more evidence will surely follow, since it is a task of the Holy Spirit to bring the truth of the Gospel to the light of day.

Pat Robertson on Adultery and Alzheimers

2011-09-18T01:15:00.000-07:00

Recently Pat Robertson apparently advised a man whose wife had contracted Alzheimers to divorce and remarry...

Many, such as Dr. Moore, condemned the teaching as anti-Christian, and rightfully so. What struck my eye however was another comment by a reader of the post, who went a little deeper into the issues:

"Moore completely missed the point, although everything he said is good and right. Folks, did you not hear what Pat Robertson subtly said in the interview? He called Alzheimer’s a type of “death,” and on THAT basis, justified divorce. This is the exact same trap, in principle, that virtually every Christian pastor and writer has fallen for in the matter of divorce on the grounds of—not Alzheimer’s but—adultery. From John MacArthur to Tony Evans to James Dobson to Charles Swindol to Charles Stanley and on and on, they argue that when a spouse commits adultery, such adultery amounts to the death of the marriage, since in the Old Testament, adultery would have resulted in the death penalty of the guilty spouse, hence, no more marriage. Therefore, they argue, in the New Testament, divorce is the “gracious” alternative to the death penalty that would have otherwise ensued. What Pat Robertson did is no different in principle than what any of your favorite preachers do when they say that adultery kills a marriage and therefore divorce is OK. We need to set the record straight with ALL these guys, not just Pat Robertson, and say that death means death; Alzheimer’s doesn’t kill a marriage, and neither does adultery. Divorce is not the alternative to the Old Testament death penalty; forgiveness is! You have no right to criticize Pat Robertson’s “Alzheimer’s-equals-death-of-marriage” view if you yourself hold the “adultery-equals-death-of-marriage” view. Both are built on the same premise and both must be condemned. “Till death us do part” does not include adultery any more than it includes Alzheimer’s, or any other thing we want to insert that we believe “kills” a marriage, including desertion, or incompatibility. Death means casket-death, and nothing less. If you’re going to criticize Pat Robertson, you must attack the foundation of his premise, which is that Alzheimer’s amounts to the death of a marriage. But if you’re going to do that, then you must [also] be consistent and condemn the view that says adultery amounts to the death of a marriage."

James Snapp Jr's Observations on Asterisks

2011-09-10T11:17:00.000-07:00

In his discussion of the Ending of Mark, James Snapp Jr. had some remarks concerning the function and meaning of different forms of asterisks in the margin of manuscripts. His observations however, equally apply to manuscripts which have marks in the margin beside John 7:53-8:11:

----------------------------------------------------- QUOTE ---

Msg #6619:

'Bruce Metzger wrote that

"Not a few manuscripts which contain the passage have scribal notes stating that older Greek copies lack it, and in other witnesses the passage is marked with asterisks or obeli, the conventional signs used by copyists to indicate a spurious addition to a document." (Bruce Metzger, p. 123, A Textual Commentary on the Greek N. T., � 1971 by the United Bible Societies.)

The second part of Dr. Metzger's statement is incorrect. To the best of my knowledge, not a single manuscript that does not have a note about the passage has been shown to place asterisks or obeli alongside it to convey scribal doubt about the passage. When copyists wanted to signify doubt about a large passage, they ordinarily placed a *series* of asterisks or other marks alongside it. But the marks that have been claimed to signify scribal doubt about the passage in unannotated manuscripts are solitary. I looked into this, and in every case that I could track down, where the presence of a mark at Mark 16:9 has been verified, and it does not refer to a note in the margin, the same mark appears elsewhere in the same manuscript at places where there is no textual issue, but there is a lection-division."

(...See, regarding this, my earlier posts about those copies [at Willker's TC-Group]. There is still one MS in Spain that I have not been able to check out. But it's a MS with a commentary accompanying the text. Time in.)

'In other words, these manuscripts were studied superficially, and marks that were made as part of the lectionary apparatus were misidentified as if they were made to convey scribal doubt. In the real world, instead of conveying scribal doubt, they do just the opposite, showing that the passage was expected to be read in the churches as a normal part of the church-services on Ascension-day, and as part of an eleven-part series of readings about Christ's resurrection'.
...

Yours in Christ,

James Snapp, Jr.

----------------------------------------------------

...The implications for those manuscripts having singular asterisks at the beginning and end of John 7:53-8:11 (the Pericope de Adultera) are obvious.

mr.scrivener

Obscurantism on the PA

2011-08-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

I'm posting a copy of Steve Avery's observations on how the evidence regarding the PA has been handled below:

HI Folks,

This was posted on our neighborly list, a very interesting point about Johann Lange earnestly considering reasons why the PA dropped from the textline. Then later I added other elements .... consider this about 3 posts combined ! :)

====================================

Teunis van Lopik, Netherlands

Some weeks ago I acquired J.P. Lange's NT volume of his German Bibelwerk. In his commentary on the Gospel of John Lange summarized extremely clear his hypothesis on the PA's suppression theory. I wish to refer to Shaff's translation: http://www.archive.org/stream/thegospelaccordi03languoft#page/270/mode/2up p. 270-271:

====================================

Steven
Thanks, Teunis. (probably not on the forum here, but the comment is general). It is interesting to see that Johann Lange (1802-1884) takes a principled analytical approach, writing before the Hortian Tide tinged so much of the textual writings.

Yet Lange, in simply sharing a reasoned historical approach, was also going against many others who had taken a strident approach against the Pericope.

e.g. Hengstenberg properly saw the actual dichotomy:

either John's authorship, or a symbolical fiction ,

- yet declared for the 'pious fraud'.

=================

There is one side-point that I want to notice. It is a type of gross misrepresentation that seems to be common in modern textcrit, where the writer places his own conclusions and biases upon others.

> Schaff
> The whole section concerning the adulteress .... is rejected as an interpolation .... by Erasmus, Calvin (?), Beza ...

These two sources for the Lange book are a bit easier to read than archive.org:

A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: critical, doctrinal, and homiletical, Volume 3 of the NT (Gospel of John) (1871)
http://books.google.com/books?id=d5lBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA267

Lange on the PA
http://pericopedeadultera.com/AE/Lange-PA.html

Steven
There was no such "rejection as an interpolation" as claimed by Philip Schaff (1819-1893) by the learned textual scholars of the Reformation era. A "rejection as an interpolation" means removing the section from their Bibles and being very cautious in any commentary to indicate that the words are not scripture. And the (?) for Calvin does not really help, since it is a three-fold problem.

Looking at the three learned men, Beza had the strongest concerns, those of Erasmus and Calvin were mild.

Schaff's attack comment ranges from exaggeration to fabrication.

We can learn and have fun looking at the position of the three learned men.

===========================

Desiderus Erasmus

Erasmus placed the Pericope in his Greek and Latin NT, he referenced parts of the Pericope in other writings, and the Pericope was included in great depth in his paraphrase. He simply allowed some questioning :

Doddridge says:
Erasmus conjectures it might be added by St. John after some copies of his gospel had been taken ;

This sounds like simply an explanation of why it was missing in some copies. If John added the section late, hardly anyone would contest that this is an argument against scripture.

Let's note the approach to the Erasmus Paraphrase section. It is a fun read/ (And note: I believe easily a "fair use" as part of a study on the position of Erasmus on the Pericope).

Paraphrase on John - Desiderius Erasmus (1991)
Translated and Annotated by Jane E. Philipps
http://books.google.com/books?id=NiQF2JO9qUwC&pg=PA105

Erasmus:
Now, since they had noticed in him an astounding mercy and gentleness towards common folk, the humble, and the suffering, from what ought to have made them love him they hunted for a handle for an accusation. The law of Moses had decreed a stern punishment for adultery, that if a woman was caught having unlawful intercourse with a man not her husband, she should be stoned at the hands of the people. And now the men indulged themselves and acted violently against women, as if they themselves were innocent before God or were going to escape eternal punishment if, even though they committed graver sins, they had no penalties to pay under the law. For the law only penalizes public crimes. It does not punish arrogance, disdain, envy, hatred; but God condemns these more than the things that the law punishes. So as Jesus was then sitting in the temple, they brought to him a woman taken in adultery - they themselves of course being firm adherents of justice and out of zeal for the law strict against offenders, though inside they were drunk with far worse vices. They set the woman in their midst so that if she were condemned by Christ's judgment some part of the crowd would lose their enthusiasm for him, since he had won popular approval chiefly by his mildness and gentleness; but if he found her innocent, as they expected he would, they would have a charge to level against him because contrary to Moses' rule he had not feared to free an adulteress. They hoped that in the ensuing confusion he would be stoned to death instead of the woman. So then, being themselves much more criminal sinners, they accused the sinning woman before Jesus as before a judge. They said, This woman was just taken in adultery. But in the law Moses commanded us to stone such persons. So we are handing her over to the people to be stoned, unless you disagree. What then is your judgment?'

But Jesus knew secrets of human hearts, and nothing at all, no matter how hidden, escaped his awareness. In his divine wisdom he so eluded their wickedness that he snatched the sinner from the hands of those who would stone her. Yet he did not declare her innocent, lest he seem to abolish the law of Moses, necessarily applied to the control of wrongdoers, for he had come to complete the law, not abolish it. Nor did he declare her guilty, because he had come into the world not to destroy sinners, but to save them. Indeed, in the regulations that the world necessarily observes for the maintenance of public tranquillity, Jesus always so directs his words that he neither approves nor reproves but as the occasion arises warns that every wrongdoing must be shunned, not only those that are punished by the laws of princes; and that certainly in God's judgment there are worse crimes than these, crimes that the laws do not punish but that cannot escape the punishment of an avenging God. So Jesus neither refused the case put before him, since he is the judge of all, nor did he sentence the guilty woman to the people already girded up to stone her, and he did not release her from the case, since she had earned a penalty. In silence he made his defence of the woman who was being rushed to punishment, so that she might be saved for penitence and might repent for salvation. He did not answer in words, but he said more by his very act. He realized that the woman was a guilty sinner, but he knew that her accusers, who wanted to appear just, were much more criminal than she. He did not abolish the law of Moses, but he displayed the mercy of the gospel law that he himself established. He warned those who were dragging the guilty woman to their cruel punishment to sink down within themselves and examine their own conscience in light of divine law, and he warned each person to behave towards his fallen neighbour as he wished to find God his judge behaving towards himself.' Teaching us in this very act, our Lord Jesus stooped down, indicating that each person must put off the disdain and haughtiness with which he flatters himself and in pride of heart looks down on his neighbour, and must sink down within himself. And stooping he wrote on the ground, reminding us of the gospel law by which God will judge us all. The law written on tablets made them proud and arrogant in their false justice; the law written on the ground makes everyone meek and merciful to his neighbour, mindful of his own weakness.

But when the Jews pressed him to declare his judgment, though he had already declared it in his action, Jesus stood up. Standing there he stated it plainly, since they did not understand what he was doing. 'If anyone among you is free from sin,'let him be the first to throw a stone at her.' In saying this he did not absolve the guilty woman, but he did strike the conscience of everyone. Furthermore, all those who knew themselves guilty feared that Jesus, to whom, as they saw, even hidden things were perfectly well known, would bring their wrongdoings into public view. When he had thrust this barb into their hearts he stooped and wrote on the ground again, in the deed portraying what he wanted done by them. He was censuring the arrogance of those who asserted their own sanctity when they were far more criminal than those whom the law punished with a dreadful punishment. For she whom they had led out to be stoned at the people's hands had not killed her husband but in the weakness of the flesh had made her body available to another man. They, on the other hand, full of envy, hatred, slander, greed, ambition, and deceit, were planning to kill the Lord of the whole law, him who alone of all was free and pure from every sin.

At this answer from the Lord, then, all who knew themselves guilty and feared exposure went out of the temple, elders, Pharisees and scribes, priests and other leaders first, and the rest following behind. For those among them who seemed to be pillars of piety and justice were drunk within with the greatest vices. After these had left, none of whom was without blame, Jesus alone remained, who alone was free from guilt. And now the sinning woman found him who had never sinned a merciful judge, when she had almost had savage executioners in those who were themselves in bondage to worse offences. So, fearing their savagery, the wretched sinner remained alone with Jesus, a dying woman with her saviour, a sinner with the source of all sanctity. She trembled with the knowledge of her guilt, but Jesus' mercy, which showed itself on his very face, offered good hope. And in the mean time the Lord was writing on the ground, as if doing something else, so that the others should clearly have fled not out of fear of the Lord's threats but condemned by their own guilty knowledge. At last our Lord Jesus stood up, and when he saw that the place was deserted and the woman alone and frightened, addressing her gently he said, 'Woman, where are the people who were accusing you? Has no one condemned you?' She answered, 'No one, Lord.' Then Jesus said, 'And I am not going to be harsher than they, and condemn one whom they left uncondemned, for I came to save everyone. The severity of the law inflicts punishment as a deterrent; the grace of the gospel does not seek the death of a sinner but rather that he repent and live. So go and do not sin any longer.' In this example our Lord Jesus taught those who declare themselves pastors of the people and teachers of the gospel how much gentleness and how much mildness they should use with those who through weakness fall into sin. For when he in whom there was no sin at all showed himself so merciful towards a known sinner, how much gentleness ought bishops have towards wrongdoers when the bishops themselves are often in more need of God's mercy than those against whose errors they rage! Or if they are not held fast by equal faults, they certainly are not entirely pure from every stain of life; certainly in their human weakness they are capable of falling into every kind of fault.

So with the informers sent away and each one's crimes revealed to him and the sinning woman let go, Jesus used this incident to develop the conversation he had begun earlier." Sins are darkness. Those who are true and simple and are eager to appear as exactly what they are draw near to the light and are freed from the darkness, as the sinning woman approached (continues.)

=====================

Next, here is a summary of the annotation by Erasmus on the verse. This may be the first edition, apparently there was some change after the correspondence with Lee.

Jane E. Philips note
http://books.google.com/books?id=NiQF2JO9qUwC&pg=PA285
(pic of this text)
Erasmus has a long annotation on 8:3 (adducunt autem scribae et pharisaei mulierem), in which he discusses the divergent Greek and Latin traditions, citing the fact that Chrysostom and Theophylact in their explications of this Gospel pass over the episode in silence, while Augustine both writes commentary on it and cites it in his other works. Erasmus adds that Jerome acknowledged it was not found in all the manuscripts, and that Eusebius thought it imported from an apocryphal gospel; he himself prefers, because of its standing in the Western tradition, not to remove it.

Some of the Erasmus-Lee back and forth on the section is here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Zbq4IzccPqwC&pg=PA215
Concerning Note 94
I confess I could not read this annotation of Lee's without laughing. You too will laugh, dear reader, when you come to know the matter. When I was first editing the New Testament in Basel and came to the passage about the woman caught in adultery', I consulted the commentaries of Augustine to see whether he had explained this passage. By some chance or other, either because I was not attentive enough or because the sequence in the manuscript was different, I convinced myself that this passage had been passed over by Augustine. (continues)

Clearly, while Erasmus was quite open about all the issues, he did not reject the section as an interpolation.
Schaff's comment is simply false.

===========================

Theodore Beza has at least one important remark that is simply unreferenced in most of the literature:

Beza's remark that only one out of Stephanus seventeen manuscripts omits the pericope adulterae (Beyond What is Written, Jan Krans)

Jan Krans points out the lack of precision of referring to the 17 Stephanus manuscripts since only about 10 had the section, but this does not fundamentally alter the overwhelming evidence and the reference.

Beza also expressed doubt, Tregelles gives this extract:

"As far as I am concerned, I do not conceal that I justly regard as suspected what the ancients with such consent either rejected or did not know of. Also such a variety in the reading causes me to doubt the fidelity of the whole of that narration."

And the Latin of Bezae is given from George Campbell in this post, plus some other tidbits, including the urls to some minor Erasmus references.

[TC-Alternate-list] Beza's doubt over the PA - Erasmus, Cajetan, Grotius, Trent, Doddridge, Pearce in Clarke, Lamy, Campbell and Catena - Sept 5, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TC-Alternate-list/message/3489

Here is Codex Bezae (the earliest manuscript witness) in Scrivener's 1864 edition.
I'll include a pic of the first three verses:

Bezae codex Cantabrigiensis, being an exact copy, in ordinary type of the celebrated uncial Graeco-Latin manuscript of the four Gospels and Acts of the apostles:written early in the Sixth century, and presented to the University of Cambridge by Theodore Beza, A.D. 1581
http://books.google.com/books?id=maA1r5J1f48C&pg=PA118

===========================

John Calvin is interesting, since you can see a bit of the Augustine referenced concern:
("will this section of scripture match my doctrinal perspective ?")

First, the Latin edition.

In evangelium secundum Johannem commentarius pars prior (1997)
John Calvin edition by Helmut Feld
http://books.google.com/books?id=J0d4LvAOHyMC&pg=PA259

Now in English.

Calvin's Bible Commentaries: John, Part I
http://books.google.com/books?id=_-eeov3WA9wC&pg=PA263
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/comment3/comm_vol34/htm/xiv.htm
http://adultera.awardspace.com/AF/Calvin-PA.html
3. And the scribes and Pharisees bring to him.
It is plain enough that this passage was unknown anciently to the Greek Churches; and some conjecture that it has been brought from some other place and inserted here. But as it has always been received by the Latin Churches, and is found in many old Greek manuscripts, and contains nothing unworthy of an Apostolic Spirit, there is no reason why we should refuse to apply it to our advantage. When the Evangelist says that the scribes brought to him a woman, he means that it was done by an agreement among them, in order to lay traps for Christ. He expressly mentions the Pharisees, because they were the chief persons in the rank of scribes. In adopting this pretense for slander, they display enormous wickedness, and even their own lips accuse them; for they do not disguise that they have a plain commandment of the Law, and hence it follows that they act maliciously in putting a question as if it were a doubtful matter. But their intention was, to constrain Christ to depart from his office of preaching grace, that he might appear to be fickle and unsteady. They expressly state that adulteresses are condemned by Moses, (Le 20:10) that they may hold Christ bound by the sentence already given by the Law, for it was not lawful to acquit those whom the Law condemned; and, on the other hand, if he had consented to the Law, he might be thought to be somewhat unlike himself. (continues)

Notice that Calvin even comments on the commentary of Augustine:

Nor do I approve of the ingenuity of Augustine, who thinks that in this manner the distinction between the Law and the Gospel is pointed out, because Christ did not write on tables of stone, (Exod. 31:18,) but on man, who is dust and earth.

And all this is very far from a "rejection as an interpolation".

===========================

PROPER WRITING ON PERICOPE HISTORY

Earlier writers such as Thomas Hartwell Horne, George Townsend, Samuel Thomas Bloomfield, William Trollope and August Tholuck had all written far more sensibly than Schaff:

Here is one example, notice the accurate writing and balance:

A commentary on the Gospel of St. John p. 203 (1836)
August Tholuck
http://books.google.com/books?id=weMrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA203
(pic of this section)
Among the learned of later times, after slight doubts had been expressed by Erasmus, Calvin and Beza, the genuineness of this passage has been disputed by Grotius, Wetstein, Sender, Paulus, and Lucke. It has been defended by Lampe, Bengel, Michaelis, Matthaei, Storr, Kuinuel, and especially by Staudlin, Prolusio qua pericopae de adultera veritas ct authentia defenditur, P. I. II. Gott. 1806.

Similarly other writers were reasonably balanced and sensible, and gave references on both sides:

Horne - "its authenticity has been questioned"
http://books.google.com/books?id=cMNCAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA290

Townsend, Bloomfield - "impugned its authenticity"
http://books.google.com/books?id=mucGAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA315 - Townsend
http://books.google.com/books?id=BdEtAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA275 - Bloomfield

===========================

SCHAFF CONTRA SCHAFF

This type of writing by Schaff, "rejection as an interpolation" is grossly misrepresenting major historical authors. Erasmus, Beza Calvin included the verse in their commentaries and Bibles with interesting notes. Schaff is simply giving bias masked as scholarship.

He was actually in the same style as Tregelles, only Schaff was simply that much worse.

An account of the printed text of the Greek New Testament: (1854)
Samuel Prideaux Tregelles
http://books.google.com/books?id=uwc_AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA240
"yet its genuineness was not believed by Erasmus himself: the same opinion was held in that century by Calvin, Beza, and other biblical scholars."

The whole exercise becomes like a game of telephone, until a distorted emphasis becomes at best a fabrication.
In his historical writing context Schaff was reasonable.

History of the Christian church, Volume 6 (1888)
Philip Schaff, David Schley Schaff
http://books.google.com/books?id=KmAsAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA413
Erasmus ... doubted the genuineness of the pericope of the adulteress (John 8:1-11), though he retained it in
the text.

While in the Encyclopedia Schaff takes another stance.

The new Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of religious knowledge Vol 6 (1910)
http://books.google.com/books?id=PGn6gnoa4rAC&pg=PA24
It would be, for example, a serious misnomer to call John viii. 53-ix. 11 (the woman taken in adultery) an interpolation. That it is no part of the Johannine text is now agreed on all hands. Yet there are strong grounds for believing the story to be a piece of genuine and trustworthy tradition.

===========================

Jerome
". . . in the Gospel according to John in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, is found the story of the adulterous woman who was accused before the Lord."

Augustine by Zane Hodges
http://adultera.awardspace.com/FATHERS/Augustine2.html
"...certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from the manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulterous,as if He who had said, 'sin no more' had granted permission to sin..."

===========================

From Boston University, a special du jour.

Journal of Early Christian Studies
Early Christian Re-Writing and the History of the Pericope Adulterae (2006) p. 485-536
Jennifer Wright Knuth
http://bu.academia.edu/JenniferKnust/Papers/701177/Early_Christian_Re-Writing_and_the_History_of_the_Pericope_Adulterae

Jerome's younger contemporary and sometime rival Augustine was a particular fan of the pericope adulterae. He cited the story on no fewer than ten occasions, often at length, and employed the tale as a central proof-text in his treatise De adulterinis coniugiis. (p. 514)

Bruce Metzger is corrected on p. 523.

Jennifer Wright
Still, the story is largely absent from Greek exegesis until the twelfth century, leading Bruce Metzger to declare that: "No Greek father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it."134 Actually, Metzger was not quite correct. The story was cited by one Greek father during the sixth century, in a work that is not widely known and preserved only in Syriac, the Historia Ecclesiastica mistakenly attributed to Zacharias Rhetor. This citation is so remarkable that it deserves to be reproduced here:

Now there was inserted in the gospel of the holy Moro the bishop, in the eighty-ninth canon, a chapter which is related only by John in his gospel, and is not found in other manuscripts, a section running thus: "It happened one day, while Jesus was teaching, they brought Him a woman who had been found to be with child of adultery, and told Him about her. And Jesus said to them (since as God He knew their shameful passions and also their deeds), ' What does He command in the law?' And they said to Him, 'That at the mouth of two or three witnesses she should be stoned.' But He answered and said to them, 'In accordance with the law, whoever is pure and free from these sinful passions, and can bear witness with confidence and authority, as being under no blame in respect of this sin, let him bear witness against her, and let him first throw a stone at her, and then those that are after him, and she shall be stoned.' But they, because they were subject to condemnation and blameworthy in respect of this sinful passion went out one by one from before Him and left the woman. And when they had gone, Jesus looked upon the ground and, writing in the dust there, said to the woman, 'They who brought thee here and wished to bear witness against thee, having understood what I said to them, which thou hast heard, have left thee and departed. Do thou also, therefore, go thy way, and commit not this sin again.' " 135 (p.524)
(pic of footnotes)

=============================================

CLASSIC BRUCE METZGER WORD-PARSING DECEPTION

Also Jennifer Wright points out, in addition to the Greek writing above,

"Greek gospel books include several details specifying the sin and guilt of the woman's accusers." (p. 524)

describing the text of many manuscripts.
Which is a de facto exposure of the Bruce Metzger word-parsing trickery.

And this is in addition to the better known Didymus (p. 499-5020 reference.
Which Wright does not mention in this context of Metzger error and deception.

Didymus
http://pericopedeadultera.com/FATHERS/Didymus.html

And as Nazaroo points out:

http://pericopedeadultera.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html
His (Metzger) cleverly worded remark that "no Greek father" before the 12th century comments on the PA, skipping quickly over a dozen Greek-speaking Latin fathers who do comment on it. (and the sad failure to correct this by his final editor Ehrman, the very scholar who wrote a book on Didymus the Blind - a 4th century Greek father who does comment on it..).

Metzger on John 8:1-11
http://pericopedeadultera.com/DUMB/Metzger.html
But Metzger is factually incorrect here as well. One Greek father, Didymus the Blind (c. 350 A.D.!) is known to have cited the passage extensively in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, discovered in the 1940's. Metzger, writing in 1971 is hardly unaware of this important find. In fact, Ehrman, who was chosen as 'editor' of the 2nd edition of Metzger's book (2000 A.D.), felt compelled to correct this 'oversight' with a footnote, even though he himself is against the authenticity of the passage.

Chris Keith gives yet another reference, from Nicon contra Metzger, which Nazaroo also discusses (Nikon)

The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the literacy of Jesus (2009)
Chris Keith
http://books.google.com/books?id=tr3Y7KrCaoMC&pg=PA132

Now, if you do enough word-parsing, you may be technically accurate, and extremely deceptive.
That is the Metzger-Ehrman style is issues like this Pericope assertion.

==================================================

DISASSEMBLING THE METZGER-EHRMAN DECEPTION

A helpful thread from the excellent blog of Roger Pearse.
We learn more, and Metzger is also deceptive about Euthymius Zigabenus.

Euthymius Zigabenus and the Pericope Adulterae - July 29, 2009
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/?p=2223

Stephen C. Carlson
Metzger's statement is less helpful than it may first appear. The negation is tightly controlled. "Greek father" of course does not cover Jerome, nor does "comment" refer to a discussion of it by Didymus as part of a different gospel.

Roger Pearse
... Hmm, that's really misleading then. I think most people reading that statement would understand from this that there are no ancient witnesses to it (even if that is not precisely what is said). On learning different, it would not be adequate to discover that it was couched in wording that covered the writer's backside, but sort of failed to mention these other points....

================

James Snapp summary review of Metzger claim in 2008 had some of these elements.

[textualcriticism] The Pericope de Adultera - October 10, 2008 - James Snapp
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/4054

==================================================

METZGER "BORROWS" ERRORS FROM WESTCOTT AND HORT

And since Metzger is rarely original, and generally does not give his sources, we go back to the dynamic duo.

The Gospel according to st John: the authorised version with intr. and notes by B.F. Westcott (1882)
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ur0CAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA141
Tim Wellings
Could Metzger be echoing what Dr. Brooke Westcott said in his commentary on John? ....
Euthymius Zigabenus ...the earliest Greek commentator who writes upon it, observes that it is not found in "the accurate copies" or is obelized in them, and that therefore it is not to be accounted genuine.' --The Gospel According to St. John, Brooke Wescott, Page 141

[textualcriticism] The Pericope de Adultera and Greek Lectionary influence - October 10, 2008
Daniel Buck quoting Hort
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/4053
"Have you realised that the Pericope [de adultera] was apparently absolutely unknown to every Greek Father whose writings have been preserved, till Euthymius Zigabenus in the 11th century?" -

This Hort quote goes back to :

Dr. Leslie McFall - 22 Dec 2002
Subject: [tc-list] Hort on the Pericope Adultery
PASSAGES RELATING TO THE PERICOPE ADULTERY IN HORT'S UNPUBLISHED LETTERS.

And I have not seen the primary source, however Leslie McFall is quite reliable.

The Metzger "borrowing" was discussed here:

[textualcriticism] The Pericope Adulterae - Nov 9, 2005 - Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/1276
... I think it is important to point out that Metzger was repeating an assertion of
Hort. And I will conjecture that Metzger was familiar with Hort's argumentation. ...

=============================================

DANIEL WALLACE KEEPS THE METZGER JOKE WORD-PARSING ON WARM BURNER

My Favorite Passage that's Not in the Bible
Daniel Wallace
http://bible.org/article/my-favorite-passage-that%E2%80%99s-not-bible

Even patristic writers seemed to overlook this text. Bruce Metzger, arguably the greatest textual critic of the twentieth century, argued that "No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it" (Textual Commentary, 2^nd ed., loc. cit.).

Ignorance or deception ?

=============================================

JAMES WHITE KEEPS THE METZGER JOKE WORD-PARSING ON WARM BURNER

http://www.aomin.org/aoblog/index.php?itemid=4554
Nevertheless, these are the facts:
. No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it.

Ignorance or deception ?

=============================================

BART EHRMAN KEEPS THE DECEPTION GOING EVEN AFTER HELPING REFUTE ONE ASPECT OF IT HIMSELF (DIDYMUS)

Metzger-Ehrman
"No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and
Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospel do not contain it."

And Bart backtracked humorously on the textual forum, adding yet another qualification:

>> Bart Ehrman
>> I certainly don't think that it is not *mentioned* by Greek writers prior to the 12th century. The point is that the biblical commentaries on John (e.g., Origen!!) have no knowledge of it before then.<<
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textualcriticism/message/4050

Fair enough.
Here are the negative evidences of this kind:

Andrew Criddle
http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives/showpost.php?p=2440624&postcount=126
Origen did write a detailed commentary on John. It was apparently never finished but covered more than half of the Gospel. Unfortunately it does not survive complete and the detailed treatment of the end of chapter 7 and beginning of chapter 8 is among the parts missing. However a list by Origen of what he had covered in that part of John makes it unlikely that he mentioned the Pericope.

John Chrysostom wrote a detailed and original set of homilies on John without mentioning the Pericope
Cyril of Alexandria wrote a detailed commentary on John without mentioning the Pericope
Nonnus wrote a paraphrase of John in Greek hexameters without mentioning the Pericope.

Returning to Bart Ehrman, this type of report is frequent, like Metzger, he has an MD ..
Master of Disinformation.

This is how he is understood in his presentations (one of these was the lay public unfamiliar).

Ehrman on John 8:1-11
http://pericopedeadultera.com/DUMB/Ehrmin.html
(1) It is implied that the Pericope de Adultera (John 8:1-11) has been somehow accidentally added to the Bible sometime in the Middle Ages by error-prone and unsupervised scribes. .... What is most disturbing and of concern is that again Ehrman seems to be obsessing on John 8:1-11. Again at least one third of the interview is about the Pericope de Adultera, and this has been carefully crafted by Ehrman.

Will Kinney
http://brandplucked.webs.com/misquotjesusbartehrma.htm
. Mr. Erhman actually says that this story is not found in any good manuscripts before the 10th century, a 1000 years after the N.T. was written, and he tells his audience at Stanford that this story came into our English bibles via the King James Bible in 1611. This statement is totally false for a number of reasons.

And a sample response listening to parsed disinformation.

http://www.freeratio.org/thearchives/showthread.php?t=126355
He mentioned in the excerpt that the famous story in John of the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, where Jesus says "let the one without sin cast the first stone", was not in the original, and in fact did not show up in copies of the NT until the Middle of the 12th century, and it was this copy that was used in the translation of the KJV, which is why it is now in the English versions we are familiar with.

=============================================

One irony is that while Metzger, Ehrman, Wallace and White build their case largely on an "evidence from silence" yet
they show their own silence on fundamental references like Jerome and Augustine.

Here is a sample from James White when he did have to respond:

The references to Augustine, Ambrose, etc. are virtually irrelevant, as it does nothing to over-turn all of the evidence summarized above. (James White)

Talk about scholastic incoherence.

And I believe that writing a major scholastic review section on the Pericope Adultera without mentioning Jerome, Augustine and Ambrose, as done by Bruce Metzger, should be considered criminal scholarship. Why mince words ? Such is not real scholarship, it is simply agiprop, Hortian apologetics.

And this Metzger section is quoted still today by scholastic midgets like James White and Daniel Wallace, as we see above, who should have known the facts years ago. And the deceptive style continues in their own presentations.

Note: thus we can spend a lot of time on the Euthymius Zigabenus word-parsing, which is :) in a way, and miss the even more fundamental deceptions. (There are many more.)

=============================================

Note:
From Jennifer Wright Knuth, p. 526-530 is a chart of evidences.

=============================================

And I hope you enjoyed the read.
You got a package lunch here, with appetizer, main course and desert all mixed together.
So I hope it digests well.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY

Ezra Abbot's Corrections to Scrivener re: PA

2011-08-17T17:25:00.000-07:00

Warfield

In 1885, Ezra Abbot, with help from J. R. Harris, Warfield, C. R. Gregory published a 50 page list of corrections and expansions to Scrivener's Plain Introduction. The subsequent 4th edition of Scrivener (edited by Miller) corrected many of the typos and errors, and may have incorporated some of Abbot's suggestions. Consequently, Abbot's 50 page booklet fell into obscurity. It is interesting however, in that it documents some details of various MSS and readings, and also the fact that Abbot was working closely with Gregory, and Warfield and Thayer. (Full title is: Critical Appendix to the Andover Review Vol. III, Notes on Scrivener's "Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament", 3rd ed., Chiefly from memoranda of the late Prof. Ezra Abbot, with additions from Profs. Harris and Warfield and Dr. C. R. Gregory, Edited by Joseph Henry Thayer, D.D.)

On pg 28, the following informative note appears:

"[MS 594 may be described as follows: Cod. Mon. 594 (dated 1079), Carpl, Eus. tl, κεφ., t., pict., τιτλ., Amm., αρχαι και τελη, syn., men.,

The synaxarion gives the lessons for every day from Easter to Whit Monday, after which only the Saturday and Sunday lessons are given. At the close of the book there are some scribe's iambics and the tract οτι ου διαφωνοισιν οι ευαγγελισται περι την του Χυ αναστασιν. The MS has some curious readings in the Pericope de Adultera: e.g. John 8:6 εγραφεν εις την γην μη προσποιομενος; vs. 8 εγραψεν εις την γην ενος εκαστου αιτων τας αμαρτιας; but its text does not seem to be generally different from that of the ordinary cursive copies. (J. R. Harris)]
[μη προσποιομενος at John 8:6 occurs more frequently than not. I have a collation of 40 MSS in my hand, only 14 of which omit μη προσποιομενος , and one of the 14 reads μη προσποιουμενος , while still another adds at the end of verse 8. The addition to verse 8 is comparatively rare; of the 40 MSS referred to only two contain it (see on MS 604 below). (C.R. Gregory)]'

and pg 29:

'Page 243, MS 604, line 1, for "296" read "396" (Burgon). [Add "Recently collated by W.H. Simcox, whose results, particularly as respects St. Luke, are published in the Am. Journ. of Philol. v.4 pp. 454-465.". (J. R. Harris)] [This MS (which is not one of the 40 above referred to; see on MS 594) also adds ενος εκαστου αυτων τας αμαρτιας to John 8:8 (C. R. Gregory)]'

mr.scrivener

Malan on the PA (12 Ancient Versions with Notes!)

2011-08-11T21:43:00.000-07:00

The following are the original pages from Solomon Malan's opus Gospel of John (1862). He gives 12 major versions (translated into English with notes): the AV, Syriac, Ethiopic, Sahidic, Memphitic, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Slavonic, Anglo-Saxon (Old Saxon), Arabic, and Persian texts :
(Click on picture to enlarge, backspace to return. To save pictures, right-click on them while viewing large versions).

T. S. Green (1856) on the PA

2011-08-06T22:26:00.000-07:00

Shortly before the Revised Version fiasco, Rev. Thomas Sheldon Green (M.A. Christ's College Cambridge) published a manifesto on how to improve the English Authorized Version (KJV), called A Course of Developed Criticism (Bagster - London, 1856), subtitled remarkably enough, "Passages of the NT materially affected by Various Readings" (!).
Green's influence, himself influenced by Tregelles and Tischendorf, was strongly felt by those who would shortly begin work on the Revised Version. Yet his analysis of the PA, like so many of his other examples, simply doesn't cut it:

JOHN 7:53 - 8: 11

'The question which arises respecting the spuriousness of this entire passage, is one of special interest, not only from its import ance, but on account of singular points involved in the evidence.

In the first place, there must be noted the circumstance of its shifting position. It is placed by one MS. after 7:36 of this Gospel, at the end of it by at least ten, and at the end of Luke 21 by four. Though none of these MSS. are of high antiquity, yet on this particular point their evidence is not impaired on that account. (1) Now the several copyists that respectively first gave to the passage these various positions, must have encountered it in some detached state, which left them free to give it a location according to the judgment or fancy of each. (2) But it is not easy to conceive a genuine portion of the Gospel narrative thus set adrift, to find a fresh lodgment as it may. (3)

Next, there is a remarkable variation of shape. One distinct phase or cast of the passage is exhibited by D alone; (4) and in the other copies that contain it, the text fluctuates more broadly than to the extent of various readings, ordinarily so called, (5) and seems to indicate the existence of two other shapes. (6)

The passage is visibly wanting in B, L, T, X, Δ, and more than fifty others, besides lectionaries; (7) and though A and C are here defective, its absence from them in their complete state is ascertainable by strict calculation, based on the uniform amount of matter in their pages. (8) Of the mass of MSS which contain the passage more than 60 stigmatise it with marks of suspicion. (9)
It is wanting in a, f, etc., of the Old Latin, in the Sahidic, the Gothic, and the best authorities of the Coptic, Armenian, and both Syriac versions. (10)

The commentaries of Origen and Chrysostom evince no knowledge, or, at least, no recognition of this section: and the same may be said of Tertullian, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Cyril, Basil, and others. The paraphrase of Nonnus has nothing answering to it. (11)

Though the judgment of Jerome is in favour of it, and hence its place in the Vulgate, yet this is accompanied with an admission of its absence from many copies: (12) and to the same purport are the scholia in various MSS. (13)

In the face of evidence thus varied and significant, the genuineness of the passage cannot be maintained. It may be regarded as having been originally a detached narrative, founded on a real transaction, and one of a probably numerous class that obtained more or less currency. (14) Such a view agrees well with an air of strangeness, that, apart from the miraculous, is not observable in the other Gospel narratives. The cast of the story has an artificial look, as designed for effect. (15)
In this case, as elsewhere, recourse has been freely had, both in ancient and modern times, to the suggestion of wilful suppression. With respect to the likelihood of such a proceeding, opinions may vary; but one thing at least is certain, that such a supposition will not serve, in the case of the present passage, to account for two principal facts of adverse evidence, namely, its shiftings of place and shape. (16)
It may be well to note the entire coherence of the narrative on the removal of this section. (17) The scene has been transferred, and with it also the dispute about Galilee, from the populace to the conclave (vs. 7:45, 52). This, however, implies no suspension of the discourse of Jesus with those about him; and the broken report of the really unbroken discourse is at once resumed after the digression by the words παλιν ουν, κ.τ.λ. [i.e., 8:12 fwd] (18)

Nazaroo has given the following notes to Rev. Green's argument:

(1) Green wishes to dismiss the fact that all the MSS which displace the PA or put it at the end of John are very late (10th century or newer). But these shuffles cannot be traced further back, and they are well accounted for by von Soden and others as the result of its absence in some copies and perhaps an attempt to preserve (by hiding) the passage. That is, some scribes disobeyed their orders to delete it (cf. Rev. 22:18) and stuck it where it would not be noticed (in Luke or at the end of John between 2nd last and last verse).

(2) Green's own explanation here is entirely fanciful and highly improbable. What copyist, finding a story in a detached state, would insert it into a Holy Gospel, no matter how good it was? The idea that this happened multiple times is even more improbable.   Scribes generally did not have any such freedoms or attitudes. They carried their work out with almost superstitious awe and reverence.   Green's imaginative story is anachronistic to the Middle Ages.

(3) Green's explanation rightly appears difficult to believe, as he himself acknowledges. But we don't need fanciful conjectures, when straightforward mechanical explanations are more than sufficient (e.g., see von Soden).

(4) Codex D's unique version of the passage is not unique however to Codex D in this place alone. That is, Codex D often exhibits an idiosyncratic and plainly edited text, replete with displacements, omissions and additions in many other places. So the behavior of Codex D here says nothing about the PA, but a lot about itself.

(5) We have documented the exaggerated claims of variation for this passage elsewhere. The fact is, (a) other important MSS have not been collated as thoroughly in other passages, and (b) the count of variants has been inflated by counting Codex D, when this is not done to the same extent elsewhere.

(6) The existance of two basic versions of the text is perfectly normal, given that one is the Lectionary text, and the other is the one found in the continuous-text MSS. This is true of every other passage in the NT which is also used in the Lectionary, although the differences vary with each case.

(7) The absence of the passage in many Lectionaries is meaningless, since the Lectionary systems don't cover the entire NT. For instance the whole book of Revelation is omitted by all Lectionary systems.

(8) This may be the first claim of a calculation having been made. The actual calculation however, as usual is omitted. But even granting that someone did such a calculation adequately, this misses the point. Now that the pages are actually missing for these two MSS, there is no way of knowing if there was a mark or note at this point in the text, or what it might have said.   The witnesses have been rendered worthless, probably by abuse. This itself is interesting evidence, but impossible to evaluate, because it merely reflects the vandalism of an unknown party, post-4th century.

(9) Dr. Maurice Robinson, who has personally examined all available MSS in this place, has ascertained that the marks are all late, and there are no early MSS including the PA with such marks (excepting possibly Codex B). Further, he has established that the marks (asterisks and obelii) are not in the main text-critical marks, but are in fact Lectionary marks for use in public reading of the text in services.

(10) Green sadly here omits any list of MSS (Greek or Latin) which contain the verses, giving a wrong impression of the state of the MS evidence at the time they were produced.

(11) The early commentators wrote their commentaries for use in church, and strictly follow only the texts which were actually read during the services. They cannot comment on texts which were not read to the public attending church. Other examples are problematic: Tertullian appears to have known the PA, and Nonnus was just a poet, while Theodore's fragmentary scholia are too late to be of text-critical value.

(12) Green here actually reverses the testimony of Jerome! Jerome actually noted that the PA is CONTAINED in many copies, implying its absence in less copies, and in less accurate copies. This is an unscrupulous use of patristic testimony, which goes completely against the evidence that Jerome gives us.

(13) The 'scholia' (marginal notes) are again all found in very late copies, post 9th century, and are not traceable to earlier authorities, but are in fact anonymous comments which cannot be granted credibility without corroboration.

(14) There is no evidence of this being a 'detached narrative' or floating pericope, as many critics have claimed. In the first place, there is no evidence that any such hypothetical entities ever existed. It appears that the NT documents were written documents from their very inception (e.g. Paul's letters, the Gospels, Acts etc.). Some may incorporate earlier written documents, but there is little evidence of any 'oral tradition' independent of and different from the NT.

(15) This is the first time we have seen this claim proposed in print. But even if the passage were judged 'artificial' or contrived in some sense, it would be impossible to differentiate it from any other similar pericope or passage in the NT gospels. In what sense for instance are the parables not 'contrived'? Or does the 'walking on water' incident seem less artificial than a debate in the temple?

(16) Green here claims suppression or deletion does not account for variation in story or displacement. But we have already seen that 'displacement' is late and fully accounted for by other factors, like the historical situation that some copies had already omitted the passage.   Since the only significant 'variation' in versions of the story stems from Codex Bezae (D, 4th cent.), there is no need for a theory of omission to account for it. To this very day, NO textual critic has ever given an adequate account of the many unusual and bizzare textual variations found in Codex D.   More importantly, no account of early omission of the PA needs to nor should it provide any explanation for Codex D. How could any explanation for the PA account for Codex D? The suggestion is preposterous.

(17) While noting that the 'omission' of the PA allows for the reconnection of 7:52 to 8:12, Green actually fails to note the most important problem: that one must make the cuts at 7:53, grouping the unrelated ending of the prior incident with the actual PA story (8:2-11).    This is tautological and demonstrates nothing, except that whoever made the cut did so purposefully so as to minimize the damage. But we can already assume the deletion was intentional, since it is too large a section to be simply accounted for by homoeoteleuton (an eye skip).
This problem was noted by John Burgon also.
Perhaps more importantly, others, even those who reject the authenticity of the PA, don't accept the rejoining of 7:52 to 8:12 as original or natural, such as for instance Bultmann. He felt compelled to chop off several more large portions of chapter 9 of John, in order to fit the pieces together.

(18) It is surely remarkable that after all is said and done, Green admits also that there is a change of scene twice, from Jesus publicly speaking, to the backroom with the Pharisees, and back again at 8:12 without even a 'hello', or an explanatory notice. "Again then Jesus said..." is hardly adequate for such leaps in time and place.

-------------------------------
mr.scrivener

AC Clark on the PA

2011-08-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing this quote from Dean's post on KJV0nly2, because it happens to encapsulate A.C. Clark's remarkable statements concerning John 8:1-11:

Here is A. C. Clark's original (1914) preface to The Primitive Text of the Gospels and Acts (1914):

'The chief result of my investigation has been to show the falsity of the principle brevior lectio potior ['prefer the shorter reading']. This was laid down by Griesbach as a canon of criticism in the words :
'Brevior lectio, nisi testium vetustorum et gravium auctoritate penitus destituatur, praeferenda est verbosiori. Librarii enim multo proniores ad addendum fuerunt quam ad omittendum.' ["A shorter reading, unless the authority of the witnesses completely lacks weight and antiquity, is preferable to a verbose one. For a copyist is much more prone to further additions than to make omissions."]

Unless my method is based upon a delusion, this statement has no foundation in facts. I may also observe that it is not so easy to invent as it is to omit.
It will be understood that my work has been almost exclusively confined to the text of Cicero. It was only recently, after I had gained confidence in the use of my method, that, in a spirit of curiosity, I happened to apply it to the text of the Gospels. The results were so surprising that I gave up, for the present, my work upon Cicero, which can only interest a small circle, and devoted myself to this more important inquiry.
I must here state that when I began my investigation, I had not made any study of New Testament criticism. I had been brought up to look on the Revised Text [1881] as final, to smile at persons who maintained the authenticity of St. Mark 16:9-20, or St. John 7:53-8:11, and to suppose that the 'vagaries' of the 'Western' text were due to wholesale interpolation. The object which I had in view was merely to study the mutual relations of the oldest Greek Uncials, notably, the Vaticanus (B), the Sinaiticus (א), and the Alexandrinus (A). I was, however, soon dislodged from this arrogant attitude, and irresistibly driven to very different conclusions. These I can only briefly indicate here, and must refer the reader to my subsequent discussion for the evidence.

Nowhere is the falsity of the maxim brevior lectio potior more evident than in the New Testament. The process has been one of contraction, not of expansion. The primitive text is the longest, not the shortest. It is to be found not in B/א, or in the majority of Greek MSS., but in the 'Western' family, i. e. in the ancient versions and the Codex Bezae (D). If my analysis is sound, we are brought back to an archetype of the four Gospels in book-form, which cannot be later than the middle of the 2nd century. This archetype appears to have contained the passages which have been most seriously suspected by recent critics, e.g. the End of St. Mark and St. John 7:53-8:11.

This statement concerning St. Mark 16:9-20 will appear so startling that I must insert a caveat. I do not pretend to go one step further than I am led by the method which I have followed. The ultimate problems of New Testament autographs do not concern me. I only deal with one set of phenomena, and my starting-point is the text current in the second century. I have made no attempt to acquaint myself with the Synoptic problem, and do not venture to encroach upon the domain of the Higher Criticism. Also, I do not regard my method as a panacea. I am sensible that much must be due to accident and to mere coincidence. It is for the reader to determine, whether the cumulative evidence which I adduce is so great as, in certain cases, to transcend the limits of coincidence.
The results at which I have arrived in the case of the Acts are even more striking. It is here that the problem of the 'Western' recension has been felt most strongly. Thus a recent writer says :

'It is the correct method to study the Western readings in Acts first of all, and to form some kind of judgement on them, and after this to turn to the Gospels and apply to them the conclusions derived from the study of the Acts.' (Lake, The Text of the New Testament, p. 91.)
This was not the process which I followed, but the conclusions arrived at in the case of the Acts greatly confirm the results furnished by the study of the Gospels.
It is briefly this, that all our MSS., including D, are descended from an ancestor written not in lines of equal length, as in the case of the Gospels, but in cola and commata, i. e. sense-lines of varying length, such as those found in D. The ordinary text has been developed from this by the frequent omission of lines, followed by modifications in the text. For proof of this statement I must refer the reader to the chapter upon the Acts.
I have not extended my inquiry to other parts of the New Testament, since I found that the Gospels and Acts provided more material than I could deal with in the time at my disposal. It appeared to me from some preliminary observations that the Pauline Epistles must be studied together. It is unnecessary to point out that the Apocalypse is a unique document which must be considered separately.'

Richard Heard (1950) and the PA

2011-08-03T11:59:00.000-07:00

Richard Heard on John 8:1-11

Heard fully acknowledges the difficulties created by the fragmentary and contrary textual evidence available. But he goes on to point out the most fatal circumstance against not only the supposed 'internal evidence' presented against the passage, but also against the entire enterprise.
Heard shows that the methodology itself, originated by 19th century German critics, is from a scientific viewpoint utterly worthless. The point is this:

(1) The Passage could be utterly devoid of 'Johannine' style and content and still be a product of John the Evangelist. In fact, a genuine passage of this type is more likely to be "un-Johannine" than "Johannine".
(2) Looking for "Johannine" features within the passage is a worthless enterprise. A scientific approach would look instead for 'internal evidence' in the rest of the Gospel.

The logic is devilishly simple: The question cannot be, "Does the passage know anything of John?", but rather:

"Does John know anything of the existence of the passage?"

Heard on John 8:1-11

Excerpt from:
An Introduction to the New Testament (Harper Bro. NY, 1950)
by Richard Heard

Chapter 10: The Gospel of John
The Unity of Composition
The gospel shows a remarkable unity of style and language. Many distinctive words, phrases, and constructions occur repeatedly in the gospel and nowhere else in the New Testament except in the Johannine epistles which are probably by the same author.
This unity extends to the Appendix (21) as a whole although it is disputed in the case of the last two verses (24-25).
Only in the story of The Woman taken in Adultery (7: 53-8:11) are the distinctively ‘Johannine’ characteristics altogether lacking, ¹ and the textual evidence -- only one early Greek MS. contains the story -- as well as the way in which it breaks the close connection between ch. 7 and 8:12, make it clear that this story is a later insertion in the gospel.
It has been shown, however, that there are a number of passages in the gospel where the ‘Johannine’ characteristics of style, although not entirely absent, are relatively scarce. (E. Schweizer, Ego Eimi, 1939 [a German work, not yet translated into English]).
These following passages are all narratives of a synoptic type and include:

the Miracle at Cana (2:1-11),
the Cleansing of the Temple (2:14-16),
the Healing of the Nobleman’s Son (4:46-53)’
the Anointing at Bethany (12:1-8) and the
the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem (12:12-15);
It is at least possible that the evangelist was here using a written source or oral tradition that had become comparatively ‘fixed’ in form.'
- Richard Heard,
Introduction to the NT, ch 10, p.

1. However, even on this point, both the critics and Mr. Heard are in serious error. The passage actually abounds with "Johannine" grammatical and stylistic features, as well as literary ones!
Some examples include the strong linguistic parallels to John chapter 6:

Comparison of John 8:1-11 and John 6:1-21:

6:3 : ανηλθεν δε εις το ορος Ιησουν (Jesus went to the mount...)
8:1 : Ιησουν δε ανηλθεν εις το ορος (Jesus went to the mount..)

6:5 : πολυς οχλος ερχεται προς αυτον (a great crowd came to Him)
8:2 : πας ο λαος ηρχετο προς αυτον (all the people came to Him)

6:6 : τουτο δε ελεγεν πειραζων αυτον (but this He said testing him)
8:6 : τουτο δε ελεγον πειραζοντες αυτον (but this they said testing him )

6:10 αναπεσειν...αναπεσαν...οι ανδρες (sit ... they sat down)
8:6 : ο δε Ιησους κατω κυψας ...(but Jesus bent down...)
8:2: και καθισας... (and having sat down...)

8:6b κατεγραφεν εις την γην ([Jesus was] writing in the ground )
6:21 και ευθεως εγενετο το πλοιον επι της γης
(and instantly the ship was upon the ground)

The minor changes in word order and vocabulary are simply stylistic variants to avoid repetition and boredom.
Then there are the many other parallels in content and thematic connections:

5:14: μηκετι αμαρτανε... ("Go, and sin no more!..")
8:11: μηκετι αμαρτανε... ("Go, and sin no more!..")

3:2 Ραββι...διδασκαλος... ("Teacher (/Rabbi)!..")
8:4 "διδασκαλε... ("Teacher (/Rabbi)!..")

4:18 ("...and the man you have now is not your husband!")
8:3 ("...this woman was taken in adultery...")

8:15 ("...I judge no one: ...")
8:11 ("...nor do I judge thee: ...")

It is difficult to imagine how more linguistic, literary and thematic parallels could be crammed into 12 short verses, even if that were one's deliberate goal, and highest priority.

Baljon (1898) on PA: State of Art and state of confusion

2011-07-28T21:19:00.000-07:00

J.M.S. Baljon

In 1898, J. M. S. Baljon attempted to give the public a corrected, lean and mean version of Tischendorf's epic 8th edition Greek NT. Tischendorf's original major critical edition was under-printed and overly expensive, as well as being massively cluttered with patristic citations which, unfortunately as Tregelles had shown, were simply carried over from previous collators and so were both unreliable and useless (for accurate patristic citations Tregelles' GNT is preferred).
Baljon's solution was to drop the bulk of the superfluous notes and present the readings of the main Uncial MSS and important minuscules and versions.

Interestingly, Baljon's approach to the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11) reflects both the state of the art, and the state of confusion surrounding the passage at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries.

Facsimiles of the relevant pages of Baljon's Greek New Testament regarding the PA can be found here: Baljon on the PA < - - click here.

"The edition of J. M. S. BALJON is in the main an abridgment of Tischendorf's octava maior. He avails himself, however, of later discoveries, such as the Sinai-Syriac Palimpsest for the Gospels, and the Syriac version published by Gwynn for the Apocalypse. In Acts, Blass's restoration of the so-called Forma Romana is regularly indicated. No other edition, for one thing, shows more conveniently where recent scholars recognize glosses or other interpolations, or propose transpositions or conjectural emendations and such like. So far, therefore, it may be commended to those who do not possess an edition with a more copious critical apparatus. But even Baljon's New Testament fails to realize the ideal of a practical edition."

In Baljon we see a repeat of earlier editors' approach to the textual problem (such as that of Tregelles, Wordsworth, and Tischendorf): He simply presents a recap of the discussions in almost impenetrable Latin as a three-page footnote, then presents the two best attested textual versions of the passage, (1) that of the TR (Traditional Byzantine text), and (2) that of Codex Bezae (4th cent. bilingual MS D/d).
His detailed apparatus for the text itself is however helpful, and represents a clearer but earlier precursor to the apparatus of von Soden (1913), who later extensively collated the Byzantine MSS themselves in this passage. von Soden's apparatus, while providing a more detailed view of the Byzantine text-type, suffers from a complex and cumbersome system of notation which is most difficult to interpret.

mr.scrivener

Scholz and MacMichael (1831-1854) on the PA

2011-07-13T07:00:00.000-07:00

Scholz (1830), Roman Catholic professor of Sacred Literature in Bonn*, searched extensively all over Europe, and discovered an additional 600 manuscripts of the NT. He personally collated many of these in full, and prepared a new edition of the Greek NT based on Griesbach's earlier (1806-1818) work.

Scholz, like Griesbach, was convinced of the authenticity of John 7:53-8:11, although he was well aware of the difficult textual problems surrounding the passage.

MacMichael (1854) republished a newer and almost completely corrected final edition of Scholz' Greek text, spending nearly 20 years carefully checking and correcting Scholz. He tells us:

"In a few instances, where deliberate consideration of the text and readings led to the adoption of some other reading than that of the original text [Scholz], the latter is presented in the notes. These deviations, however are very rare; their number, it is believed, will not be found to exceed twenty." (MacMichael, Preface, iii)

MacMichael adds extensive English notes to the text of Scholz in the lower margin (apparatus). On the PA he states:

"The genuineness of the text from 7:53 to 8:11 (both inclusive) has been much questioned: see Olsh., following Beza, Grotius, Hammond, Wetst. It is defended by Whitby, Mill, Selden (d Uxor. Heb.), Bloomfield.
Of its antiquity there can be no doubt (it is noticed by Tatian, A.D.160), and its authenticity, or truth as a genuine fragment of the Gospel narrative, handed down from Apostolic times, has hardly been questioned. Its position here, unconnected as it stands with what precedes or follows it, has suggested the idea that it was originally inserted in the margin, as an incident illustrative of our Lord's words, εγω κρινω ουδενα (8:15)."

MacMichael, although properly allowing for the weakness of connection of the three adjoining sections, comes in on the side of the essential authenticity and integrity of the passage.

It may be noted that many sections in John are weakly joined, and John's gospel does not purport to be a continuous and complete narrative, but rather a collection of key incidents in Jesus' ministry, often vaguely connected. (cf. John 20:30-31).
_________________________________________

* John Martin Augustine Scholz (b. at Kapsdorf, near Breslau, 8 February, 1794; d. at Bonn, 20 Oct 1852), the German Catholic Orientalist and exegete

Nazaroo

Cambridge U., A. Plummer, and the PA

2011-07-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

We previously discussed Plummer's misquotation (1889) of Godet (1860s) on the number of variants in the PA and the significance (none) of this 'false positive'.

Today, we want to look at his work in more detail, and in context.

How and why should Reverend Plummer have become an expert on the PA in the first place? Of course the answer is that he wasn't an expert on the PA.

Westcott and Hort, and their allies in the 1880s were desperately seeking to promote their new "Revised Version" of the English Bible, which was not a strict revision at all, but actually a substitution of a critically reconstructed NT text, based on the school of Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, & Hort.

It quickly became obvious that many seasoned scholars and experts would not be going along with the all the changes to the text. The only way to advance their cause was to raise a whole new generation of students, lacking the that background, and indoctrinate them in the Westcott/Hort viewpoint.

For this, the Cambridge group began a new series of Bible commentaries, specifically targeted for schools and colleges, i.e., the next generation of Bible students. The principles of the new commentary were transparent

"The General Editor [J.J.S. Perowne, Dean of Peterborough] thinks it right to say that he does not hold himself responsible either for the interpretation of particular passages which the editors of specific books have adopted, or for any opinion on points of doctrine that they may have expressed.
On the NT more especially questions arise of the deepest theological import, on which the ablest and most conscientious interpreters have differed and will always differ.
His aim has been in all such cases to leave each contributor to the unfettered exercise of his own judgment, only taking care that mere controversy should as far as possible be avoided.
He has contented himself chiefly with a careful revision of notes, with pointing out omissions, with occasionally suggesting a reconsideration of some question, or a fuller treatment of difficult passages.
Beyond this he has not attempted to interfere, feeling it better that each Commentary [on each book] should have its own individual character, and being convinced that freshness and variety of treatment are more than a compensation for any lack of uniformity in the series."

- Deanery, Peterborough, 1880."

It is obvious that the Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools, (1889) like the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, by the same editors, was from the start to be a wild mix of every theory and notion circulating, intended to expose vulnerable young minds to the fads of recent scholarship.
Looking backward, most of the editors were hardly qualified for the task, and their mediocre works were soon forgotten. Only a few names are occasionally referenced today, such as A.B. Davidson, and H. C.G. Moule (who wrote Hebrew and Greek grammars respectively).
Plummer became known because he happened to land the job of commenting on John's Gospel and Epistles, always popular and important NT books. His work was recycled for the later ICC commentary.

Just as remarkable as the charter regarding the commentaries, was the method that was chosen to provide the Greek text to accompany them:

"..the Syndics of the Cambridge U. Press have not thought it desirable to reprint the text in common use [Stephen's text (TR) as published by Scrivener].
To have done so would have set aside all the materials that have since been accumulated towards the formation of a correct text, and to disregard the results of textual criticism...
On the other hand the Syndics were unable to adopt one of the more recent critical texts [copyright?], and they were not disposed to make themselves responsible for the preparation of an entirely new and independent text [no one with the necessary skills on hand, or a budget]:
At the same time it would have been obviously impossible to leave it to the judgement of each individual contributor to frame his own text, as this would have been fatal to anything like uniformity or consistency. [what a startling admission!]
They believed however that a good text might be constructed by simply taking the consent of the two most recent critical editions, those of Tischendorf and Tregelles, as a basis. ...allowing a determining voice to Stephen's text where the two critical editions were at variance and it agreed with either, and to a third critical text, that of Lachmann, where the three disagreed. In this manner peculiar readings [lone decisions] would be passed over...while readings having double authority [two critics] would [possess] confidence. ...in all other cases, Scrivener's edition of Stephens has been followed. [So in Acts, Epistles, Rev.]
In the Gospels, a single modification has been rendered necessary by the importance of the Sinai MS (א) [Aleph], discovered too late to be used by Tregelles, except for [John 21 & forward].
Accordingly, if a reading in Tregelles' margin agrees with Aleph, it is given the same authority as his text [i.e., it is assumed that Tregelles would have switched!], and bracketed words omitted by Aleph are treated as rejected.
The spelling and accents and Iota subscripts and composite forms of Tischendorf are adopted. The punctuation of Tischendorf's 8th edition is usually adopted, except as mentioned in the notes. Paragraphs correspond to the [Revised Version]. The commentator is free to express other preferences.
It is hoped the text formed will fairly represent the results of modern criticism, and will at least be ...preferable to the Received Text, for use in schools."
- J.J. Stewart Perowne, 1881.

It follows that the opinion of two colluding critics, Tregelles and Tischendorf, will take precedence over the Traditional text and the vast majority of manuscripts, versions, and early Christian writers (ECW), in all cases, and where the two critics differ, a third critic Lachmann will be brought in to outvote the Traditional text in any case. Its a lose-lose situation with a crude, stacked voting system. The NT text will be decided by three favoured critics, of the Lachmann school, with all others, equally expert, such as Hug, Griesbach, Scholz, Scrivener, Burgon, Bloomfield, Wordsworth, Canon Cook, Whitney, Vincent, Godet, Baljon, even Alford, being carefully avoided. The vote is further prejudiced by altering Tregelles' more cautious choices to conform to Codex Aleph, the most abberant text of the Gospels known. the result again stacks the deck further toward the Aleph/B (Alexandrian) text-type.

The method certainly delivers a text substantially like Westcott/Hort (without the copyright problems) and is more or less true to its claim: "the text formed will fairly represent the results of [one school at least of] modern criticism".

But as a method it must be judged crude, unscientific, and heavily biased to favor the opinions and agenda of the Cambridge "Syndics", and not the needs of honest scholarship.

(to be continued)

Adam Clarke on the PA

2011-07-06T12:27:00.000-07:00

The original "New Edition" (1832) of Clarke's Commentary and Critical Notes, as the 1884 preface tells us, reigned for 50 years as the standard commentary, outselling almost all other similar works. Its continuing usefulness and popularity caused the publishers to sponsor a Revised Edition (1884), supplemented by advances since that time. The publishers chose only the best scholars in harmony with the original evangelical orthodoxy. The final editor (Daniel Curry) expressed his own accord with the original work, accepting the Bible as the word of God, itself the revelation of Jesus Christ, and his intent to carry on in the original spirit of this great work.

In 1825 Clarke had written:

"Bishop Pearce says,
"It would have been strange if Jesus, when he was not a magistrate, and had not the witnesses before him to examine them; and when she had not been tried and condemned by the law and legal judges, should have taken upon him to condemn her. This being the case, it appears why Jesus avoided giving an answer to the question of the scribes and Pharisees; and also how little reason there is to conclude from hence, that Christ seems in this case not enough to have discouraged adultery, though he called it a sin.
And yet this opinion took place so early among the Christians, that the reading of this story was industriously avoided in the lessons recited out of the Gospels, in the public service of the churches; as if Jesus' saying I do not condemn thee, had given too much countenance to women guilty of that crime. In consequence of this, as it was never read in the churches, and is now not to be found in any of the Evangelistaria [Lectionaries], and as it was probably marked in the MSS. as a portion not to be read there; this whole story, from verse 1 to verse 11 inclusive, came in length of time, to be left out in some MSS, though in the greater part it is still remaining." (- Pearce)
Thus far the judicious and learned Bishop. How the passage stands in all die MSS. hitherto collated, may be seen in Wetstein & Griesbach."

Daniel Curry (the 1884 editor) deletes the previous quotation, and substitutes newer material from Horne and Harman.

After the insertion of T. H. Horne's overview on the PA (from his Introduction), and the opinion of Dr. H. M. Harman (from his Introduction), The new editor summarizes Adam Clarke's position:

"Dr. Clarke disposes of the matter in this wise: After weighing what has been adduced in favour of its authenticity, and seriously considering its state in the MSS, as exhibited in the Var. Lect. of Griesbach, I must confess, the evidence in its favour does not appear to me to be striking. Yet I by no means would have it expunged from the text. Its absence from many MSS, and the confused manner in which it appears in others, may be readily accounted for on the principles laid down by Bishop Pearce. It may, however, be observed, that a perfect connexion subsists between verse 52 (ch 7) and 12 (ch 8) - all the intermediate verses having been omitted by MSS of the first antiquity and authority. In some MSS it is found at the end of this Gospel; in others a vacant place is left in this chapter; and in other it is placed after the 21st chapter of Luke."

A few comments are in order:

a) Clarke had at his disposal only the variants and MSS recorded by Griesbach in 1805.   Since that time, thousands more MSS have been discovered, catalogued and collated in regard to the PA, showing its overwhelming inclusion in some 1,240 continuous-text MSS and over 1,000 lectionaries.

b) Bishop Pearce understood the problematic content of the passage in the light of European morals and nomist concerns.   Indeed, von Soden has accurately collated the features of the passage's removal, reinsertion and interpolation at other locations, and shown how this came about during the later history of copying, due to confusion.

c) The connexion (or rather lack of a jarring discordancy) between 7:52 and 8:12 is not so smooth and close as might be claimed. "Then again Jesus spoke to them..." (v12) makes no direct sense given Jesus is out of the scene in the previous verses, where the religious authorities are in private talks elsewhere in the temple.   No clear location is indicated, even though there is an obvious change of scene between 7:52 and 8:12.

d) The vacant spaces provided in some of the most ancient Uncial MSS indicates a clear knowledge of the existence of the passage and an intent to either include it or leave an explanatory marginal note at this point, probably to tell subsequent readers of its omission in the master-copy used.   Thus rather than evidence of its absence, we have in these copies evidence of its existence, but absence only in the master-copy being used.

mr.scrivener

The English Hexapla on the PA

2011-06-23T02:00:00.000-07:00

Here are the key pages from the monumental English Hexapla (1841):

Click to Enlarge: Backbutton to Return

Trollope's Cogent stance on PA

2011-06-19T13:14:00.000-07:00

Turning to William Trollope's Analecta Theologica (1842 2nd ed.) Vol. 2, p. 87, we find the following breath of fresh air:

"The narrative of the Woman taken in Adultery, contained in the opening of this chapter [ch.8], together with the last verse of ch. 7, are wanting in a great number of the best MSS. [1] Many of those also, which retain the passage, mark it with obelisks, as an indication of supposed spuriousness; [2] and it exhibits a greater variety of readings than any other portion of the Scriptures whatsoever. [3] In some copies [family 1, 10th cent.] it is found at the end of the Gospel; in others, elsewhere[late copies], and in others, again, at the end of Luke 21 [fam. 13, 10th cent.]; Origen, Chrysostom, and Theophylact have taken no notice of it in their commentaries; [4] and it is first explained by Euthymius, a writer of the 12th century. [5] Many of the older versions are without it; [6] and several of the ablest critics have rejected it as spurious. [7]

Now Papias, in a fragment cited by Eusebius, relates a tradition respecting a woman who was accused of many crimes before our Lord, which was taken from the Apocryphal Gospel of the Nazarenes; and it has been thought that this was the legend in question, which has by some means found its way into the narrative of St. John. Others have thought that the incident is the relation of a real fact; but that it is one of those events in our Lord's ministry which were not inserted, for want of room, in any of the four canonical Gospels, though they were long preserved in the Church by oral tradition. (See Luke 1:1, John 20:30).
Several of these histories were recorded in the margins of early copies, so that some of them at length obtained a place in the text; and it may not be impossible, from the remarkable variations in the MSS, that the preservation of this story is to be thus accounted for. (See on Matt. 20:28, Luke 6:1).

The weight of the evidence however, both internal and external, unquestionably preponderates in favour of its authenticity. The majority of MSS are considerably on its side; and its absence from those in which it does not appear, is traced by Augustine (de Adult. Conjug. II.3) to a scrupulous fear, that the ignorant might be thereby induced to think lightly of the sin of adultery.

At the same time it is sufficiently evident, why Jesus thought proper to evade the question of the Scribes. A snare was laid for him similar to that which lurked in the insidious question respecting the tribute-money in Matt. 22:17. Had he countenanced the punishment of the woman, they would have accused him to the Romans of invading their judicial authority; and had he, on the other hand, referred them to the pro-consular tribunal, they would have held him up to popular hatred., as sanctioning an infringement of their liberties and rights. That he did not palliate the atrocity of the offence is evident from the caution with which he finally dismissed her. pro- Whitby, Lightfoot, Mill, A. Clarke, Michaelis, Kuinoel, Doddridge, &c. (con - Grotius, Beza, Le Clerc, Wetstein, Tittman, &c.) See also Horne's Introd. Vol. IV. p. 315.

Trollope is to be appreciated for his insight into the reality behind the textual evidence, especially given the spotty knowledge available in his time, and the primitive state of textual criticism as a 'science'.   The following modern footnotes clarify what was missing from view for Trollope and his contemporaries, but which is readily known to us today:

1. The final count of extant MSS missing the passage is actually quite small. Some 1,350 MSS do have it, while only a few dozen have left it out.

2. From the thorough research of Dr. M. Robinson and others, it is now clear that all manuscripts containing such marks (obelisks, asterisks, archus and telos) are in fact very late. There are no early manuscripts containing the passage with such marks.   The only early manuscript with a special mark, Codex B (4th cent.) does not actually have the passage, and there is some doubt as to whether this mark (a double horizontal dot, an 'umlaut') refers to the passage, or a textual problem in the preceding verse.

3. The alleged great number of variants in this passage is at best a guess, and no similar passage of John has ever been collated for comparison. (See our previous post on this).   In any case, variants are an indication of copying errors subsequent to the existance of a passage, and have no bearing on authenticity.

4. Its now known that the early commentaries, specifically prepared for public reading in church services, don't comment on any passages which are not actually read to the congregation first during the service. Many passages were never publicly read during services, for instance the book of Revelation.

5. We now know that Didymus (c. 350 A.D.), an early popular Greek commentator, also cited this passage when commenting upon another O.T. passage.   This disproves the theory that the passage was unknown and unquoted until the time of Euthymius (12th cent.).

6. Several of the ancient translations (e.g., Syriac, Coptic, Armenian) were not strictly continuous-text copies, but were ecclesiastical copies prepared for liturgical church worship. These versions follow early 'lectionary' practices, and exclude passages not read publicly in services.

7.   Here Trollope, writing in 1840s, is referring to early critics and commentators, such as Wetstein and Grotius. Many of these people were anti-supernatural rationalists and skeptics, with heterodox doctrinal beliefs, and paranoid attitudes spawned from the violent and controntational early Reformation environment.   Wetstein for instance, rejected all ancient Uncials, because he believed they were laced with "Latin" interpolations.   Lachmann wrongly imagined that the traditional text (TR) originated in the late Middle Ages! Griesbach naively embraced the belief that older manuscripts were more accurate, because he did not fully comprehend the many independent lines of transmission in the Christian period.

Nazaroo

Plummer (1886): 80 variants in 12 verses? not likely

2011-06-12T08:55:00.000-07:00


Plummer also wrote for the ICC series

In Alfred Plummer's commentary, The Gospel Acc. to St John (London, 1880-1892), p. 175 fwd, he makes the following incredible remark:

"The extraordinary number of various readings (80 in 183 words) points to more than one source."

Here are Nazaroo's comments on the problematic statement:

Plummer's statement here remains extraordinary and unverifiable even today. By 'various readings', he must mean alternate readings, not variation units (places in text).
But the number itself would only be 'extraordinary' if we could compare it to collations in other places of the text, which have never been done. The Pericope Adulterae (Jn 7:53-8:11) has been extensively collated; initially by Tischendorf (1870), then more thoroughly by von Soden (1911), and finally exhaustively by Dr. Maurice Robinson (2000).
However, no other portion of the Gospels has been collated in all extant MSS, like the PA has. So we have no similar portion of text to compare to.
The number 80 is at any rate inaccurate.¹ The method Plummer used to get this number is unknown, but it may simply be something gleaned from the Prolegomena of Tischendorf's 8th ed. GNT, ghost-written by Gregory, Davidson, Tregelles, and of dubious accuracy. If it includes all the quirks of Codex Bezae, these have not similarly been so thoroughly catalogued in any known GNT apparatus anywhere else in John.
Most remarkable of all, is Plummer's unique conclusion that this variant count implies "more than one source". Can he simply mean more than one source for the variants, or more than one source for the PA itself? We can never know at this point what Plummer had in mind. His statement here is worthless.

1. It turns out a similar statement is found 15 years earlier in Godet (1865):

"Besides, there is an extraordinary variation in the text in the documents which present this passage; 60 variants are counted in these twelve verses."

Note that the number is lower by ten. It is unlikely that any special collations were done between 1865 and 1880 when Plummer published. The similar numbers seem to indicate that he has simply mis-read Godet's "60" as "80", and although Plummer went through a dozen editions from 1880 to 1904, this was never corrected.

The actual problem of accurately counting variant readings for a verse or passage is an ever-retreating mirage, and an unsolvable problem in mathematical terminology. The more that manuscripts are copied, the more the errors will accumulate. The more manuscripts we collate, the more variants we collect. The actual variants for any passage or portion of scripture is a complete unknown, even if we only consider "extant" (surviving) copies.

Such minute and exact collating has never been done, nor can it be. Even with the more modest goal of 'surviving MSS', we cannot do it, because a large number of manuscripts remain in private hands are unavailable and unreported. These documents are often priceless family heirlooms and the owners are completely uncooperative in even revealing their existance.

mr.scrivener

19th cent. confusion over Jn 7:53-8:11

2011-06-10T05:02:00.000-07:00

C. K. Barrett's popular but brief introduction to the New Testament for students, Companion to the Greek Testament , (1867) para. 24, gives the following brief sketch:

"b. The story of the woman taken in adultery, contained in John vii. 53—viii. 11, is rejected as spurious by many.

It is not found in some of the best MSS, including א, A, B, C, (A and C are deficient in this part of the N. T., but from the space which is wanting it is clear that they did not contain the passage); in several of the MSS in which it is found it is marked with asterisks or obeli; in some it is placed at the end of John, and in others at the end of Luke xxi. It is omitted in some MSS of the Old Latin, the Peschito, and some other versions; it is not quoted in any extant writing of the second century, and appears to have been either unknown to, or rejected by Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian. It differs in style from the rest of the Gospel; ο λαος is used instead of ο οχλος, εις after πορευομαι and rapaylvofiai, and δε to connect two sentences instead of ουν.

On the other hand, it is found in D, some of the later uncials, many cursives, several MSS of the old Latin, the Vulgate, and some other versions; and it is quoted in the 4th century by Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine.

The general opinion is, that the passage was not in St. John's written Gospel, and is not therefore a part of canonical Scripture; but that the history is nevertheless a true one, derived (perhaps through a narrative of Papias, mentioned by Eusebius,) from the oral teaching of the Apostle himself."

It is not however the brevity, but the inaccuracy of Barrett's statement which misleads a whole generation of students:

a) No real quantitative survey of opinion was done. In fact, in the mid-1800s most scholars still held that the passage was genuine. The "rejected as spurious by many." misleads the reader as to relative numbers of scholars.

b) The markings "asterisks or obelii" are not explained. Subsequent investigations by Dr. Maurice Robinson (who personally examined every manuscript containing the PA) have shown that the markings are ecclesiastical instructions and are all very late. There are no early manuscripts which mark the passage with such signs.

c) The late date of manuscripts which misplace the passage is not indicated. In fact, all of them are later than the 10th century, and most are later than the 12th. They are not relevant to the early history of the text.

d) The omission of the PA in some ecclesiastical manuscripts, such as the Old Latin and Syriac, points to the church's avoidance in reading the passage out in public during services. In fact, many passages of the NT are never read in church, nor are they found in the Lectionary system (selected passages for services).

e) The lack of commentary for the PA in the ancient commentaries is traceable to the same cause. The commentaries were designed for church services. Commentators such as Origen could not comment on passages which were not actually read out in public services.

f) The fact that the passage "appears to have been either unknown to, or rejected by Origen, Tertullian, and Cyprian" shows the uncertainty of interpreting "arguments from silence". There is no evidence at all that these early writers actually rejected the verses. Origen naturally passes over the passage in his commentary (although this is apparently hasn't even survived, and what we know of it comes from a later table of contents!). Tertullian on the other hand, actually does provide some rather suspicious evidence of his own knowledge of the passage. In Cyprian's time the passage was already well-known to other writers, so his omission is not surprising or relevant.

g) Both Jerome and Augustine provide important information about the state of the text in their time, and heretical movements which were actively editing the text. This information is crucial to understanding what really happened in the 4th century regarding the PA.

h) Barrett's "general opinion" is in fact only a popular opinion held among Protestant Unitarians and historical-critical investigators in Germany and England. Many other scholars had other opinions, both on the passage, and on Unitarianism and Rationalist approaches to Holy Scripture.

i) The theory that the story originates in Papias and migrated into John's gospel is only a conjecture, and a dubious one at that.

j) Internal Linguistic evidence regarding the PA has been examined in detail here:

Why 'δε' is irrelevant in John - more claims implode
'ει μη' in John 8:1-11 - NOT a stylistic marker

k) The whole approach of analyzing vocabulary has been invalidated by R. Heard (1950)

mr.scrivener

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 8)

2011-05-22T12:42:00.000-07:00

With Hubner's next blurt, its obvious that he either doesn't understand the point Hills has made, or else he doesn't care:

5. Hills’ argument regarding the Montanists and the pericope is equally poor and deserves no weight (though it is creative!). Honestly, I have a hard time really following the argument and how it requires that the pericope as a Greek text has an early origin.

(- Hubner)

E.F. Hills' actual original argument runs as follows:

"Not only conservatives but also clear thinking radical scholars have perceived that the historical evidence favors the belief that the pericope de adultera was deleted from the text of the fourth Gospel rather than added to it. Hilgenfeld (1875) observed, "The bold presentation of the evangelist must at an early date, especially in the Orient have seemed very offensive." ⁽⁴³⁾ Hence Hilgenfeld regarded Augustine's statement that the passage had been deleted by overscrupulous scribes "as altogether not improbable." And Steck (1893) suggested that the story of the adulteress was incorporated in the Gospel of John before it was first published. Concluded Steck, "That it later was set aside out of moral prudery is easily understandable." ⁽⁴⁴⁾
Rendel Harris (1891) was convinced that the Montanists, an ascetic Christian sect which flourished during the 2nd century, were acquainted with the pericope de adultera. He wrote, "The Montanist Churches either did not receive this addition to the text, or else they are responsible for its omission; but at the same time it can be shown that they knew of the passage perfectly well in the West; for the Latin glossator of the Acts has borrowed a few words from the section in Acts 5:18. ⁽⁴⁵⁾ In Acts 5:18 we are told that the rulers laid their hands on the apostles and put them in the common prison. To this verse the Latin portion of D adds, and they went away each one to his house. As Harris observes, this addition is obviously taken from the description of the breaking up of the council meeting in John 7:53. If the Montanists were the ones who added these words to Acts 5:18, then the pericope de adultera must have been part of John's Gospel at a very early date.

Naturalistic scholars who insist that John 7:53-8:11 is an addition to the Gospel text can maintain their position only by ignoring the facts, by disregarding what the ancient writers say about this pericope de adultera and emphasizing the silence of other ancient writers who say nothing about it at all.

This is what Hort did in his Introduction (1881). Here the testimony of Ambrose and Augustine is barely mentioned, and the statement of Nikon concerning the Armenians is dismissed as mere abuse. ⁽⁴⁶⁾ Contrary to the evidence Hort insisted that the pericope de adultera was not offensive to the early Church. "Few in ancient times, there is reason to think, would have found the section a stumbling block except Montanists and Novatians." ⁽⁴⁷⁾ With the implications of this sweeping statement, however, Rendel Harris could not agree. "Evidently," he observed, "Dr. Hort did not think that the tampering of the Montanists with the text amounted to much; we, on the contrary, have reason to believe that it was a very far reaching influence." ⁽⁴⁸⁾
43. Einleitung, p.782.
44. T Z aus der Schweiz, vol. 4, p.98.
45. "Codex Bezae," Texts and Studies (Cambridge University Press), vol. 2 (1891), p.195.
46. N. T. In The Original Greek, vol. 2, Appendix, p.82.
47. Idem, p.86.
48. "Codex Bezae," Texts and Studies (Cambridge University Press), vol. 2 (1891), p.195.

In fact E.F. Hills himself has made no claim at all regarding the Montanists.

The original idea that the Montanists may have omitted the passage was from Augustine. Since Augustine was actually there, and battled the Montanists and their successors for many years, its likely he knew more about them than we ever will.
What Hills does succeed in showing is that even Hort thought the Montanists had motive for removing the passage. Hort downplays this, but he could hardly deny the the hostility of the Montanists, since the only reason we know anything about the Montanists at all is through Augustine's descriptions!

But E. F. Hills biggest score is the obvious fact that critics who reject the passage must also effectively reject the testimony of all the 4th century Early Christian writers:

350 A.D.	Ambrosiaster	- a solid quotation
360 A.D.	Didymus	- quotes PA as scripture
370 A.D.	Pacian	- Supports Jerome
380 A.D.	Jerome	- on John 8:1-11
380-390 A.D.	Ambrose	- quotes Jn 8:1-11
350-400 A.D.	Epiphanius	- Euseb. Canon has PA
380-400 A.D.	Faustus	- quoted by Augustine
390-400 A.D.	Augustine	Supports PA and TR

And this stance by modern textual critics is wholly unscientific and unhistorical. Real historical investigation gives due weight to credible witnesses, who have been corroborated on other issues.
Nazaroo

(to be continued...)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 7)

2011-05-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

E. F. Hills

Hubner continues to attack E. F. Hills, rather than analyze the current data on the PA (John 7:53-8:11). By now the siren song is getting tedious. The examination is superficial, and so inaccurate as to border on dishonesty:

" 5. Hills makes another poor conjecture:
'...offence was taken at the story of the adulterous woman brought to Christ, because she seemed to have received pardon too easily. Such being the case, it is surely more reasonable to believe that this story was deleted from John’s Gospel by over-zealous disciplinarians than to suppose that a narrative so contrary to the ascetic outlook of the early Christian Church was added to John’s Gospel from some extra-canonical source.' (E. F. Hills, - KJV Defended)
This is a conclusion based on one citation from early church history. It is a leap of logic that is incredible – especially given that all of the external and internal witness (see above quote by Metzger) points in the other direction."

The fact is, Hubner is just slagging Hills again. Before quoting Cyprian, Hills has actually just finished quoting some half-dozen early Christian writers;

(a) Ancient Testimony Concerning the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11)
The story of the woman taken in adultery was a problem also in ancient times. Early Christians had trouble with this passage. The forgiveness which Christ vouchsafed to the adulteress was contrary to their conviction that the punishment for adultery ought to be very severe. As late as the time of Ambrose (c. 374), bishop of Milan, there were still many Christians who felt such scruples against this portion of John's Gospel. This is clear from the remarks which Ambrose makes in a sermon on David's sin. "In the same way also the Gospel lesson which has been read, may have caused no small offense to the unskilled, in which you have noticed that an adulteress was brought to Christ and dismissed without condemnation . . . Did Christ err that He did not judge righteously? It is not right that such a thought should come to our minds etc." ⁽³²⁾
According to Augustine (c. 400), it was this moralistic objection to the pericope de adultera which was responsible for its omission in some of the New Testament manuscripts known to him. He wrote, "Certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if He who had said 'sin no more' had granted permission to sin." ⁽³³⁾ Also, in the 10th century a Greek named Nikon accused the Armenians of "casting out the account which teaches us how the adulteress was taken to Jesus . . . saying that it was harmful for most persons to listen to such things." ⁽³⁴⁾
That early Greek manuscripts contained this pericope de adultera is proved by the presence of it in the 5th-century Greek manuscript D. That early Latin manuscripts also contained it is indicated by its actual appearance in the Old Latin codices b and e. And both these conclusions are confirmed by the statement of Jerome (c. 415) that "in the Gospel according to John in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, is found the story of the adulterous woman who was accused before the Lord." ⁽³⁵⁾ There is no reason to question the accuracy of Jerome's statement, especially since another statement of his concerning an addition made to the ending of Mark has been proved to have been correct by the actual discovery of the additional material in Codex W. And that Jerome personally accepted the pericope de adultera as genuine is shown by the fact that he included it in the Latin Vulgate.

Thus E.F. Hills' "poor conjecture" is not based on a single citation (i.e., Cyprian), but rather the surviving patristic evidence combined. Hills could have cited another half-dozen more early Christian writers, which lend even more corroborative support to the view given by early Christian writers (ECWs).

Again, it looks like Hubner is hoping that readers simply won't check his omitted facts. The full section written by E. F. Hills is available online here:

E. F. Hills on the PA - - click here.

Dozens of other textual critics who have analyzed the evidence are available here:

Experts on the PA - - Click here.

Nazaroo

W. Webster (1855) on the PA

2011-05-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

A refreshing and no-nonsense review of the authenticity question was given by William Webster in his The Greek Testament with notes...(Princeton, 1855). A conservative scholar, with little concern for the confusion of previous commentators, provides a good overview on page 442 fwd:

"The external evidence for and against the genuineness of this passage, derived from the number and value of the MSS and versions in which it is contained or omitted, is very nearly equal. For a full account of it, see Bloomfield's Recensio Synoptica. The internal evidence preponderates greatly in its favour as genuine.

(1) No real discrepancy can be pointed out between its style and the usual style of the Evangelist. On the contrary, see 2, 4, 6, 9, n.
(2) The conduct of our Lord on the occasion here recorded is in accordance with his general conduct, with his character, and with several of his express declarations; so much so, that it might be adduced as a good instance of undesigned coincidence with them (See v. 15. 3:17, 12:47, L. 9:56, 12:13-15, 19:10. )
(3) At the same time, his treatment of the accused woman was obviously liable to be misunderstood, and would present many difficulties to the earliest commentators on the NT. Their views of the nature and object of Christ's mission, and of the distinction between the covenants of the law and the Gospel, were imperfect and limited. This was the result of the prejudices of their philosophical and religious education, whether Jewish or Gentile. And they were all more or less embued with the spirit of that Gnostic asceticism which afterwards so extensively prevailed. Hence this passage would be a stumbling block to them which they would be glad, on any pretence, to remove.
To say the least, its omission by them is much more easy to bet accounted for than its introduction at a later date. For if the story appeared improbable, from moral considerations, to expositors of the 3rd and 4th century, it would appear far more so, on the same grounds, to those of the 7th and 8th. The former were more likely to pass by unnoticed, and their contemporary transcribers to omit, a narrative not found in all copies of S. John's gospel, and difficult to reconcile with their notions of the character of Christ and Christianity, than the latter were to insert in the sacred books a floating tradition, which had not previously appeared in them, and which their known opinions would lead them rather to reject than to receive.
For the principles on which the rejection or omission of this narrative may be accounted for, see Dr. Wordsworth's Lectures on the Apocalypse, Lect. I, pp. 12-15.
(4) The contrivance of the Scribes to find matter of accusation against Jesus is in accordance with the attempts related in L. 20, viz. the enquiry concerning his authority, and the question about the tribute money. And the subject, on this occasion, is nearly allied to that of divorce which the same parties brought before him, 'tempting him'. M. 19:3, Mk. 10:2.
(5) His answer is of the same character as in the two former cases, creating a difficulty or dilemma, (see also L. 20:44.).   And yet the similarity is not so close as to suggest the idea of imitation by a pseudo-Evangelist.   Moreover, the conduct of our Lord in teaching by action on this occasion, corresponds with the instances of his setting a little child in the midst of his disciples, and his washing their feet.
(6) Each of the other three Evangelists has related, or alluded to , the attempts of the Scribes and Pharisees above mentioned. Such attempts, therefore, were particularly important occurrences in the life of Christ. Hence it appears natural that S. John should relate one; and it is in entire consistency with the general character of his Gospel, that he should pass by those described by the others, and record one not referred to by them. See also on v. 15 and v. 20."

peace
Nazaroo

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 6)

2011-05-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hubner continues with more fluffery:

4. "The argument regarding Eusebius is poor and carries no weight. It is based on conjecture (e.g. “Eusebius may have been hostile to the story of the woman taken in adultery not only because of moralistic objections but also because it was related by Papias.”) and straw men (“Instead of stressing Eusebius’ silence it is more reasonable to lay the emphasis upon his positive testimony, which is that the story of the woman taken in adultery is a very ancient one, reaching back to the days of the Apostles.” – who is suggesting that the story of the woman in adultery is not ancient? No one. Most scholars agree that the story probably happened, which means it goes back to the life of Jesus Himself)."

Actually, no.

In fact, the evidence regarding Eusebius is relatively very important, because it can be firmly dated around 300-320 A.D., making it some of the earliest testimony we have. Since we all apparently agree that the PA story is 'ancient', i.e., coming from the late 1st to early 2nd century (e.g. Papias, Didaskalia, Apost.Const. etc.), we are glad Hubner concedes that issue is established.
But it is even more important, because it shows that in certain cases, Eusebius is willing to fudge the facts himself. He cannot be seriously or credibly claiming that the PA was unknown to him other than from a citing of Papias. Something is horribly wrong here, and its pretty obvious what it is:

(1) We know that the PA was left out of copies in the 3rd century in Egypt (P66, P75), and there are obvious factors here:

(a) Certain scriptures could not be read publicly, even in secret meetings, when the Church was underground and illegal, persecuted by Romans and Jews, and infiltrated, spied on, and betrayed by both enemy camps. Thus for instance, no one dared read from Revelation, especially after the Roman/Jewish Wars (cf. Josephus), and key passages from all books were avoided. Special manuscripts prepared for 'public services' were prepared from the earliest times, modeled after Jewish synagogue practices (P66 and P75 are of this type).

(b) There was a large Jewish population in Alexandria and Egypt (cf. Jeremiah, Josephus etc.) being actively proselytized by early Christian Jews. They had their own Greek OT translation (the LXX), and were extremely volatile, sensitive and hostile to stories that made the Jewish authorities and the Jews look bad. They even later removed the Story of Susanna from the Greek Daniel, because it slagged the Babylonian Jewish Authorities (cf. Origen , Theodoton etc.). Its obvious that the Alexandrian Jews were willing to alter texts in their own interest.

(c) The PA was offensive to Jews, and dangerous. Unlike other recorded conflicts between Jesus and the Jerusalem authorities, this story made it appear that the Jewish parties were willing to stone a woman to death, just to entrap Jesus. This was not a mere disagreement over Torah interpretation. It painted the Jews as murderous, lecherous monsters.

(2) We know that the PA was left out of later copies in the 4th century, from the Constantine Period (e.g., Aleph, B).

Boiled his Queen Alive for Adultery

(a) The PA was offensive to Emperor Constantine. Although the omission of the PA was not originated by Constantine or Eusebius, its omission clearly served Constantine's interests and safeguarded Eusebius' Christianity, only recently made legal and winning official support. Constantine had executed his own son from an earlier marriage based on testimony of his new queen, re: alleged adultery. Later Constantine found out she had apparently lied, being an adulteress herself, and having caused Constantine to wrongly kill his own son. Emperor Constantine had his Queen boiled alive for this. It is clear from this horrific record that Constantine was not inclined to forgive adultery in any form. At the same time, Constantine apparently bribed the bishops with extraordinary promises of immunity and protection and he actually quoted the PA during the discussion!

(b) Constantine and Eusebius actually edited the Bible. Eusebius was in the unfortunate position of trying to keep the decision by Constantine to embrace Christianity, while providing a text for public worship services acceptable to Constantine. This often involved severe abridgments and deletions of Holy Scripture. For instance, when approving of a translation into the Gothic language for his Goth troops, Ulfulas, following the policy set by Constantine and Eusebius earlier, omitted the entire Books of Kings, because in their view, the Goths were "already too warlike", and these books would only encourage them.

The foregoing facts make the testimony of Eusebius and other historians regarding the events in the 4th century very important to establishing why the PA was missing from key manuscripts of this period.

E. F. Hills' opinion is not based on mere conjectures, but rather a careful evaluation of a combination of important historical evidences.

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 5)

2011-05-01T19:26:00.000-07:00

Lets proceed further down Hubner's list of points against E. F. Hills:

2. "The same principle goes for Codex Bezae Cantibrigiensis, which was written from 400-450 AD (compare to P66, B, א, all of which were written earlier and do not contain the pericope).
3. The same principle goes for Apostolic Constitutions, which was written from 375-380 AD – again, after the vital manuscript evidence. But more importantly, this source isn’t a biblical manuscript at all."

Hubner proceeds with the same naive and flawed 'textual criticism' of the 19th century. His whole argument again centers on the actual crude dates of manuscripts.

(1) However, the dating of most manuscripts is a joke. The 'dates' provided in the literature are guesstimates that have a typical range of plus or minus 50 years, or about a 100 year window, when dated by crude and ambiguous palaeographic assessments of 'style' and scribal technique.   But these factors are not only complicated by the wide range of scripts and styles which existed in every age, but also by the fact that these features could vary between copyists or within the same manuscript, before a manuscript ever left the scriptorium.
Futher, copyists would often deliberately imitate older styles, to give a manuscript a prestigious look, or an authority, which also gives a false impression of the date of manufacture.

(2) No one even knows the origin of even the most famous manuscripts.   Copies like Codex B and Aleph are of completely unknown origin, but can hardly be dated earlier than 340 A.D., when such expensive MSS were first made. But the wild variations between the styles, format, and text of these MSS betrays a time-spread of 50 or 100 more years, pushing the date of Aleph closer to the time of Jerome (c. 400 A.D.) or even later.   (See our examination of the text and dating of Sinaiticus here.) Manuscripts like Codex Bezae show signs of being in the possession of magicians and alchemists, more interested in fortune-telling and astrology than Christian dogma.

(3) There aren't enough MSS from the 4th century and earlier to give us a proper sample of the texts in circulation from these early centuries. It is ridiculous to pretend that less than 4 copies which vary wildly among themselves can possibly represent 4 centuries of copying involving many thousands of manuscripts. Reports from contemporaries like Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine make it clear that there were many problems with the text. The narrow geographical area of out of the way Egyptian settlements is not any kind of finger on the pulse of the mainline copying lines of transmission.

(4) Hubner completely misunderstands the meaning and proper use of patristic and ECW evidence. For our purposes, it doesn't matter that the Apostolic Constitutions are 'not a manuscript'. They are a datable record of when the passage was in circulation and viewed as authoritative. From this data, the reasonable conclusion is that the Pericope de Adultera was found in copies of John going back to the 2nd century or earlier. This coincides with what can be gleaned from the testimony of other Early Christian Writers (ECW) like Jerome etc.   The first thing that patristic evidence does is establishes the earliest verifiable date for a passage or verse. For purposes of establishing its existance, it matters not what condition that verse or passage is in the source, or even the credibility or accuracy of the source.

(5) What Hubner calls "vital manuscript evidence" isn't 'vital' at all. Its fragmentary, sporadic, undatable, and untraceable anonymous 'testimony' which must be carefully and cautiously evaluated.   We don't actually need it at all to do rational historical research and reach reasonable conclusions about the early text.


Click to Enlarge

(to be continued...)

peace
Nazaroo

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 4)

2011-04-25T04:04:00.000-07:00

Lets turn to Hubner's attack on E. F. Hills now.

Granted that Hills' article is out of date (1984), and Riddle should perhaps have appealed to more recent work, the question raised is whether Hills' defense of the PA is reliable and sound or not, in the first place. Hubner spends a page and a half blasting Hills, so it is important to examine his claims point by point:

Hubner's Case against Hills:

1. "The references to Augustine, Ambrose, etc. are virtually irrelevant, as it does nothing to over-turn all of the evidence summarized above. It does little to the external evidence of manuscripts since the vast majority of early Greek manuscripts listed above were written prior to the Christians that Hills cites. Furthermore, this says nothing about the dozens of other Christians who quoted and preached from John and show no evidence that the pericope is even there."

Are Augustine, Ambrose etc. "virtually irrelevant"? According to Hubner, this is because 'the vast majority of early Greek MSS" cited by Metzger were written prior to these writers. Lets test the theory: We have at least five EWCs who lived before 400 A.D., all commenting on the state of the text before this time (Didymus, Pacian, Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine):

350 A.D.	Ambrosiaster	- a solid quotation
360 A.D.	Didymus	- quotes PA as scripture
370 A.D.	Pacian	- Supports Jerome
384 A.D.	Jerome	- on John 8:1-11
388 A.D.	Ambrose	- quotes Jn 8:1-11
350-400 A.D.	Epiphanius	- Euseb. Canon has PA!
380-400 A.D.	Faustus on PA	- quoted by Augustine
400 A.D.	Augustine	- Supports PA and TR

So we have a solid witness, in fact a consensus on the existance and placement of the PA in John for the 50 years between 350 and 400.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg regarding patristic evidence. There is far more evidence available than either Dean Burgon or E.F. Hills ever suspected:

Patristic Evidence for the PA click here.

Now look at Metzger's list:

Early Papyri and Uncials:
P66 (c. 200-250 A.D.)
P75 (c. 250-300 A.D.)
א (c. 350-400 A.D. )
B (c. 350 A.D. )

Other Later Uncials (5th - 10th century) : ... L (8th), N (5th), T (5th), W (5th), X (10th c. commentary!), Y Δ Θ Ψ 0141 0211

Minuscules (9th-15th century): 22 33 124 157 209 788 828 1230 1241 1242 1253 2193 al. Codices A and C are defective."

First, Hubner's language is deliberately deceptive: "vast majority of early MSS..." ?!? What is he talking about? Lets talk clearly about either the majority, or the early MSS in the list, but not both, please. The 'vast majority of MSS' in the list are LATE, not early. The 'early MSS' are not a vast majority, but a tiny minority.

To give Hubner a break, we've included P75 in the list (Metzger may have left it out on purpose, given the suspicious nature of this copy and its relation to B).

Only two papyri are earlier than the list of Early Christian Writers.

Even א and B are merely contemporary survivors from the period between 350 - 400 A.D. This was a period when there were literally thousands of copies of the NT made all over the Empire, and two surviving copies are simply not an adequate sample for determining the state of the text in this period. We have to turn to the contemporary writers in this period to get any real information about it.

The rest of the copies, by Hubner's own reasoning, are 'virtually irrelevant' to the text in the 4th century, and in any case are completely outnumbered by other late copies that include the PA in its normal place.

'Silence' of Early Fathers?

Regarding the fact that no clear evidence survives of other writers quoting the PA, simple logic dictates the reasons why:

(1) We don't know what other writers said or wrote about the PA. Only a handful of samples of even the most popular writers survive. We simply can't expect to find Patristic evidence for every line or passage of the NT. Its unreasonable.
(2) Writers often had no occasion to quote the PA. In making the great Church Commentaries, they could only comment on parts of Scripture publicly read in the service. Whole books are neglected, such as Revelation.
(3) Some writers avoided quoting the PA. In heated debates, its natural that writers would skip over scriptures that don't help their case. Thus Tertullian for instance, seems to sidestep the PA in his dispute with a Roman bishop.

All these factors lead us naturally to expect a lack of evidence regarding the PA from at least some quarters. Its unreasonable to claim any special weight for the apparent 'silence' of some writers. Such special pleading is worthless.

When we actually turn to the four earliest manuscripts omitting the PA, we find that contrary to the impression given by modern critics, these manuscripts seem to be well aware of the existence of the passage:

(to be continued...)

peace
Nazaroo

Metzger on the PA...again.

2011-04-19T01:59:00.000-07:00

For a while we were treated to somewhat of a vacation from the usual amateurish and frivolous Metzger quotes whenever the subject of the Pericope de Adultera (Jn 7:53-8:11) arose.    Most seemed to have taken the hint that textual criticism, and criticism of the PA in particular, was a dangerous reef sporting many a shipwreck.

But the recent attempt to resurrect Metzger's luring siren song by Hubner has forced us once again to deal another blow to this crumbling dinosaur.

We have already given ample examination to the details of Metzger's claims elsewhere, and James Snapp Jr.'s recent review of textual evidence in all categories may be reasonably called exhaustive.

What is left to say about Metzger's work? Only this:

Here Comes the Judge:

(1) The whole approach Metzger uses ought to have been abandoned by serious textual critics by the 1850s.   That was when people had no scientific method, and didn't know any better.    In fact, as Samuel Davidson (1848) demonstrates, the method of the day was apologetic in tone, not neutral by any stretch of the imagination. The model in use was the 'judge, seated to hear evidence'.

Manuscripts were trotted out as if they were witnesses, each with some important statement to make about this or that passage. They were lined up carefully in a black-and-white fashion, and allowed to vote 'yay' or 'nay' regarding some proposition about the authenticity or authorship of a passage or its wording.

Today such song and dance performances should be laughable. This is just not how science is done, or has been done, since 1906 and the publication of Special Relativity. There are no faces to be saved that aren't long dead. No reputations to protect (the whole concept has been reduced to peer-fawning).   There are no concerned agendas regarding Calvinism, Nomism, or Catholicism to desperately defend. The only dogma of interest to religion is Providential Preservation, and this has been wholly abandoned by secular academia. The only dogma of interest to secular academia is historical-criticism, and this is scoffed at by those of faith.

In short, the time is ripe for honest and scientific review of textual and historical evidence, not parades of the supermodel fashion-show type.

Here are the real facts:

Manuscripts don't testify regarding authenticity. They don't vote, they don't have expert opinions, and in fact, they are inanimate objects.

What they can do, is tell us the earliest outside time-spot that a given reading must have been in circulation, or what amounts to the same thing, its latest cutoff point. They can sometimes tell us who made use of a certain passage. They can suggest a reading's status in a given era or place. They can provide hints about possible controversies arising from variants. They can instruct us about church practices surrounding a passage.

After that, we are on our own.

The question of authenticity must be solved on other more important grounds, such as apparent knowledge revealed in the containing document about the existance of the passage.

The question of authorship must be solved based on a combination of historical information and literary analysis of content, grammatical and historical knowledge found in both author and passage.

Manuscripts don't speak of authenticity or authorship; they speak of controversy and tampering, debate and policy, local historical understanding and practice.

In fact, manuscripts can't tell us directly about original documents at all. They can only tell us about their subsequent treatment in a history of copying and usage. All manuscripts and post-publication evidence is just that: Evidence about what happened AFTER the publication of a document, and its release into the public domain.

That is why Metzger's little parade of witnesses "for" and "against" "non-Johannine origin" is such a farce.

His terse note that Papyri P66/P75, Codices Aleph and B leave it out, without mentioning their condition or age.

His note that A and C must have omitted it, without any explanation for the mutilation of these manuscripts.

His guesses about what unknown copyists must have meant when putting an asterisk in the margin beside it in a few late copies.

His cleverly worded remark that "no Greek father" before the 12th century comments on the PA, skipping quickly over a dozen Greek-speaking Latin fathers who do comment on it. (and the sad failure to correct this by his final editor Ehrman, the very scholar who wrote a book on Didymus the Blind - a 4th century Greek father who does comment on it..).

His deliberate omission of the late dates of all the manuscripts that displace the passage (they are all post 9th century documents).

His sluffing off of the real controversy around the fact that the three beginning verses are included in the omission (Jn 7:53-8:2, connecting narrative and context).

His bald assumption concerning the "earlier and better" manuscripts.

His failure to mention that the other editor on the UBS committee was an apparently nonconformist Roman Catholic Cardinal.

These are things that make Metzger's summary of the "evidence" laughable as a scientific document.

peace
Nazaroo

James Snapp Jr. on textual evidence for the PA

2011-04-17T06:31:00.000-07:00

Syriac PA...

Yesterday James posted quite a lengthy examination of the textual evidence in regard to the PA. I reproduce it here for those who may not have ready access to the TC-Alt Yahoo Group:

------------------------------------ QUOTE ---

"I am not a PA-defender. I am still waiting for the PA-specialists to publish
something definitive on the subject. ...

"Meanwhile, as I said, I'm not a PA-defender, but I do like accuracy, and Jamin
Hubner's writings on this subject are not accurate. He is not writing as a
textual critic; he's writing as an apologist, and he leans heavily on Metzger.
Although I've been pretty busy, I felt motivated to respond vigorously to some
of Hubner's questionable claims, and to express some additional thoughts about
the PA.

Apparently Hubner does not allow comments at his blog, so I hesitate to disturb
his pleasant, comfortable world. But, he might have good reasons for that.
Anyway, here are some things I noticed in his blog-entry called "Case Studies in
King James Onlyism: The Woman Caught in Adultery Was In the Original?" --

Hubner correctly notes Riddle's note that the NKJV has a footnote stating that
the PA is "present in over 900 manuscripts." Has Wieland Willker been writing
to the wind? In his textual commentary on the Gospels, Willker includes a note
from Maurice Robinson that includes an up-to-date count of pertinent
manuscripts: "The number of MSS + lectionaries that contain the PA is at least
1350+43+470 = 1863 total MSS (there are somewhat more than 280 continuous-text
MSS that do not include the PA (excluding lectionaries, where the PA only
appears sporadically, when certain specified saints happen to be honored
therein)." So let there be an end to the "over 900 MSS" statement; we should
refer instead to "at least 1,393" (1350+43) MSS that include the PA, versus
"somewhat more than 280" MSS that do not contain it, not counting lectionaries.

Hubner stated, "Riddle's basic argument for the inclusion of the pericope is (1)
over 900 manuscripts contain it, (2) some 5th century Christians include it, and
a few earlier sources."
Whatever led him to the conclusion that the defense of the PA comes down to
these two points, the evidence is not really so simple. First, as I just said,
the PA is in at least 1,393 continuous-text MSS, and is absent from somewhat
more than 280; using round figures (1,400 with, 300 without), it looks like
inclusion of the PA is supported by 82% of the extant Greek MSS, and opposed by
18%. That's not close. Now, authenticity is not decided by democratic
election. I just bring up the numbers to improve the accuracy of the count, and
because I have noticed that some of the very same people who reject the PA have
been quick to enlist a numerical majority when it supports their own favored
variant.

Second, if some Christians in the 400's included the PA in their text of John,
and "a few earlier sources" also do so, how does that stack up against the MSS
which Hubner refers to as "the earliest texts of the New Testament," namely P66,
Aleph, B L N T W X Y Delta, Theta, and Psi? Hubner's list consists of four MSS
(P66, Aleph, B, and W) from before the 400's. The others break down as follows:
L = 700's. N = 500's. T = 400's. X = 900's. Y = 800's. Delta = 800's.
Theta = 800's. Psi = 800's (or 900's). I'll add to this list A and C (both
from the 400's), which are damaged but do not have enough space on the missing
pages to include the PA.
Instantly granting that the Alexandrian Text lacks the PA, we set P66, Aleph, B,
C, L, Delta, and Psi on the scales as its representatives.

But then we take L and Delta off the scales, because they both have features
which clearly attest to their copyists' awareness of the PA; though they cannot
attest to variants within the PA, they are two-voiced on the question of its
existence.

So, if we consider just the Greek evidence initially cited by Hubner, it's the
Alexandrian Text, + A, N, T, W, X, Y, and Theta against the PA. Waitaminute --
the testimony of W should be qualified; it has a blank page (blank on both
sides) between John and Luke; Willker notes, "It is possible that this indicates
knowledge of the PA." Okay; now we're ready to compare -- waitaminute again.
We might have to adjust the testimony of B, because it has an umlaut (distigme)
at the end of John; Willker states that it is "roughly in the middle of the free
space beneath the colophon. It is not clear what this means. It is in
principle possible that this indicates the PA, too." Indeed, figuring that B's
umlauts indicate the presence of a textual variant, the only textual variant
that occurs in the space after John is the inclusion of the PA in family-1 MSS.
(This could be nothing but a trace of a late medieval critic putting dots in B
where it disagrees with whatever other (Latin?) exemplar he possessed. But
until a case is made one way or the other it bears considering.)

Okay then: the crystal-clear, unequivocal Greek witnesses for non-inclusion of
the PA, before the 500's, are: P66. P75. B (at least, B's main exemplar).
Aleph. T. W. (I'll even toss in A and C.) That's it?? Eight Greek
manuscripts? And seven of the eight are either directly from Egypt (P66 and T)
or are leading representatives of the Alexandrian Text (Aleph and B and, to a
lesser extent, C) or both (P75 and W (in this part of John))?? We could just as
easily say that as far as Greek manuscripts before the 500's are concerned, the
manuscript-evidence for non-inclusion of the PA consists of representatives of
the Alexandrian Text plus Codex A (which is non-extant here in John;
non-inclusion of the PA in A is discerned via space-calculations; Metzger states
that non-inclusion of the PA in A is "highly probable" but Willker considers it
certain. I'm with Wieland on this one).

Eight manuscripts, seven of which represent one locale. Meanwhile, Ambrose, c.
375, made a clear reference to the pericope, from his Latin text. And where was
his Latin text from? Some earlier source. Pacian, c. 380, also referred to the
pericope. The Apostolic Constitutions also refer to the pericope. Jerome,
writing before 417, stated that he found the PA in "many codices, both Greek and
Latin." And, destroying Metzger's claim that "No Greek Church father prior to
Euthymius Zigabenus" comments on the pericope, Didymus the Blind mentions the
events in the pericope, in his commentary on Ecclesiastes (extant in the Tura
Papyrus, discovered in 1941 but not known to Metzger, apparently, when he wrote
his Textual Commentary. Regarding the Tura Papyrus see
http://lib.byu.edu/dlib/didymus/ ). Ehrman, as I recall, has attempted to
excuse Didymus' statement that he found the pericope "in some Gospels" by
pointing out that this allows the possibility that Didymus might have been
referring to some Gospel-text other than the Gospel of John, but neither he nor
anyone else has explained why Didymus' statement should not be understood to
naturally mean that he was referring to codices containing the four canonical
Gospels. For wouldn't Didymus have been more specific if he had had some other
Gospel-text in mind?

And then there's Augustine, who treated the PA as an integral part of John, and
who surmised that some enemies of the true faith excised the PA because they
were afraid that their wives would use it as an excuse for, or defense of,
infidelity. Augustine also reported, according to Hort, that some pagans
ridiculed Christ's writing on the ground. Now, figuring that Augustine was
being honest, and that he hadn't shared his copies with those sacrilegious
pagans, their copy or copies of John should also be in the equation somewhere.
So should the reference from Augustine's correspondent Faustus, a Manichean.

Ambrosiaster, too, briefly chimes in about the PA.

About 100 years after Augustine, according to the Syriac translation of
Zacharias Rhetor's Ecclesiastical History (which is not the work of Zacharias at
this point; see Willker's commentary for details), Mara of Amid (519-527)
possessed a Greek copy of the Gospels that included the PA, probably added at
the end of the Gospel of John with a note that it belonged in Section 89, (which
is a mistake; Section 86 would be correct).

Now let's see here: what are the patristic witnesses for the PA before the
500's? Ambrose + Pacian + Apostolic Constitutions + Didymus' Gospels-text +
Jerome's "many codices, both Greek and Latin" + Ambrosiaster + Augustine +
Faustus + Augustine's pagans, and, figuring that Mara's Greek copy did not come
into existence ex nihilo, one other witness. Even if we were to make the silly
assumption that Jerome's "many codices" should be counted as a single witness,
this would still be ten witnesses. And consider the geographical variety
involved: Ambrose is in Milan. Pacian is in Barcelona. Augustine is in North
Africa. Didymus is in northern Egypt. Jerome is, well, all over the place.
Mara had his Greek copy when he was in exile in Alexandria.

And we're not quite done. In Codex Lambda (800's), the PA is obelized and there
is a scholium: TA WBELISMENA EN TISIN ANTIGRAFOIS OU KEITAI, OUDE APOLINARIOU.
EN DE TOIS ARCAIOIS OLA KEITAI (followed by a reference to the use of the PA in
Apostolic Constitutions). -- The obelized section is not in some copies, or in
Apollinaris'. In the old ones, it is all there. -- The same note appears in MS
262. [Apollinaris = Apollinaris of Laodicea, d. 390, who is said in a scholium
to have made a text-critical comment at Mt. 6:1. Probably.] Codex Lambda also
has the Jerusalem Colophon ("copied and corrected based on the ancient exemplars
from Jerusalem preserved on the holy mountain," or words to that effect) after
all four Gospels. (Other confirmatory margin-notes appealing to older MSS to
vindicate the inclusion of the PA are in MSS 135, 301, and 34.)
Then there's 565 (from the 800's or 900's). NA-27 says that 565 omits the PA,
but that is not entirely true. 565 has the PA after John, but the page is in a
very deteriorated and unreadable condition. Willker does not mention the note
that F. C. Burkitt said (in the first note in "Two Lectures") was in 565 (read,
perhaps, when the MS was not in such bad shape as it is now): TO PERI THS
MOICALIDOS KEFALAION EN TW PARA IWANNOU EUAGGELIW WS EN TOIS NUN ANTIGRAFOIS MH
KEIMENON PARELEIPSA. KATA TON TOPON DE KEITAI OUTWS EXHS TOU OUK EGHGERTAI.
Burkitt comments: "In other words, the Pericope stood in the usual place in the
MS from which 2-pe [ = Tischendorf's siglum for 565] was copied, but the scribe
left it out for what we may call critical reasons." We should recollect that
565 also has the Jerusalem Colophon. We should also recollect that that the
text of John in 565 is Caesarean; it's in sync with the text of f-1. So
although 565 attests to the presence of the PA after Jn. 21, this note makes it
clear that 565's exemplar had the PA in the normal place.

And let's not forget the Old Latin evidence: there's the Latin text in Codex
Bezae, which Parker assigns to c. 400. Another piece of evidence in Codex D is
its variant in Acts 5:18, which seems to be based on John 7:53 -- EPOREUQH EIS
EKASTOS EIS TA IDIA. Now, Codex D is from the 400's or 500's, but the Western
Text to which it attests is considerably earlier, so this is no trivial piece of
evidence -- but it would carry more force if there were another witness with
this reading in Acts 5:18. Oh wait -- we *do* have another witness for it:
none other than G67!

And there's e (Palatinus), from the 400's. Willker lists seven Old Latin
copies, which appear to echo three or four earlier strata, each echoing a
pre-Vulgate text.

But Metzger notes that the PA is absent from Old Latin a (Vercellensis, c. 370),
l*, and q. It's also absent from the Sinaitic Syriac, the Curetonian Syriac,
and "the best manuscripts of " the Peshitta. The Armenian text which was the
base-text for the Old Georgian version did not include the PA. On the other
hand, another form of the Armenian text does include the PA, and (as one might
expect in a Caesarean text-witness) some Armenian copies have the PA at the end
of John; see the footnote in Metzger that begins "According to a note in
Zohrab's edition" for details. Matenadaran 2374 includes the PA but in a very
unusual form, which Burkitt presents in English in "Two Lectures." (Matenadaran
2374 is an especially important Armenian MS, for various reasons.)

Metzger did not mention Old Latin b. Could that be because Old Latin b
(Veronensis, from the 400's) has been mangled so as to be bereft of the whole
page where the PA had been before (from 7:44 onward)? Just as
space-considerations preclude the presence of the PA in Codex A,
space-considerations insist on the inclusion of the PA in OL Veronensis. The
thing to see is that it looks like somebody deliberately detached the PA from
this copy, ruthlessly rendering it useless at this point -- which is just the
sort of thing that Augustine said was being done to the pericope. I wonder why
Metzger didn't mention the testimony borne by Old Latin b.

By the time we finish considering the external evidence outside Egypt, things
are not nearly as overwhelming as Hubner's parroting of Metzger makes it appear.

We now turn to the rest of Metzger's comments that were repeated by Hubner:
"Most copyists apparently thought that it would interrupt John's narrative least
if it were inserted after 7:52." How did Metzger know what the copyists of
roughly 1,400 manuscripts were thinking? There is no evidence that most
copyists of John who included the PA did anything but attempt to mechanically
reproduce the contents of their exemplars. MS 225 (in which the PA comes after
7:26) shows that the PA was grafted into that particular MS at the wrong place
(Hort suggests that this was an accidental error; 7:53-8:11 is transposed with
7:37-52), but it does not set a precedent. Ditto for the smattering of Old
Georgian copies Metzger mentions -- which, as far as I can tell, is just one
copy. (If the Alexandrian Text had not supported non-inclusion of the PA, these
items would not be given a second thought.) As for family-13, the group of MSS
in which the PA appears in Luke, after Lk. 21:38, this placement is nothing,
more or less, except an adaptation to the lectionary-order of readings.

Having adopted Metzger's recipe, Hubner proceeded to add plenty of yeast: "When
it does appear in later manuscripts" -- as if this is rare, instead of the
reading of 80% of the MSS -- "it is inserted in different places (e.g., after
Luke 21:38, 24:53, John 7:36, 52, and end of John)." (The reference to an
appearance after Lk. 24:53 must refer to MS 1333, which Maurice Robinson
describes in a note that is included in Willker's commentary.) Some perspective
is in order: the copies that have the PA after Lk. 21:38 (= f13), or after Lk.
24:53, or after John 7:36 are a smattering; they occupy a thin borderline, so to
speak, between inclusion and non-inclusion of the PA. As for the copies that
have the PA after the end of John, well, we are always being told to weigh MSS,
so let's weigh this batch: their weight boils down to their shared ancestor-MS,
from the 400's. Important? Certainly, especially since it agrees with part of
the Armenian evidence, testifying to the Caesarean Gospels-text. But the
misplacement of the PA does not settle the question, it only frames it.

Hubner stated that the PA "is usually marked off by obeli or asterisks to let
people know it probably wasn't in the original" but that is false. He also
stated that "It is recognized as Scripture by almost no early church father,"
but this is essentially an argument from silence.

Hubner proceeds: "The references to Augustine, Ambrose, etc. are virtually
irrelevant, as it does nothing to over-turn all of the evidence summarized
above." This is wishful thinking on Hubner's part. The patristic quotations
from Augustine and Ambrose (and the others I have mentioned) reflect the
contents of their manuscripts, and cannot be realistically dismissed so
cavalierly. This is, perhaps, a teaching moment: when patristic writers are
silent, their silence is interpreted as support. But when patristic writers
gush with support, their testimony is "virtually irrelevant." Jerome, virtually
irrelevant! What a sense of humor.

He continues: "It does little to the external evidence of manuscripts since the
vast majority of early Greek manuscripts listed above were written prior to the
Christians that Hills cites." The reader who takes the time to review the
production-dates of the manuscripts listed by Hubner will see that the rate is
about even among the 12 MSS that he listed; that is, P66, Aleph, B, T, and W are
earlier than, or contemporary with, the patristic testimony from Ambrose,
Augustine, Jerome, etc., while L, N, X, Y, Delta, Theta, and Psi are later.
Five out of twelve? A vast majority, you say? Even if one donates P75, A,
and C to the list, there's still no /vast/ majority.

The juggernaut keeps on rolling as Hubner engages Edward Hills' presentation of
evidence. I will address just a few points, though, in the interest of brevity:

What about Codex Bezae? Oh, that thing was written in 400-450 and is therefore
dismissed like the patristic evidence, of course! It's a manuscript "of
secondary importance." As if all the contents of D sprang up no earlier than
the MS.

What about Apostolic Constitutions? Hey, that's from 375-380 -- a whole 25
years later than the estimated production-date for Codex Sinaiticus. So that's
just trivial! It was produced "after the vital manuscript evidence." We have
reached another teaching moment: the "vital manuscript evidence" is not f-1 or
f-13 or anything other than P66, P75, Aleph, and B. (All the other Greek
manuscripts for non-inclusion, except T, which is clearly from Egypt, is later
than 380.) There you have it, folks: in Hubner's world, the "vital manuscript
evidence" is all Alexandrian.

Hubner rejects Hills' idea that the silence of Origen, Chrysostom, and Nonnus
does not necessarily imply that they were not aware of the PA. Hills proposed
that "they may have been influenced against it by the moralistic prejudice of
which we have spoken and also by the fact that some of the manuscripts known to
them omitted it." Hubner regards this as largely conjectural, which it is, but
it is not an unreasonable idea, considering how controversial the
What-To-Do-With-Those-Who-Commit-Adultery question was in the early church.
It's not a strong enough mechanism to elicit the excision of the passage from
the text, but it could elicit the non-inclusion of the passage in public
reading, and that could cause it to be avoided in homilies (thus explaining a
lot of the "stunning" patristic silence), and even to be obelized (and that, in
turn, could cause it to be excised). I think there's more to it. But Hills
should not be taken to task for offering suggestions and theories; this is
something that Metzger does on page after page (when he reads the copyists'
thoughts, for example).

Hubner states that we have "Lots of texts of Scripture in both manuscripts and
church father references that go from John 7:52 to 8:12. Is that not true? No
"omission" exists unless we presuppose it." If the evidence is against the
pericope, then what occurred is an "insertion." Hills says there is no motive
for this insertion." Of course it is true that 18% of the Greek manuscripts of
John do not have the PA between John 7:52 and 8:12. This is not the question.
All that Hubner is doing at this point is, in essence, saying that if Hills is
wrong, then Hills is wrong. That is certainly true, but it does not build a
case. Hills' point that there is no motive for this insertion is a strong one.
It is not hard to see why strict-minded moralists would not be fans of this
pericope; the motive for avoidance is easy to see. Where is the motive for
inclusion? There were lots of sayings and anecdotes floating around in the
early church; some of them slip into the NT text here and there, but they are
quirks, whereas the PA is in 1,300 Greek MSS, not to mention its Old Latin and
Vulgate support. Why would this controversial story receive such special
treatment, so as to be grafted into the Gospel of John?

As he wraps up, Hubner offers a theory: "My conjecture is that the popular
version was first inserted by the scribe of Codex Bezae � not only because this
is the earliest extant manuscript to include the story but also becase the
Bezaean editor had a proclivity for enlarging the text." It's not clear if
Hubner is citing himself or someone else. But a comparison of the PA's text in
Codex D to the PA's text in Byzantine MSS should quickly relieve everyone of the
notion that the Byzantine form of the PA was derived from the Bezan form. Next
comes a paragraph bolstering the idea that Codex Bezae was the first MS to
include the PA in the text of John. I won't address this idea simply because I
think Hubner is able to think his way out of it without my help.

Now you might be wondering what I think of the PA. I consciously avoid reaching
a firm decision, waiting for the experts who have been researching it to deliver
a decisive case. But I have developed a theory which would explain why, if the
passage is original, it was excised. Leaving the critique of Hubner's
blog-entry, here's the theory, expressed as a narrative, with supportive
citations given along the way:

The final form of the Gospel of John was not written down by the apostle John.
In Ephesus in the late first century, there were two individuals names John:
John the apostle, son of Zebedee, and his prot�g�/assistant who was also named
John. It was this second individual who assembled the Gospel of John, using
source-materials provided by his mentor -- some written sources, and some
memorized recollections. Meanwhile, nearby in Hierapolis, Papias (a man
described by Irenaeus as a hearer of John and a companion of Polycarp) was
ministering and writing, and in his writings he included one of John the
Apostle's many anecdotes which he had heard. Eusebius mentions this in Eccl.
Hist. III:39 -- "He also notes another story about a woman, who has been accused
of many sins before the Lord, which the Gospel according to the Hebrews
contains."

Now, if you'd like a refreshing review of the available citations about Papias,
consult http://www.textexcavation.com/papias.html . There you will find the
following extract from the Arabic writings of Agapius of Hierapolis (who lived
in the 900's -- in Hierapolis-in-Syria, not the Hierapolis in Asia Minor): "At
this time there lived in Heirapolis a prominent teacher and author of many
treatises; he wrote five treatises about the gospel. In one of these treatises,
which he wrote concerning the gospel of John, he relates that in the book of
John the evangelist there is a report about a woman who was an adulteress. When
the people led her before Christ our Lord, he spoke to the Jews who had brought
her to him: whoever among you is himself certain that he is innocent of that of
which she is accused, let him now bear witness against her. After he had said
this, they gave him no answer and went away." (This is from Holmes'
translation.)

A statement by Vardan Vardapet is also presented: "That story of the
adulterous woman, which the other Christians have written in their gospel, was
written by a certain Papias, a disciple of John, who was declared and condemned
as a heretic. Eusebius said this." The heresy in question is chiliasm, the
belief in a future earthly kingdom which shall be ruled by Christ for a thousand
years. Of course this was not considered heresy in the early church; Vardan
Vardapet here has projected upon Eusebius' description of Papias his own (i.e.,
Vardan's) opinion of chiliasm.

Papias' five books are not extant today except in disjointed fragments, but they
seem to have been available to Eusebius in the early 300's, to Apollinarius of
Laodicea in the late 300's, and even to Maximus the Confessor in the 600's.
Thus, Papias' five books, while not exactly commonplace, were extant somewhere
or another all that time. And in one of those five books was the anecdote that
Eusebius mentions, "A report about a woman who was an adulteress." When we
align Eusebius' statement with Agapius' statement that one of Papias' five books
was about the Gospel of John, it seems safe to deduce that Papias' report about
a woman who was an adulteress was in that book.

Now advocates of the authenticity of the PA might be celebrating, thinking, "If
the PA was in Papias' book on the Gospel of John, then we have a witness for the
text of John with the PA in it -- and this witness, Papias, was a contemporary
of the author (or co-author) of the Gospel of John! We have here a witness that
outweighs everything else that is to the contrary!" But before you light the
fireworks, remember that Agapius is a tenth-century source (see
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/agapius_history_00_eintro.htm ), and his claim
that one of Papias' books was about the Gospel of John might be merely a
surmise, based on Eusebius' statement that Papias had reported a story about an
adulteress; figuring that Agapius used a text of John that included the PA, he
may have taken the small step of deducing that Papias must have been writing
about the Gospel of John when he wrote about the story of the adulteress.

Why shouldn't we picture one of Papias' five books as a commentary on Jesus'
statements in the Gospel of John? Because, in the extract from Papias provided
by Eusebius, Papias expressly states his preference for oral statements over
books: "I inquired about the words of the elders, what Andrew or what Peter had
said, or what had been said by Philip or what Thomas or James or what John or
Matthew or any other of the disciples of the Lord, [and] the things which both
Aristion and the elder John, disciples of the Lord, were saying. For I did not
suppose that things from books would profit me as much as things from a living
and remaining voice."

Such a statement would seem rather out of place in a book about another book.
But it would be right at home in a book about sayings of Jesus which Papias had
collected over the course of his inquiries about what Jesus' companions
(including John) had said that Jesus had said. The focus of Papias' five books
was, as their title implies, the sayings of the Lord, but those sayings were
frequently framed or prefaced by short narratives; there is no need to picture
the collection as a list of raw proverbs and axioms. And one of those short
narratives was an anecdote about Jesus' encounter with a woman accused of
adultery, framing Jesus' instructions to the woman's accusers. This anecdote
was not from the Gospel of John, but had come directly from one of the oral
sources that Papias listed, possibly John the son of Zebedee or John of Ephesus.

Papias' anecdote, while recognizably reporting the same incident that was
reported in the Gospel of John, was very different verbally. But it was
sufficiently similar that when someone with ecclesiastical influence in the
second century encountered Papias' Five Books, and then read the Gospel of John,
this person said to himself, "This section is from Papias!" And, determined to
preserve only the text from the author, without any unauthorized additions, this
person proceeded to excise the passage in his copy of the Gospel of John, and
exerted whatever influence he had so as to assure that future copies of the
Gospel of John would not contain what he considered to be an intrusion from
Papias' Five Books.

And thus the PA was removed from the Gospel of John, sometime in the 100's. The
misunderstanding that the PA was from Papias (instead of being another report of
the same event) was considered sufficient grounds to obelize or excise the
passage, sometimes beginning at 7:53, and sometimes beginning at 8:3 or
thereabouts. This had a widespread impact on the text of the Gospel of John in
Egypt and in Syria. What Augustine assumed to be the work of people concerned
about how their wives might misinterpret the passage was actually the work of
meticulous second-century scribes who had unfortunately misidentified the PA in
the Gospel of John as an intrusion of a similar passage in the works of Papias.

Later on, things got complicated. The influence of Papias' anecdote sometimes
worked in the opposite direction. Somewhere in the east, an influential reader
looked into this textual question and concluded that the PA belonged in the text
of John -- but none of his copies of John contained it. But he had access to
Papias' five books, and so, thinking that Papias' anecdote and John's pericope
were one and the same, he extracted the anecdote from Papias' text, and placed
it in his text of the Gospel of John. Thus we ended up with texts such as what
is found in the Armenian Matenadaran MS 2374 (an English representation of which
can be read in the first appendix-note of Burkitt's "Two Lectures").

And here we must revisit the evidence from Mara of Achid. John Gwynn (in
Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 27) mentions that in one of the
earliest copies of the Peshitta (Add. MS 14470, from the 400's or 500's), there
is a note, "written in a ninth-century hand on a leaf prefixed" to the rest,
which states, "Yet another chapter from the Gospel of John son of Zebedee. This
SUNTAXIS is not found in all copies, but the Abbat Mar Paul found it in one of
the Alexandrian copies, and translated it from Greek into Syriac, according as
it is here written; from the Gospel of John, canon tenth, number of sections
96,* according to the translation of Thomas the Harklensian." (The * refers to
a footnote: "* A mistake for 86. The number of sections in the Harklensian St.
John is the same as in the Greek, 232." Gwynn adds citation-references.)

Let's read the rest of what Gwynn had to say about this: "It then starts from
vii. 50 ("Nicodemus saith unto them . . . ."), giving it and the two following
verses as in the Harklensian text, then proceeds with the disputed passage,
beginning vii. 53, and ends with viii. 12, modified as in our MS. [By this he
means that the Syriac text of 8:12 is different from what normally appears in
the Peshitta; it reads the equivalent of "When therefore they were assembled
together, Jesus spoke, saying, 'I am the light of the world,' etc.] A note
nearly the same, but abridged, is found in a Paris MS. (XXII, Catal. Bibl. Reg.)
of the Harklesian Gospels, dated A. Gr. 1503 (i.e., A. D. 1192, not 1202, as
Adler wrongly states), which also contains the Pericope; appended to, but not
inserted in, St. John's Gospel. This copy (b) begins with vii. 53, and ends
with viii. 11, to which it subjoins the note. Adler has printed the whole,
Verss. Syrr., p. 57. In the third copy (c) the Pericope takes its place in the
text of the Gospel: this is another Harklensian MS., known as Cod. Barsalibaei,
now in the Library of New College, Oxford (No. 334), from which White has
printed the Pericope as an appendix to his edition of the Harklensian Gospels
(p. 559). In this MS., viii. 12 is given in its altered form. A marginal note
states that "this SUNTUCION is not found in all copies"; when the Greek word,
evidently a blunder for SUNTAXIS, points to a common origin with the notes in
the two MSS. last mentioned. Thus in these three MSS. the Pericope appears
associated more or less directly with the Harklensian version."

(I note in passing that at the very least, this Syriac evidence echoes Greek
copies accessed in Alexandria by Thomas of Harkel when he produced the Harklean
Syriac in the early 600's --616, to be precise, using two or three Greek copies
in the Gospels, according to Syriac colophons.)

No doubt you noticed, when I read the Syriac note provided by Gwynn, stating
that the Abbat Mar Paul found the story of the adulteress in an Alexandrian
copy, that it bears a certain resemblance to Burkitt's description of Mara's
codex, as drawn from the text that incorporates Zacharias Rhetor's Church
History. Gwynn and Burkitt both point out errors in their sources' description
of the section-number; Burkitt's source refers to Section 86, and Burkitt points
out that this should be 89; whereas Gwynn's source refers to 96, and Gwynn says
that the correct number is 86 (the same number that Burkitt considered a
mistake).

Let's take a moment to get acquainted with Mara of Amid. Mara must be the same
individual who is called Moro Bar Kustant in the reworked form of Zacharias
Rhetor's Church History, in which we find the following in Book Eight, at Roger
Pearse's Tertullian
website�http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/fathers/zachariah08.html�and here
is the excerpt (about events after the death of Nonnus of Seleucia, who came
from Amida) to prove it:

"And in succession to him again, in the presence of three bishops, as the canons
require (namely, Nonnus of Martyropolis, Arathu (?) of Ingila, and Aaron of
Arsamosata, who were on the spot), they ordained Moro Bar Kustant, the governor,
who was steward of the Church, an abstemious man and righteous in his deeds,
chaste and believing. And he was fluent and practised in the Greek tongue,
having been educated in the monastery of St. Thomas the Apostle of Seleucia,
which in zealous faith had removed and had settled at Kenneshre on the river
Euphrates, and there had been rebuilt by John the Archimandrite, a learned man,
who was at that time an ex-pleader (?), a native of Edessa, the son of
Aphthonia. And this Moro had been trained up in all kinds of right instruction
and mental excellence from his boyhood by Sh'muni and Morutho, his grave,
chaste, and believing sisters.

"And after remaining a short time in his see he was banished [by Justin] to
Petra, and from Petra to Alexandria; and he stayed there for a time, and formed
a library there containing many admirable books; and in them there is abundance
of great profit for those who love instruction, the discerning and studious.
These were transferred to the treasury of the Church of Amida after the man's
death. And in every matter which I record, in order not to cause annoyance by
blaming one man or praising another, I have related whatever the truth of the
matter is without any falsehood. However, the man progressed more and more in
reading in Alexandria, and there he fell asleep. And his body was conveyed, by
his sisters, who were with him and ministered to him, comforting him in
affliction, as it is written, and laid in his own Martyrs' Chapel in the village
of Beth Shuro. And as a record of the eloquent expression of his love of
instruction I will set down at the end of this Book the prologue composed by him
in the Greek tongue and inserted in his Tetreuangelion."

It is at the end of Book 8 of the reworked text of Zacharias Rhetor's Church
History that we find the same material to which Burkitt (and, as Burkitt noted,
Dionysius Bar-Salibi) referred:

"Now there was inserted in the Gospel of the holy Moro the bishop, in the
eighty-ninth canon, a chapter which is related only by John in his Gospel, and
is not found in other manuscripts, a section running thus: "It happened one day,
while Jesus was teaching, they brought Him a woman who had been found to be with
child of adultery, and told Him about her. And Jesus said to them (since as God
He knew their shameful passions and also their deeds), `What does He command in
the law?' And they said to Him, `That at the mouth of two or three witnesses she
should be stoned.' But He answered and said to them, `In accordance with the
law, whoever is pure and free from these sinful passions, and can bear witness
with confidence and authority, as being under no blame in respect of this sin,
let him bear witness against her, and let him first throw a stone at her, and
then those that are after him, and she shall be stoned.' But they, because they
were subject to condemnation and blameworthy in respect of this sinful passion,
went out one by one from before Him and left the woman. And, when they had gone,
Jesus looked upon the ground and, writing in the dust there, said to the woman,
`They who brought thee here and wished to bear witness against thee, having
understood what I said to them, which thou hast heard, have left thee and
departed. Do thou also, therefore, go thy way, and commit not this sin again.'
""

We should notice that Zacharias Rhetor died around 550, and Gwynn states that
the manuscript (British Museum Syriac Add. 17202) that incorporates his Church
History is from the 600's, so the antiquity of the text seems securely
established.

It seems possible that someone may have confused the Mara of Amid with Paul of
Tella, since both were scholarly fellows working in Alexandria. But nothing
precludes that idea that Mara found a Greek manuscript at Alexandria in the
early 500's that included a story about the adulteress, and that Paul of Tella,
working with Thomas of Harkel in the early 600's, also found the same story in a
manuscript there. Maybe Paul and Thomas knew of Mara's manuscript and somehow
obtained it, or a copy of it.

The thing to see is that the text of the pericope that is presented in Mara's
note, as preserved in the postscript to Book 8 of Zachariah Rhetor's Church
History in a Syriac MS from the 600's, is far different from the usual text of
the PA. As Gwynn says, "The original of this version must have differed
considerably from all existing Greek copies; keeping at first pretty close to
the Textus Receptus, but approximating especially towards the end to that of
Cod. Bezae (D), which is the oldest extant Greek of the passage."

Why this variation? Because, via the collision of copies (or recollections of
copies) in which Papias' anecdote had been inserted into the text of the Gospel
of John, and copies in which the PA itself appeared, variants from the anecdote
intruded into the text of the PA, and variants from the PA intruded into the
text of Papias' anecdote. We can't verify this regarding Papias' anecdote,
since his works are not extant in anything like an intact form, but in the text
of John, this mechanism accounts for the extreme variations in the form of the
PA that are observed in Mara's copy, and for some of the variations in the text
of D (which are listed by Willker), and for the variations in the Armenian codex
Matenadaran 2374. These variants are echoes of a competition between the PA as
it appeared in the Gospel of John, and a very similar anecdote that appeared in
one of Papias' Five Books -- a competition that began in the 100's. It never
had a strong effect on the Old Latin, though, perhaps because Papias' Five Books
were not translated into Latin and for that reason the PA never had a Latin
doppelganger. (There was, nevertheless, some effect, in a, l, and q.)

Matenadaran 2374 exhibits this phenomenon. In the 900's, Nikon accused
Armenians of "casting out the account which teaches us how the adulteress was
taken to Jesus," and, indeed, figuring that the Armenian Gospels-translation, by
450, was conformed to the Caesarean text (exemplified in f-1), how natural it is
to see the PA, in Armenian copies, placed at the end of John instead of within
the narrative (not, as Nikon thought, because the Armenian copyists thought it
was improper to read, but mainly because they were following their Caesarean
exemplars). But in Matenadaran 2374, something else happened: the PA was
inserted into the text of John -- not from the Caesarean text (as if a scribe
had merely moved the passage from the end of John, in his exemplar, to the place
after Jn. 7:52, in the copy he was making), but from a substantially different
text, namely, the text of Papias' Anecdote.

Matenadaran 2374 was produced in 989, but its exemplar was probably produced no
later than the 600's. It's a tenth-century MS with a seventh-century text. Its
copyist -- or /somebody/ -- was at least a little familiar with Papias' writings
(perhaps indirectly via Eusebius and/or Rufinus), considering the "Aristou
eritzou" note that preceeds Mk. 16:9 in this MS. I can't think of any other
source for Matenadaran 2374's version of the story of the adulteress other than
Papias' Five Books. Vardan said that this is the source.

To summarize the theory: with Papias' Anecdote in the equation, a mechanism
exists for the early excision of the PA in Greek texts that affected
transmission-streams in Egypt and Syria, as reflected by the Alexandrian Text,
the Proto-Byzantine Text, and the Peshitta. Greek copies of John containing the
PA continued to circulate in areas unaffected by the initial excision (as Jerome
explicitly declared), and these copies are echoed in about 80% of the extant
Greek MSS. When, at various times and places, copyists whose copies of John did
not have the PA decided to insert the PA, they sometimes took it from copies of
John, but on one occasion (in the case of Matenadaran 2374) a copyist inserted
Papias' Anecdote instead, and in other cases copyists used forms of the PA which
had been contaminated by variants that may be traced to Papias' Anecdote.

Now, I am not endorsing this theory today; I could take the same evidence and
assemble a case for the prosecution. But if you want a theory that defends the
PA as original and accounts for the strong external evidence against the PA, as
well as the high rate of textual variation within the text of the PA, there you
have it.

In other news: "Assorted Essays on New Testament Textual Criticism," a
collection of some materials that are in the Files here at TC-Alternate is now
available for the Kindle (in conveniently edited, slightly condensed, annotated
form).

Yours in Christ,

James Snapp, Jr.

(P.S. -- about Euthymius Zigabenus: as one might suspect by now, Metzger did
not give the whole story. Here's Euthymius' comment, drawn from Donaldson's
thesis: "It is necessary to know that from there until 'Then, again, Jesus
spoke to them, saying, "I am the light of the world,"' among the accurate copies
is neither found nor obelized. Wherefore these words appear written alongside
the text and as an addition; and the proof of this is that Chrysostom does not
remember them at all. But nevertheless we must attempt to elucidate even these
things; for the section in these texts concerning the woman caught in adultery
is not without benefit." Does this reflect a thorough investigation on
Euthymius' part, or simply reliance upon an earlier scholium? I would say the
latter.)

---------------------------------------- END QUOTE ---

Our very grateful thanks to James Snapp,
for the Herculean effort here at thoroughness
and clarity regarding the complex textual evidences.

mr.scrivener

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 3)

2011-04-16T12:37:00.000-07:00

Hubner on Metzger

Before delving into Hubner's critique of E.F. Hills, we need to look at Hubner's handling of Metzger.   As noted previously, Metzger himself is a fraud, an ecumenicalist and liberal scholar who spearheaded the re-writing of the entire Old Testament (the RSV/NRSV), re-interpreting it from the Jewish perspective, and obscuring or destroying every major prophecy concerning Jesus. This has been documented here:

Metzger & the NRSV   - - Click here.

We have analyzed Metzger's propaganda on the PA elsewhere in detail:

Metzger and the PA   - - Click here.

(1) Hubner presents Metzger as 'gospel'. What concerns us here is first of all the obvious double standard Hubner applies. He presents Metzger without any critique or analysis at all, introducing as: "These are the facts:" (!), while he submits E. F. Hills' counterpoint to a minutely detailed critique, thirteen long paragraphs.

This is effectively the same (politically correct) double standard that is applied to the court testimony of women today:

His version of the story: "Thats just his version."
Her version of the story: "Thats the gospel truth."

(2) Hubner botches the Metzger quote, leaving out not only his footnotes, but he fails to properly cite the manuscript evidence, dropping out identifiers and superscripts. This is important, for it misleads the reader further in several places. There is no excuse, because even if he can't cut and paste superscripts, the information can easily be provided other ways. Here are the missing footnotes:

1. According to a note in Zohrab's edition of the Armenian version,

"Only five of the thirty manuscripts we used preserve here the addition [i. e. the pericope of the adulteress] found in Latin manuscripts. The remainder usually agree with our exemplar in placing it as a separate section at the end of the Gospel, as we have done. But in six of the older manuscripts the passage is completely omitted in both places"
(translated by Erroll E Rhodes, who comments as follows in a note to the present writer: "When the pericope is found in manuscripts after 7.52, it is frequently accompanied with an asterisk or other symbol").
2. The pericope is lacking in the Adysh ms. (a.d. 897), the Opiza ms. (a.d. 913), and the Tbet' ms. (a.d. 995).
3. Occasionally an attempt is made to support the Johannine authorship of the pericope by appealing to linguistic and literary considerations (e. g. J. P. Heil in Biblica, lxxii [1992], pp. 182-191); for a convincing rebuttal of such arguments, see D. B. Wallace in New Testament Studies, xxxix (1993), pp. 290-296.
For patristic evidence of other forms and interpretations of the pericope, see B. D. Ehrman, New Testament Studies, xxxiv (1988), pp. 24-44.
4. So Eberhard Nestle, who, however, identifies no specific manuscripts (Einfuhrung in das Griechische Neue Testament, 3te Aufl. [Gottingen, 1909], p. 157). According to information kindly provided by Dr. J. N. Birdsall, the pericope follows 7.44 in Sinai ms. georg. 16.
In the editio princeps of the Georgian Bible (Moscow, 1743), as well as the editions of the New Testament of 1816, 1818, 1878 (Gospels), and 1879, the pericope stands in its traditional place after 7.52.

Footnote #3 is particularly telling, as it was added by Ehrman (the apostate editor), who reveals that there are recent and substantial scholarly counterarguments regarding the supposedly "overwhelming" Internal Evidence, such as those by J. P. Heil (1992). To counter that, Ehrman also references Wallace's response, but Ehrman fails to cite J. P. Heil's immediately published counter-response to Wallace. Both pieces by Heil along with a critique of Wallace are available here:

J. P. Heil on the PA (1992,1994) - - Click Here.

In Heil's second piece, Wallace is effectively refuted.

On Hubner's carelessness re: textual witnesses:

"syrc" = Syriac-c and Syriac-s, "syr" = Syriac-p (some Palestinian MSS).
"ita, *, " = Italic-a, Italic -l* (original hand), and Italic-q. (three MSS).
"arm" = Armenian-MSS (i.e., some manuscripts only).

Such mistakes make tracing the witnesses impossible, and perpetuate new errors regarding the evidence.

(3) Hubner actually trims Metzger down, snipping off a disturbing section which might not enhance either Metzger's or his own position. Here is the missing final section of Metzger:

"Sometimes it is stated that the pericope was deliberately expunged from the Fourth Gospel because it was liable to be understood in a sense too indulgent to adultery. ¹³
But, apart from the absence of any instance elsewhere of scribal excision of an extensive passage because of moral prudence, this theory fails...

"...to explain why the three preliminary verses (vii 53; viii 1-2), so important as apparently descriptive of the time and place at which all the discourses of chapter viii were spoken, should have been omitted with the rest"
(Hort, "Notes on Select Readings," pp. 86 f.). ¹⁴

Although the committee [that is, the editorial committee of the United Bible Societies' (UBS) Greek New Testament, (1966, 2nd ed. 1968)] was unanimous that the pericope was originally no part of the Fourth Gospel, in deference to the evident antiquity of the passage a majority decided to print it, enclosed within double square brackets, at its traditional place following John 7.52.
Inasmuch as the passage is absent from the earlier and better manuscripts that normally serve to identify types of text, it is not always easy to make a decision among alternative readings. In any case it will be understood that the level of certainty ({A}) is within the framework of the initial decision relating to the passage as a whole. "

Here are our own footnotes to this section of Metzger:
____________________________

13. When Metzger says "sometimes it is stated", he is deliberately leaving out WHO actually did the stating. In fact, such statements are traceable to the 4th and 5th centuries, when St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, and St. Jerome spoke about the verses, and their absence in some manuscripts.
These statements are not just nebulous 'theories' by unknown opponents of Metzger's view. These are eyewitness accounts and opinions of ancient fathers and scholars who were actually there to record the state of the MSS evidence, and give their understanding of what had happened.

14. Metzger now presents Hort's argument against Augustine's explanation for the omission of the verses. What Metzger fails to give notice of, is that Hort was commenting in 1886. A lot has been written on this subject in the 100 years since.

Nowadays, many textual critics are less ideological about such problem passages, and have less trouble admitting the many ideological, cultural, and psychological factors that may have contributed to textual variants. Specifically, the problem of misogyny and patriarchical attitudes that go back to Jesus' time are now more fully recognized than in Hort's day. Not only does Augustine's explanation appear more plausible now, at least as a partial solution, but critics are willing to consider multiple factors in explaining textual history.
It may be true that Augustine's explanation cannot fully account for the extent of the omission, but it may well explain the opportunism which would arise out of an initial removal of the verses in some copies.
Today it looks quite plausible that the passage was removed in early times for expediency or to avoid charges by Jewish opponents. The choice of the size and place of the 'cut' may have been determined by liturgical factors. Then, once omitted, this would play into the hands of those who were ideologically motivated, like a Tertullian or some factions within the church at later periods.
It may be that the only acceptable final explanation for the omission of these verses will necessarily involve multiple historical events, motives, and parties. There is no shame in allowing a complex solution to a complex problem.

(to be continued...)

Nazaroo

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 2)

2011-04-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

After noting that Riddle appeals to E.F. Hills' defense (1984) of Jn 7:53-8:11, Hubner dismisses this as ignorance or neglect of "the point made by White", which is apparently some critique about TR supporters and the history of the Reformation bibles (who cares?).

Hubner now claims that the earliest copies are important, and that it is a "faulty assumption" to give the TR priority over the texts of the early MSS. He reduces Riddle's position to: (1) over 900 MSS contain the PA; (2) some 5th century Christians and a few earlier sources include it. This says Hubner is a very weak basis for the originality of the PA. If this were all there was to say, it might be a weak case. But this is a straw-man argument. Riddle's reliance on Hills is irrelevant. The fact is, all three stooges here are completely out of touch with the real evidence and also any effective and credible scientific method.

Hubner tries to make the argument that the later copies are numerous simply because of circumstance: MS production is far easier in some places and at some times than in other places and times. This is simply absurd. This is not the reason there are thousands of later MSS and only a few early ones.

The large number of later manuscripts is not the result of any 'special circumstances' or uneven distribution of resources. Its a universal effect independent of any local variations in production.

(1) Overall, the number of Christian texts exhibited constant exponential growth, because Christianity itself experienced constant exponential growth for nearly two thousand years.
(2) Typically, many copies were made from almost every master-copy, throughout the entire period. As a result, the total number of copies continually expanded, and just as importantly, because of this method of reproduction later copies would ALWAYS outnumber earlier copies by a large factor, even with wide variations in production at various times and places.
(3) That would be true if no manuscripts at all were ever lost or destroyed. But the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the earliest manuscripts have indeed been lost or destroyed, making the later MSS outnumber the earlier in even greater numbers.
(4) The 'early manuscripts' have indeed virtually all perished (i.e. pre-300 A.D.) as a result of a combination of:

(a) the moist conditions of most of the Mediteranean, mold and rot,
(b) the manuscripts almost all suffered heavy use from popularity,
(c) the early manuscripts were confiscated and destroyed by authorities,
(d) the only manuscripts to survive come from Egypt, where they were preserved in bone-dry desert conditions and buried in sand, protected from oxidation, insects, and moisture.

These are the main factors which have resulted in many later manuscripts, and almost no early manuscripts at all. Variations in production at different times and places have nothing to do with it. Hubner doesn't know what he's talking about.

Hubner admits he hasn't faced down Hodges or Robinson, but his confidence is undisturbed. He says,

"(Now, if Riddle wants to appeal to an argument from Hodges or Burgon or Robinson, they can be dealt with, though I’m not sure I have much more to add (or have time to) than what has been already said by Wallace, Fee, and others.)"

Against Hodges and Dr. Maurice Robinson, he would match Wallace and Fee. But they are simply not up to the task. Fee is out of date, and Wallace has refused open debate on the question of the authenticity of John 7:53-8:11, and has repeatedly tried to stop productive discussions everywhere. Against these two (Laurel and Hardy), there is no real contest: Hodges properly reopened the question of authenticity in his landmark articles (1979), carefully sifting the textual and patristic evidence. Dr. Maurice Robinson (2001, etc.) is probably the world's leading expert on the Pericope de Adultera, after having personally collated every surviving manuscript known.
It may be that Fee felt he had the better of Hodges in their debates over the Byzantine text-type, but this has little to do with the evidence proper for the PA.

Next, Hubner quotes Metzger's tired blurb against the PA (Commentary, p 187 fwd), which hasn't been significantly updated since 1971. Ehrman, Metzger's groomed clone, merely added a reluctant footnote on Didymus the Blind for the 1994/2000 reprint. Ehrman's lying propaganda campaign against the PA is well documented.

What Hubner doesn't tell the reader is that Metzger is the closet Jewish heretic responsible for the infamous RSV and NRSV, who spearheaded the complete sabotage of all the Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, based on the modern Jewish interpretation of the O.T.

Betrayer of 20th century Christianity

If most Christians knew the real diabolical nature of Metzger and his friends, they would burn all copies of this infamous mistranslation.
Wallace describes Cardinal Martini as follows:

"the...5 editors on the [UBS] committee. ...Another was a Roman Catholic scholar, Cardinal Carlo Martini, formerly the Archbishop of Milan (from 1980 to 2002). Martini was highly considered for the papal office, too. The point is that Martini is a squeaky-clean Catholic with impeccable credentials. Yet, on the committee for the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament, he agreed with the rest of the committee (it was a unanimous decision each time) that Mark 16.9-20 and John 7.53-8.11 were not original to the Gospels but were added later. "

What kind of Protestant would describe a committed Roman Catholic as "squeaky clean", with "impeccable credentials"?!? His lifetime commitment to Roman Catholicism ought to be credentials enough to utterly reject him as a candidate for the 'reconstruction' of the Protestant Bible. Wallace has obviously been bought and walks down the same road as Billy Graham, toward a "new world order" and "universal religion", concocted in the backrooms of the Vatican.

Unconcerned about Roman Catholic 'ecumenicalism', 'Hubris' marches forward to attack the (now dated) defense of E. F. Hills (1984), another straw-man attack which does nothing to address the current state of Johannine studies in regard to the PA.

Nazaroo

(To be continued...)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part I)

2011-04-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Recently, Jamin Hubner, yet another Alexandrian text-type pusher, got into a lame debate with Jeff Riddle over the TR/CR or Byzantine vs. Alexandrian text-type question.

In that debate, Riddle affirmed the authenticity of the PA, and pointed to E.F. Hills' arguments (1984) in its favor.

Hubner responded with the standard Bruce Metzger poison (1971), then followed with a further series of arguments. He even uses Metzger's the infamous bombastic phrase, slightly modified:

"The evidence (internal and external) is overwhelmingly clear: ..."

(see Metzger's tripe: "The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the pericope of the adulteress is overwhelming. ..." )

He references Philip Comfort's nonsense (1989), and may be taking his backhanded quote from that ("The external evidence against the Johannine authorship of the pericope of the adulteress is ovewhelming." - Comfort also plagarizes Metzger), although he has added "internal" evidence to the mix. He seems to be cut-and-pasting from some commentary, or else possibly some Daniel Wallace crap (2007?) or even the W.H. Harris' (2001) / NETbible (2007) fluff:

"(1) the pericope wasn’t contained in the earliest Bibles and manuscripts we have (and there are a great variety in that category),

(2) when it does appear in later manuscripts, it is inserted in different places (e.g. after Luke 21:38; 24:53, John 7:36, 52, and end of John), and is usually marked off by obeli or asterisks to let people know it probably wasn’t in the original, and

(3) it disrupts the flow of the text and events of Jesus, and also demonstrates a different style/vocabulary,

(4) it is recognized as Scripture by almost no early church father. Thus, Comfort summarizes, “the inclusion of this story in the NT text is a primary example of how the oral tradition, originally not included in the text, eventually found its way into the written text” (Comfort, 286).

This isn't scientific or historical data, but sloppy nonsense designed to mislead:

(1a) "the pericope wasn’t contained in the earliest Bibles..."
The passage obviously was in the earliest 'Bibles' (e.g. complete NT copies), since it was in many manuscripts ("both Greek and Latin") before Jerome's time, and was also in his Latin Vulgate translation (c. 390 A.D.), which was adopted reasonably quickly by the whole Latin church. Thats a lot of 'Bibles'. There were no 'Bibles' (complete collected NT writings in a single book) much before the middle of the 4th century, and the few surviving copies are often defective or edited for Church services. If as Hubner says, "there are a great variety in that category", he must mean manuscripts later than the 4th century, because only four manuscripts containing John survive that can be dated before about 350 A.D., namely P66, P75, Codex B, and Codex Aleph. (a great variety?). On why these manuscripts are missing the passage, see our article here: What Causes Large Omissions?

(1b) "The (internal) evidence is overwhelming..." (Hubner)
This might be might be better phrased as "The internal evidence is irrelevant."
At the same time, the complimentary advances in knowledge about the vocabulary and syntactical features of gospel pericopes have shown that nothing can be concluded by the presence or absence of "Johannine" or "Markan" features.
All gospels present spans of text that do not conform to author usage or style, and yet which are not in any doubt as to their authenticity. The significance of this is that tests of vocabulary or style are not significant and therefore inconclusive. Dr. Heard on Vocabulary Questions

Finally, it is significant that deeper and newer studies of John's Gospel for instance, have revealed structural, chiastic, and thematic patterns that indicate the authenticity of the PA, and the probable composition of John with the PA included. Chiastic Patterns in John

(2) "when it does appear in later manuscripts, it is inserted in different places"
This is nonsense. It is found in the majority of MSS its usual place (in some 1,400 copies) with only a handful of MS from the latest era dissenting:

MSS which move the PA: Click to Enlarge

Normal manuscripts have the PA at John 7:52. The few oddballs that don't were accounted for by von Soden (1913) long ago: The later Manuscript Families (1 and 13) cannot be traced earlier than the 8th or 9th century, fully five centuries too late to give first-hand testimony regarding the position of the passage in the crucial early period. Von Soden has shown that most cases of displacement of the passage arose in the Middle Ages as copyists attempted to delete or reinsert the passage. These anomalies don't represent the original position of the passage in any case. The shuffling of the passage about does not indicate early doubt, but rather later confusion arising from its omission in some copies.

(2b) "and is usually marked off by obeli or asterisks to let people know it probably wasn’t in the original" (Hubner)

Another falsehood from Hubner: Only a minority of manuscripts have any markings. Thus it is not 'usually marked off' at all. When the passage is marked off in any way, it is usually as a church lesson (Lection) for public reading, not as a textual-critical indication regarding doubt. Dr. Maurice Robinson has collated all of the some 2,400 manuscripts and lectionaries, and has fully analyzed the real meaning and use of the markings.

(3) "it disrupts the flow of the text..." The question of whether the passage 'interrupts' the Gospel narrative is currently in dispute, and there is complex evidence on both sides of the issue. The decision by the translators to remove the passage from John and place it at the end of the gospel was therefore misguided and is not supported by current textual and historical evidences. For recent arguments see earlier posts here, and the evidence of J. P. Heil (1994) Andrew Wilson, (2005) and recently Daniel Buck (2010) .

(4) "it is recognized as Scripture by almost no early church father"
Again Hubner seems to be relying upon the fact that most readers aren't going to check his facts. The PA is quoted and recognised as Scripture by most of the important early Church writers. Even those who don't quote it often seem to know it: See our extensive review of Patristic Evidence for the PA.

We'll review Hubner's 13 further points in the next article.

nazaroo

NEB Nonsense on the PA

2011-04-10T17:53:00.000-07:00

One of the earliest English modern New Testaments to dare to actually remove the Pericope de Adultera (the PA: John 7:53-8:11) and place it at the very end of John's Gospel, was the New English Bible (NEB, 1961).

Shortly thereafter, The text adhered to by the translators of the New English Bible was published separately as The Greek New Testament, edited by R. V. G. Tasker (Oxford U., 1964). In this second volume, the thinking behind some of the editorial decisions was revealed in much more detail, in an Appendix. On page 426 the note on Jn 7:53-8:11 is as follows:

"(chapt) 7. 53- 8:11. This passage, usually printed in this position [i.e. John 7:52] in editions of the NT (following most late Greek MSS and the Latin versions) is found here in no ancient Greek MSS, except D; and some MSS which insert it at this point mark it as doubtful. It is also absent from the Syriac versions. It is found after Jn. 21:24 in Family 1; after Luke 21:38 in Family 13; and after Jn 7:36 in [MS] 225. This evidence seems to indicate that it was not generally recognized as part of the Gospel of John. Internal evidence supports this. It is un-Johannine both in style and content; and its presence here interrupts the discourse at the festival of Tabernacles. The translators decided, therefore, to treat it as a disconnected incident and print it at the conclusion of the Gospel of John."

The factual errors, and subsequently erroneous decision on the part of the translators can be corrected concisely as follows:

(1) There are only two surviving 4th century Manuscripts (B, א ), and two 2nd - 3rd century papyri copies of John (P66, P75) in existence. Yet the number of manuscripts in circulation by the 4th century is estimated to be in the thousands to several thousands. These few surviving copies cannot credibly represent the text at large, as the sample-size is absurdly low. Even these few copies show a wide variation in the text at this time, especially in North Africa and Egypt.

(2) The fact that Codex D (Bezae) includes the passage, along with the testimony of Ambrose, Didymus, Jerome and Augustine, makes it clear that many copies must have had the passage in its normal place, even though none have survived.

(3) Dr. Maurice Robinson has collated the bulk of the MSS having the passage, and has found that most of the marks (asterisks, obelisks, notes etc.) do not indicate doubt at all, but rather indicate the beginning and end of 'Lections' or Church Lessons for public reading.

(4) The later Manuscript Families (1 and 13) cannot be traced earlier than the 8th or 9th century, fully five centuries too late to give first-hand testimony regarding the position of the passage in the crucial early period. Von Soden has shown that most cases of displacement of the passage arose in the Middle Ages as copyists attempted to delete or reinsert the passage. These anomalies don't represent the original position of the passage in any case. The shuffling of the passage about does not indicate early doubt, but rather later confusion arising from its omission in some copies.

Only LATE MSS displace the PA

(5) The argument that the passage is "un-Johannine" is based on crude and now discredited tests of vocabulary and style, and the methods and interpretation of the evidences have not held up in subsequent analysis. Dr. Heard has shown that all such vocabulary/style tests for pericopes are invalid, given the nature of John's gospel.

(6) The question of whether the passage 'interrupts' the Gospel narrative is currently in dispute, and there is complex evidence on both sides of the issue. The decision by the translators to remove the passage from John and place it at the end of the gospel was therefore misguided and is not supported by current textual and historical evidences. For recent arguments see earlier posts here.

(7) In the meantime the question of whether John's Gospel has knowledge of the passage has been answered in the affirmative by the discovery of structural and chiastic, and thematic structures embedded in the Gospel which are damaged when the passage is omitted. It appears that the Gospel was composed with the passage in place and consciously blended with the other materials.

Interlocking Sections of John's Gospel

peace
Nazaroo

The Interesting Case of Codex Delta (Δ) and the PA

2011-04-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Codex Δ - Sang. 48

The scribe has begun to copy out verse 8:12 on line 5 of pg 348. This shows that the exemplar he was copying from omitted the verses beginning from 7:53-8:11. He then crosses this out, perceiving that the passage is missing. He carefully leaves 19 lines blank, including 2 lines at the top of the next page, and a further spare line at the bottom of that page (p.349), to allow the passage to be restored. The planned recovery was never followed up. The scribe was likely copying out an ancient codex modified for lectionary/ecclesiastical use. Ecclesiastical marks are visible in the margins of the copy.
Pages 348-350

Click to Enlarge: John 7:52 ends here, with a bit of 8:12 crossed out

Space left here as well as on previous page, suggesting pre-planned inclusion

Close-ups

Waltz's online Encyclopedia of Textual Criticism offers the following description of Codex Delta:

Location/Catalog Number Saint Gall, where it has been as long as it has been known (hence the title Codex Sangallensis). Catalog number: Stiftsbibliothek 48.
Contents: Contains the gospels almost complete; it lacks John 19:17-35. The Greek is accompanied by an interlinear Latin translation (designated δ). It has been argued that Δ was originally part of the same volume as Gp; for the arguments for and against this (e.g. their similar appearance and identical size), see the entry on that manuscript.
Date/Scribe: Usually dated paleographically to the 9th century. (It can hardly be earlier, as reference is made to the (heretical) opinions of Godeschalk at Luke 13:24, John 12:40. These references appear to be in the original hand, and Godeschalk died in 866.) A few sources prefer a 10th century date.
The hand is quite awkward and stiff, resembling Gp in this as in many other ways. The Latin is written above the Greek, and the scribe seems to have been more comfortable with that than with Greek. (There are many reasons for believing this; one of the more noteworthy is his regular confusion of certain Greek letters.) It has been widely suggested that his native language was (Irish) Gaelic [?].
The form of the manuscript again reminds us of G: It is written in continuous lines, but appears to have been made from a manuscript written in sense lines of some sort; there are enlarged, decorated letters in almost every line. (Though the decorations are very inartistic; Gregory suggests that "[t]he larger letters are rather smeared over than painted with different colours." The enlarged letters do not really correspond with sentences, but rather are quite evenly spaced. Spaces are supplied between words, but these are very inaccurate (more evidence of the scribe's weakness in Greek). There are only a few accents and breathings, not always accurate. Gregory notes that "[t]he titles for the chapters often stand in the middle of the text."
Rettig believed that several scribes worked on the manuscript. This is a difficult question to say the least. The style of the manuscript is very similar throughout. At first glance -- indeed, at any number of glances -- it appears that the scribe is the same throughout. But this is because the hand is so peculiar. The evidence of G indicates that this was more or less the normal style at Saint Gall. So it is possible that there were several scribes -- but the matter really needs to be investigated with modern resources.
Description and Text-type: For once there is almost universal agreement [?]:
Δ is block-mixed. The usual assessment is that Matthew, Luke, and John are Byzantine, while Mark is Alexandrian.
(Indeed, Δ was the single most important prop in Streeter's argument that manuscripts should be examined first in Mark.)
Interestingly, most formal investigations have not precisely confirmed this division into parts; von Soden listed Δ as H, and the Alands list it as Category III.
Even Wisse does not find it to be purely Byzantine in Luke 1; his assessment is that it is Mixed in Luke 1 and (von Soden's) K ^x in Luke 10 and 20.
It should be noted, however, that both the Aland and von Soden were listing text-types for the gospels as a whole; they are not book-by-book assessments. (The Alands, at least, did not so much as examine John.)
An examination of the actual readings of the manuscript shows that conventional wisdom is correct at least in general: Δ is Byzantine in Matthew, Luke, and John, and is Alexandrian in Mark. We should however add that it is not purely Alexandrian even in Mark; nowhere does it approach the quality of B (Vaticanus), or even of L.
It is a late Alexandrian/Byzantine mix. It is also my personal impression that Δ has rather more Alexandrian readings in the early part of Mark, and that the Byzantine component increases somewhat in the final chapters -- but I have not formally verified this.
The interlinear Latin version is sometimes listed as an Old Latin version, and designated δ. This is probably at least technically a misnomer; the Latin version was probably prepared after the translation of the Vulgate. But since it has been made to correspond to the text of Δ , it is not a pure vulgate text. Still, it has no real critical value.
Other Symbols Used for this Manuscript:

von Soden: e76

mr.scrivener

Recent Disinformation about the PA

2011-04-02T07:47:00.000-07:00

I posted the following comment on the recent posting on the ETC blog, below.
It seems to have been deleted.
In any case, I'm reposting my comments here, for those interested:

RE: The Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11)

"Focusing narrowly on the "textual evidence" and using it so crudely doesn't help enlighten those who want useful information on how these variants arose, or whether they are genuine or not.

All "textual evidence" has to be evaluated and interpreted, and this ought to be done in the light of internal evidences and transcriptional probabilities.

Modern advances in understanding of transcriptional (copying) evidence suggests that 'Prefer the Shorter text' is not supportable by current knowledge of copying habits.

Royse's recent studies seem decisive on this issue.

In any case, neither Mark's Ending nor the PA can be explained away
as mere scribal glosses or 'accidental interpolations'. Even if copyists sometimes erroneously included mistaken 'corrections' into the text, neither the ME or the PA could be so accounted for. These were major editorial decisions made by ecclesiastical authorities in the light of textual knowledge now no longer accessable to us.

What Causes Large Omissions?

At the same time, the complimentary advances in knowledge about the vocabulary and syntactical features of gospel pericopes has shown that nothing can be concluded by the presence or absence of "Johannine" or "Markan" features.
All gospels present spans of text that do not conform to author usage or style, and yet which are not in any doubt as to their authenticity. The significance of this is that tests of vocabulary or style are not significant and therefore inconclusive.

Dr. Heard on Vocabulary Questions

Finally, it is significant that deeper and newer studies of John's Gospel for instance, have revealed structural, chiastic, and thematic patterns that indicate the authenticity of the PA, and the probable composition of John with the PA included.

Chiastic Patterns in John

mr.scrivener

T. Manson (1952) on Jeremias and the PA

2011-03-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

“The Pericope de Adultera (Joh 7 53 – 8 11)
A Footnote to the Article by Professor Jeremias
ZNW 43 (1950 / 51) 145 –150 ”
by T. W. Manson
ZNW 43 (1952 / 53) 255 –256

"In his discussion of the historicity of the trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin Professor Jeremias offers a very interesting and persuasive exegesis of the Pericope de adultera in support of the contention that at the time of the crucifixion the Sanhedrin did not have competence in capital cases. He concludes that the story is of the same type as the question about paying tribute to the Roman Emperor (Mc 12 13–17). If Jesus sanctions the execution of the woman, he thereby usurps the power of the Roman authorities; if he forbids it, he goes against the plain teaching of the Law of Moses.

This illuminating treatment of the story as a whole leads me to put forward a suggestion concerning one detail of the narrative, the stooping and writing in the dust. This action has been variously explained by the commentators; and there is an interesting attempt to illustrate it from Mohammedan sources in a short article by the late A. J. Wensinck in the Rendel Harris Festschrift (1).

I have for some time thought that the action of Jesus might be explained from the well-known practice in Roman criminal law, whereby the presiding judge first wrote down the sentence and then read it aloud from the written record (2). The interpretation of the whole story put forward by Prof. Jeremias provides a very satisfactory framework for this way of understanding the writing in the dust. Jesus by this action says in effect: “You are inviting me to usurp the functions of the Roman Governor. Very well, I will do so; and I will do it in the approved Roman manner.”
He then stoops down and pretends to write down the sentence, after which he reads it out: “whoever among you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her.” If this interpretation is correct, it strengthens the case for interpreting the whole story in the way proposed by Prof. Jeremias. Jesus defeats the plotters by going through the form of pronouncing sentence in the best Roman style, but wording it so that it cannot be executed.

___________________________________________

(1). H. G. Wood (Editor), Amicitiae Corolla (1938), 300–302.) Th. Mommsen, Le Droit pénal romain (Trans. Duquesne, 1907) II, 129–31. Cf. Tertullian, Apol. II, 20 (ed. Hoppe, p.9): denique quid de tabella recitatis illum ‘Christianum’? Acts of
the Scillitan Martyrs (ed. J. A. Robinson, Texts and Studies, I, 2, p. 114) : Speratus proconsul decretum ex tabella recitavit. Cypriani Acta proconsularia (ed. Hartel CSEL, III, iii, p. cxiii) : decretum ex tabella recitavit. Mart. Pionii xx ed. O. v. Gebhardt, 1902, p. 113) : και απο πινακιδος ανεγνωσθη Ρωμαιστι. Πιονιον εαυτον ομολογησαντα ειναι Χριστιανον ζωντα καηναι προσετεαξαμεν.
(2). (22. Dc. 1952)

Mapping the Spread of the PA

2011-03-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons Hort's list of evidence in favour of the verses is so small is that he has actually listed part of the evidence in another section (Appendix I. Notes on Select Readings, pg 83). There, he interprets the evidence in favour of his insertion theory instead. We will examine that later.
Hort immediately classifies the passage as 'Western'. By this he literally means only in the Latin tradition, not the Greek, in spite of its presence in the majority of Greek manuscripts from all parts of the Empire. His begrudging acknowledgement of its Greek presence is a backhanded slap. He calls the Greek tradition here late 'Constantinopolitan': he has coined his own term. He implies the spread of the text into the Greek began in one Eastern city, late in the 4th century.

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The city of Byzantium was the commercial center of the Eastern Greek provinces, and was renamed 'Constantinople' after Emperor Constantine made it the new capital of the Empire in 326 A.D. According to Hort then, the passage originated in the Latin tradition, and was first brought into the Eastern Greek text from Rome in the 'late' 4th century via Constantinople. From there, it only slowly gained dominance sometime between the 5th and 7th centuries in the Greek lines of transmission.
Its easy to see why Hort's theory of an imposed Latin insertion was popular among extreme anti-Papal Protestants. Yet the full evidence concerning the history of the verses cannot really be dismissed so simply. The passage is actually found to have been popular all over the Empire at least before 400 A.D.

The REAL Spread of the Pericope de Adultera

And its apparent origin appears to be in the Far East according to Eusebius, not the West. The first explicit notice of the passage is given by Papias around 120 A.D. in the middle of Turkey. As Hort himself notes further on:
"[Eusebius] closes his account of the work of Papias (Cent. II) with the words "And he has likewise set forth another narrative (istorian) concerning a woman who was maliciously accused before the Lord touching many sins (epi pollaiV amartiaiV diablhqeishV epi tou kuriou), which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews". (Hort, Introd., Appendix I. Notes on Select Readings, pg 83) Hort had no doubts over the identity of our passage here, and few others do either. The only real questions remaining concern the reliability of both early fathers as to some curious details in this report.
Papias is independantly confirmed as "a hearer of John and companion to Polycarp" by Irenaeus. He apparently lived from about 60-135 A.D. Eusebius calls him 'bishop of Hierapolis' (the modern town of Pamukkale, in Turkey near Colossae) but little else is known. Although Eusebius scorns him as "a man of small mental capacity", this is apparently because Eusebius himself interpreted the Gospels allegorically, while Papias believed in their literal truth.

M. Scott with evidence of Authenticity for PA

2011-03-26T08:41:00.000-07:00

The following is exerpted for review and critique from:
ON THE TRAIL OF A GOOD STORY,
Ciphers in the Sand, (2000).
by J. Martin C. Scott

A careful read will show a surprising amount of evidence in support of the genuineness of John 8:1-11, even though Mr. Scott attempts repeatedly to interpret this evidence as supporting a theory of "intelligent copyists" who cleverly added and edited the passage to make it appear "Johannine". What is this, except an admission that the passage indeed has multiple "Johannine" features, all evidence of its authenticity.

The Purpose of the 'Mount of Olives' Reference
Jesus has escaped the grasp of his opponents once more and, for the only time in Johannine story, spends the evening on the Mount of Olives. The geographical detail (8.1) is without exception seen by commentators as a point of disjuncture, and one of the reasons for the story finding a home after Lk. 21.38, which bears a number of similarities to Jn 8.1-2.
From a narrative perspective, this misses a crucial intertextual link, which binds the story closely to Jesus prior words concerning ‘living water’ in Jn 7.37-39.
It is important to note that the Johannine account does not, in fact, use the same expression for ‘Mount of Olives’ which is found in Lk. 21.37 (το ορος το καλουμενον Ελαιων), but instead uses the form found in LXX text of Zech. 14.4: (το ορος των ελαιων).
This text in Zechariah is one of those that offer an echo of the theme of ‘living waters’ (Zech. 14.8;Jn 7.38). ⁷ As a prophecy of eschatological judgement, if an echo of the Zechariah text is heard in Jn 8.1, it provides both a link back to Jesus’ preceding speech (‘living water’) and a perfect backdrop for what is to follow (judgement theme) in the Johannine context.
It is from this place of judgement that Jesus returns to be tested in judgement at dawn the next day (8.2). It is to the environs of the Temple that he once more comes, alerting the reader to the potential for entrapment, given the immediately preceding plotting of his opponents and the role of the Temple police in it. As so often in the Johannine narrative, many people are present to hear Jesus’ wisdom, but crucially also to witness the events which follow in the unfolding drama.
The life-giving Word is interrupted in mid-flow by the merchants of death (8.3), who arrive abruptly on the scene, taking centre stage while the crowd appears for the moment at least to melt into the background.
The Pharisees are joined here uniquely in the Johannine narrative by the scribes. Although difficult to see from our commonly used Greek texts, it is notable that some manuscripts read ‘chief priests’ instead of ‘scribes’ here, which indicates that at least some copyists were alert to the nuances of Johannine language and sought to align it to the more familiar pattern found at Jn 7.32. ⁸

The Woman as Pawn in a Deadly Game
The drama really begins to unfold with the announcement of purpose of Jesus’ opponents appearance: they bring a woman with them who they claim has been caught in adultery. The description is startling as she is thrust into the centre of the picture. As Gail O’Day describes it:
‘She is an object on display, given no name, no voice, no identity apart from that for which she stands accused’ (1992: 632).
The reader here may recall an earlier story in the Fourth Gospel in which an unnamed woman is, at least implicitly, accused of sexual license (Jn 4.16-18, the Samaritan woman). There the encounter with Jesus started a process of discovery by which the Samaritan woman entered into new faith and performed the task of true discipleship by calling others of her own people to encounter with Jesus. ⁹

The Sinister Intent Behind the 'Game'
This image also reminds us of the reality for the woman brought before Jesus: she is on trial for her life. Yet the reader becomes increasingly aware that the trial is not about any form of justice, but is a put-up job.
First, if the woman was truly guilty of adultery, as the next verse tries to confirm, what need would there be to consult Jesus, for whose judgement his opponents to this point have shown only contempt (7.12, 15, 20, 47-49)?
Second, even the most obtuse of readers recognizes that it takes more than one person to commit adultery – yet only a woman is brought to Jesus.
Third, the following verses show that Jesus is being placed in an impossible situation with regard to making a judgement, having to contradict the letter of either the Jewish or the Roman law.

The Pharisees appear to approach Jesus with a measure of respect when they address him as ‘Teacher’ (διδασκαλος, 8.4). This may be evoked by the earlier description of his position, seated on the ground in the traditional manner of a rabbi with his disciples around him (8.2).
Brown sees this as another link with Synoptic style (1966: 333), but it is in fact the most common way of addressing Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, and a title which the Johannine Jesus himself later acknowledges as an accurate description (Jn 13.13, 14) (Scott 1992: 152).

The Ambiguity of the Circumstances in the Johannine Context
A significant narrative ‘gap’ occurs at this point. We hear that the woman was caught in the very act of adultery, but we are not told whether she has already been tried and sentenced or whether Jesus is being sought out as the ‘judge’ in a highly irregular court scene.
Although Schnackenburg, after a whole page of discussion, concludes with some justification that ‘the story itself shows no interest in the question’ (1980: 164), it nonetheless remains an important interpretative crux for the narrative reader.
Is Jesus being placed in the formal position of ‘judge’ by the Pharisees, or is he being, as it were, consulted in passing as the woman is taken already to her place of execution?
The narrative setting into which the story has been placed by the copyists makes the former choice compelling, given the direct relationship which emerges on either side with Jn 7.24 and 8.15. The idea that, in addressing Jesus as ‘Teacher’, the Pharisees are ‘in effect submitting the case to him for decision’ (Schnackenburg 1980: 164), is attractive: the tone is set for what follows by alluding to Jesus as judge.

The Internal Focus of the Story is Hypocrisy, not Adultery
The designation of the crime as ‘adultery’ (μοιχεια) raises a number of issues for a narrative reading. Much of the discussion among historical critics has centered on the nature of the crime, the legality of the accusation in terms of proper witnesses and the martial status of the woman. ¹⁰ Again the text reveals nothing of any certainty here, even though the weight of argument seems to favour seeing her as a married woman.
A significant aspect of the way in which the story is told is the uncovering of the hypocrisy of the woman’s accusers, so the suggestion that she is being used as a pawn in a deadly game in which the rules are being flouted sits well with the overall aim of the account. This would suggest that, whatever the legal niceties of the case, which Derrett (1963-64) is at pains to uncover, justice under the law is neither sought nor required by the accusers.
In the light of this, the theme of adultery takes on a different aspect within the Johannine narrative as a whole. It has long been noted that irony is a common technique employed by the Fourth Evangelist (Duke 1985) and this text fits the literary pattern of the Gospel well in theis respect

The Harmony of the Story with the Following Narrative
As George Brooke has pointed out (1988: 107), there is a strong linguistic connection in the LXX between the two terms μοιχεια and πορνεια, the latter of which is used to describe Jesus’ opponents in Jn 8.41.
Whether or not the copyist saw this connection in placing the story where it now appears in the Fourth Gospel, ¹¹ the close conjunction of the words now offers such a literary link to be made by the reader. The irony now lies in the fact that Jesus’ opponents, who seek to condemn another of adultery, themselves come under such suspicion and innuendo within a matter of a few verses!

Adultery as Metaphor for Apostacy
Adultery is used frequently in the Hebrew scriptures, especially in the prophetic materials, ¹² as a metaphor for apostasy – turning away from the true God. This is precisely what the Fourth Gospel portrays the opponents of Jesus as doing in rejecting his message of truth for their own ‘lies’ (Jn 8.55).
What irony, then, that those who seek to trap Jesus through complicity in ‘subverting’ the letter of the law on adultery, should themselves end up under accusation of the same charge. That the narrative does infer their guilt here is strengthended by another observation which Brooke makes regarding the use of language in Jn 8.44. Here the word επιθυμια appears for the only time in the Gospel. Brooke connects it to the use of the word to translate the subject of the tenth commandment (‘You shall not covet’) in both of the LXX versions of the Decalogue (Exod. 20,17; Deut. 5.21). He concludes:
"Since the first object of covetousness in the prohibition in the LXX is ‘your neighbour’s wife’, it is perhaps not surprising to find an allusion to this commandment, the tenth, as the dialogue develops from the subject of adultery" (1988: 107).
In reading the unfolding narrative of John’s Gospel, then, the insertion of the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery at the end of ch. 7 serves to underline the hypocrisy of Jesus’ opponents in the following dialogue. But it has a still wider connection to the theme of apostasy by means of yet another vital intertextual allusion: namely, to the figure of Sophia in Israel’s wisdom literature.

Sophia and the Adultress in Wisdom Literature
The comparison between the adulteress, or prostitute and Sophia is a well-worked theme in Proverbs 1-9. The whole image of God’s invitation to humanity, in the form of Sophia as the woman who invites ‘men’ to receive her gifts, functions successfully because it has a perfect foil in the image of the immoral woman who seeks to turn them away from God. This latter figure surely represents apostasy in the Wisdom tradition. Brooke also refers to the Wisdom literature, pointing to the identification of Sophia with Torah in Sir. 24.23 (1988: 107). To reject Sophia is to abandon the law, whose very purpose is to keep ‘men’ from seductive powers of the adulteress (Prov. 6.23-29).
Since the Fourth Gospel contains a sophisticated leitmotif of Jesus as the embodiment of Wisdom over against the idea that she is contained in the Torah, ¹³ the rejection of Jesus Sophia by his opponents in John 8 is an indication precisely of their apostasy.
The huge irony which the insertion of a story concerning adultery throws up is that their supposed defence of the Torah is calculated at the expense of the true embodiment of Wisdom, Jesus Sophia. In the Johannine terms, the attempt to entrap Jesus through Torah is the ultimate apostasy, since it puts false wisdom in the place of true Wisdom.
Jesus versus Moses
The reference to Moses (8.5) recalls the words of the Johannine Prologue (1.17), where a direct comparison is made between Jesus and the lawgiver. Since at that point the contrast is made between law on the one hand and grace and truth on the other, the reader is already prepared for the potentiality of a merciful judgement from Jesus. In the story of the quite deliberate healing of a man on the sabbath (5.1-18), the Johannine Jesus has also demonstrated before that he is more than willing to flout the letter of the law to engage in the merciful work of God.
When the story is placed into the context of John 7-8, the eventual outcome is less surprising in the light of what has gone before. Barrett notes that grammatically speaking the word ‘you’ () is placed ‘in a position of emphasis, inviting Jesus to set himself against Moses’ (1978: 591). He duly takes up the challenge!

Explicit Challenge to Both Roman and Jewish Legal Codes
Although the story seems primarily concerned with the issue of Jesus’ attitude to the Jewish law, on the level of the wider narrative a double dilemma is a set up for Jesus in this challenge. On the one hand, if he refuses to condemn the woman to death, he will be accused of rejecting the authority of Moses and the Torah.
Of course, the Johannine Jesus has already indicated his claim to superiority over Moses in a prior speech (5.46) and will do so again in the following dialogue (8.58), but the insertion of this story heightens the drama by appearing to make him explicitly override a legal prescription.
On the other hand, if he accepts the verdict and allows the woman to be stoned, he not only subverts the portrayal of his role as the very embodiment of grace and truth (1.14), but also stands in potential conflict with the authority of the Roman law.
Even if we cannot be certain whether the saying in Jn 18.31 was an accurate description of the functioning of Roman rule in Palesine at the time of Jesus, it is quite clear that on the level of a narrative reading, this conflict potentially exists for the Johannine Jesus.
The narrator interrupts the flow of the story at this point (8.6) to make explicit to the reader what has all along appeared to be the case: the woman is merely the bait in a plot to catch a bigger fish – Jesus. Although this aside does not appear in all manuscripts and is considered secondary by such a careful commentator as Becker, it fits well with Johannine style, as Johnson (1966) has pointed out. ¹⁴
The late addition of this statement ¹⁵ may again reflect the activity of knowledgeable scribes, who adjusted its style to echo Johannine usage. However much the aside now places the focus on the plot against Jesus, the reader remains conscious that it is the woman who lies in most immediate danger of death.

Writing in the Earth
Jesus responds by bending down and writing with his finger on the ground. Perhaps predictably, this mentioned of ciphers in the sand, with its twin in v.8, has been the subject of intense speculation by historical critics, who advance the claims of a variety of possible subjects.
Some commentators assume that Jesus must have written out a text, which eventually pricks the consciences of the accusers. Others think he makes a more general accusation, for example by writing down the sins of his opponents. Yet others see it more in the form of a symbolic action, perhaps evocative of a particular text like Jer. 17.13:
‘Those who have turned away from you will be written in the dust, because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water’.
Among the texts advanced as possible subjects for Jesus’ scribbling, Derrett is confident in identifying consecutively Exod. 23.1b and 23.7. This reflects his opinion that Jesus is challenging the legality of their witness and the honesty of their motives in bringing the charge (1963-64: 16-25).
Derret goes so far as to suggest that, from his position of crouching down, Jesus could only have written some 12 Hebrew characters – which miraculously coincides with the texts he quotes! Ingenious though this is, it is completely speculative and, as Brown comments, ‘if the matter were of major importance, the content of the writing would have been reported’ (Brown 1966:334).

Divine Doodling?
Brown’s own conclusion about the action is untypically lacking in imagination. He thinks that Jesus is simply taking time out ‘doodling on the ground’ in order to contain his anger and revulsion (1966: 334). Even if this were the reason for the first such action, it does not explain the second occurrence.
Strangely, too, the exhaustive treatment of Becker is somewhat banal at this point, since he sees the action of Jesus as merely an insertion by the narrator to offer a pause in the controversy dialogue (1963: 87).
In his commentary on the text he calls it a ‘novelistic-decorative detail’ (1979: 283), rather ignoring the point, taken up by Schondorf, that the double appearance of the motif in such a short text indicates a significant emphasis on it by the writer (Schondorf 1996: 92). ¹⁶

Various Explanations of the Writing
Schondorf himself is almost triumphant in his identification of the significance of Exod. 31.18, the closing verse of the giving of the law on Siani, with its telling phrase, ‘the tablets of stone inscribed by the finger of God’. He concludes: ‘Jesus’ finger would be, in fact is the finger of God, which writes down the divine Law and thereby expresses his opinion regarding sin’ (1996: 92; my translation and emphasis).
As an example of intertextual echo around the word ‘finger’ this would make some sense, but as a historical judgement it could scarcely justify Schondorf’s optimism.
In his analysis of the background to the text, Manson cites yet another possible approach to defining the content of the writing. He thinks it may well reflect the practice of the Roman courts, where the judge would first of all write out the sentence before delivering it to the accused (1952-53: 255-56).
This might work with the first instance, the sentence being that announced in v. 7, but in terms of the unfolding of the narrative, the second occurrence, which would by Manson’s analysis be the words of Jesus to the woman in v. 11, already anticipates the departure of the accusers in v. 9.
Beasly-Murray also rightly cautions against reading wider Roman practice into the Palestinian context (1986: 146). ¹⁷
Luise Schottroff’s comment probably contains more insight on the realities of the situation, however, when she says:
‘I do not believe that Rome’s representatives, especially the prefect in Caesarea, would have regarded a woman’s execution by stoning as a trespass against Rome’s sole jurisdiction over capital punishment’ (1995: 184).
Schottroff rightly points to the assumption in both the narrative world of the text and the harsh world of the Pax Romana, that the woman is at best a disposable commodity.

Writing Issue is Left Open...
Given this variety of suggestions from those approaching the text from a historical perspective, it is clear that there can be no simple single solution to the riddle of either its content or symbolism. From a narrative perspective, the action of Jesus presents a whole range of imagery for the reader open to its intertextuality.
There is no question that Jer. 17.13 makes a compelling narrative link both with the internal discussion of the pericope (the apostasy theme noted above) and with the surrounding material in the text’s present location in the Fourth Gospel.
Jeremiah’s reference to the ‘spring of living water’ has often been seen as a background to Jn. 7.38. Then on the wider internal level of the Johannine narrative, the story would make a double connection to that of the Samaritan woman through the presence of a woman considered of dubious character and the identification of Jesus either verbally or symbolically as ‘living water’ (see Jn 4.12).

___________________________________________

7. This text in Zechariah also connects with this section of John by reference to the Feast of Tabernacles (Zech. 14:16). Jn 2.16 also alludes to Zech. 14:21, indicating the measure to which this text was known and reflected upon by early Christians.
8. Brown 1966: 333. This reading is not evident from the critical apparatus of the Nestle-Aland 27th edition. The edition by C. Tischendorf, Novum Testamentum Graece (1869), however, lists four miniscules which contain the reading 'chief priests'. It is significant insofar as it indicates the care taken by some copyists in inserting material in a manner sensitive to context.
9. See Scott 1992: 184-98.
10. See Blinzler (1957-58: 32-47); Derrett (1963-64); Becker (1963: 165-69).
11. Brooke (1988: 107) suggests that this was the case, and I see no good reason to doubt the ability of an intelligent copyist in making this connection.
12. For details of the main texts, see Brooke (1988: 107).
13. See Scott (1992: 105-106). The comparison begins in Jn 1:17 and continues throughout the Gospel.
14. See also Trites (1974: 147-46).
15. We should note here the astonishing interpretation of Young (1995). He sees the addition of this verse to the tradition as an indicator of a quite different purpose in the original form of the story. Far from being a tale which sought to denigrate the Pharisees, he argues that the text is really about an attempt by the Pharisees to find a way to save the woman from the awful sentence of the law. In the young Rabbi Jesus they find an interpreter who enables them to achieve this end: "They wanted to saver her, and Jesus helped them' (1995: 70). Suffice it to say that only a male commentator was ever likely to think that one up!
16. Also note Schnackenburg (1980: 165-66).
17. See also Schnackenburg (1980: 165).

The Egerton Fragment and the PA

2011-03-18T08:43:00.000-07:00

Surprising evidence of the PA comes from one of the earliest unknown 'gospel' fragments so far found: The Egerton Papyrus 2 (high resolution photo):

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This remarkable fragment appears to be a Christian student's composition, drawing from several gospels, notably the Gospel of John. At first it was thought to be a page from an unknown "lost Gospel", but its plagarized and composite nature has been thoroughly scrutinized and reasonably well understood for some time now. Whoever composed this work used well-known gospel accounts and lifted both motifs, phraseaology and ideas liberally and crudely in putting together what appears to be elaborated fictional stories of Jesus.

What is less known about the Egerton Fragments, is that they rather plainly reference the PA and its surrounding context in John also, making it the earliest non-canonical witness to both the existence of the PA, and its placement in John's Gospel!

This information was actually nearly lost, as one fragment of the page was not at first recognized as belonging to the same page of this document.
The second part remained as the "Koln 255" fragment, until textual critics put them back together again. Here is the reverse side of the Egerton Fragment (recto) together with the additional Koln 255 fragment, with the two key-words of interest highlighted:

"Teacher!", ...."and sin no more!"

Here is a translation of the first part of the recto side shown:

Fragment 2: Recto (→)

". . . coming unto him began to tempt him with a question, saying, Teacher, Jesus, we know that thou art come from God, for the things which thou doest testify above all the prophets. Tell us therefore: Is it lawful [? to render] unto kings that which pertaineth unto their rule? [Shall we render unto them], or not? But Jesus, knowing their thought, being moved with indignation, said unto them, Why call ye me with your mouth Master, when ye hear not what I say? Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people honour me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. In vain do they worship me, [teaching as their doctrines the] precepts [of men] . . ."

However, the use of John being reasonably settled, little thought has apparently been spent upon its possible importance as a witness to the early existence (and location in John) of the Pericope de Adultera. Admittedly, the evidence is rather slender and tentative. But it is a remarkable coincidence, that several phrases are placed in close proximity, in the correct order (the same as in the Pericope), namely,

"rulers...the crowd..." (verso)
"Teacher! (διδασκαλε = 'rabbi', John 8:4, see also Jn 3:2)" ...
"Go...and sin no more!"(μηκετι αμαρτανε) 8:11

In particular, the combination of "Teacher"...(cf. Jn 8:4) and "Sin no more" (Jn 8:11) are eerily reminiscent of the Pericope de Adultera."

peace
Nazaroo

Old Latin Manuscript r1 (6th cent) photos of PA

2011-03-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

The 'Codex Usserianus Primus' (GA label: it-r1) was named after James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh (died 1656), but misleadingly so, as there is no evidence that it was in his library. It contains the four Gospels in a pre-Vulgate text ('Old Latin'), in this order: (Matthew, John, Luke, Mark).


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This Old Latin manuscript (circa 550 A.D.) is one of many excellent witnesses which show that the Pericope de Adultera (Jn 7:53-8:11) was fully accepted as Holy Scripture and was found in the Latin translation long before the time of Jerome. Jerome had produced the Latin Vulgate translation in 394 A.D. directly from Greek manuscripts of the 3rd century he acquired in Constantinople. He noted at that time that there were "many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin" containing the passage. These surviving witnesses to the older Latin translation circulating before Jerome's version confirm Jerome's observations.

Here's the blurb from Dublin:

"There are 179 folios, page size varying greatly as a result of damage caused by its enclosure in a shrine as the relic of an unidentified saint.
There are two broadly similar hands, one copying Matthew and John (fols 1r-78r), the other responsible for Luke and Mark (fols 78v-182r).

The major surviving decoration is a cross in red, outlined in black, at the close of the Gospel of Luke (fol 149v), placed within a triple frame of rope and dot patterns, with a crescent on each corner. On either side of the cross, the letters alpha and omega signify the eternity and infinitude of God. There are colophons to Luke and Mark: explicit secundum lucanum ([the Gospel] according to Luke ends); incipit secundum Marcum ([the Gospel] according to Mark begins). A leaf, now lost, between the end of Matthew and beginning of John may also have been decorated. Further decoration includes red dots on top of certain initial letters; rubricated openings to chapters; and line fillers of red 'commas'. Traditionally regarded as the earliest surviving Irish book, produced in Ireland itself or at the Irish missionary foundation of Bobbio in north Italy, the manuscript has recently, and not improbably, been assigned to the 5th century and an origin in continental Europe. If that is correct, it travelled to Ireland, or at least into Irish hands, at an early date. Dry-point glosses, added in the 7th century, include one in Old Irish: at Luke 3.14, stipendiis (rewards) is glossed with the equivalent word in Irish, focrici.

New Internal Evidence for PA (V) John Smoother without PA?!

2011-03-10T05:01:00.000-08:00

Daniel Buck on TC-Alternate-List has laid out problem with omitting the PA. It turns out that contrary to the claims of those wanting to omit it, John does not read any 'smoother', or fit together better without the PA:

"John chapter 7 shifts scene and speaker several times:

Version A: With PA in Place:

v. 1-9      Dialog between Jesus and his brothers in Galilee
v 10-13 Jews looking for Jesus in Jerusalem
v. 14-24 Jesus and the Jews in Jerusalem
v. 25-27 Jews to each other in Jerusalem
v. 28-30 Jesus to the Jews at the temple
v. 31-32 Jews who heard him to each other near the Pharisees
v. 33-34 Jesus to the Jews
v. 35-36 Jews who heard him to each other
v. 37-39 Jesus to the Jews on the last day of the feast
v. 40-44 People who heard him to each other
             - Jesus now certainly absent from the scene -
v. 45-49   Pharisees, guards to each other at Pharisee HQ (see v. 32)
v. 50-52   Pharisees, Nicodemus to each other
v. 53    Pharisees, guards leave the scene

                - Jesus comes back on the scene -
8: 1 Jesus goes to Mount of Olives & back to temple
8: 2 Jesus present teaching people at temple
8: 3-9    Scribes and Pharisees with Jesus at temple
8: 10-11 Jesus, the woman taken in adultery (and left)
8: 12     Jesus to the people in the temple
8: 13-20 Pharisees and Jesus in the temple treasury

Version B: Now See what happens when you take out 7:53-8:11:

v. 35-36 Jews who heard him to each other
v. 37-39 Jesus to the Jews on the last day of the feast
v. 40-44 People who heard him to each other
            - Jesus now certainly absent from the scene -
v. 45-49   Pharisees, guards to each other at Pharisee HQ (see v. 32)
v. 50-52   Pharisees, Nicodemus to each other
              - - - PA deleted - - - -
8: 12       Jesus to the people in the temple (no entrance!)
8: 13-20 Pharisees and Jesus in the treasury

Jesus speaking "again" in v. 12 must either refer to the people in v. 8:2, or all the way back to the people in v. 7:37-44. Everything in v. 45-53 intrudes on the context, without the PA there.

Notice how Bibles that leave out v. 2 have to mistranslate v. 12 to make sense of it.

Daniel Buck

New Internal Evidence for PA (Part IV) Culpepper: Linguistic Crosslinks

2011-03-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

Internal Analysis

Background to the Internal Evidence
As we said before, the interesting part of Culpepper's book is not his treatment of John 8:1-11, which can only be characterized as woefully inadequate, bordering on special pleading.
The fun part is that Culpepper elsewhere in the book inadvertantly has provided startling and powerful supplimentary internal evidence for the authenticity of the Pericope de Adultera.
To start, Culpepper helpfully diagrams the connections between chapter 5 of John and chapter 7. On page 166 he provides a chart, showing a remarkable and deep linkage between two sections of John, 5:1-47, and 7:15-24:

John 5____________________________________Jn 7:15-24

5:47.........."letters" /what is written' (grammata).....................7:15
5:31..........speaking on His own behalf..................................7:17
5:44..........seeking the glory from God...................................7:18
5:45-47......Moses gave the Law.......................................7:19-25
5:18...........seeking to kill Jesus........................................7:19-20
5:1-18 .......healing of man at pool/'one work'.........................7:21
5:1-18........"I healed a man's whole body on Sabbath............7:23
5:9.............the sabbath...........................................................7:23
____________________________________________________

Obviously the connections between the two passages run deep. And neither of these two passages are suspected of being additions on any textual grounds. The MSS tradition is unwavering here. Also, no one has ever produced any internal evidence suggesting either or both of these two passages was some kind of addition or insertion.
But now let us add our own second chart, showing the remarkably similar connection between two other passages in John:

Now we extend this list with the parallels between chapter 6 and 8:

John 6__________________________________John 8:1-11

6:14............ the Prophet to come.......................................7:52
6:15.............Jesus retires to mountain alone.......................8:1
6:17............it was now night................................................8:1
6:22..........the following day, the crowd/people stood.........8:2
6:37,44...........the people came to Him...............................8:2
6:21................they willingly received Him...........................8:2
6:45................they were taught of God..............................8:2
6:25................they said to Him Rabbi/Teacher..................8:4
6:32................Moses gave them bread/law........................8:5
6:30..............."What do you work/say?"..............................8:5
6:36.................they believed Him not................................. 8:6
6:21................on the ground...............................................8:6
6:41-2.............they murmered at/pressed Him....................8:7
6:34...............then they said, "give us this bread"
.......................and they that heard were convicted.............8:9
6:39-40........."I will raise them up"
......................Jesus raised Himself up..............................8:10
6:47.........."whosever believes in Me has eternal life"
....................."Neither do I judge thee"...............................8:11
_________________________________________________

Note that the parallel includes the 'joining section' (John 7:53-8:1). The whole purpose of this transitional portion is to intentionally connect to the previous part of John (the end of chapter 7).
The parallel also involves the previous verse, 7:52, which is not even in dispute as a part of John's Gospel. There is no textual evidence of a gloss here in 7:52 either.
In case this weren't enough, there are the incredible direct parallels in language between chapter 6 and the passage:

The word-for-word parallels between John 8:1-11 and John 6:1-21:

Jn 6:3 : ανηλθεν δε εις το ορος Ιησουν (But Jesus went to the mountain...)
Jn 8:1 : Ιησουν δε ανηλθεν εις το ορος (But Jesus went to the mountain..)

Jn 6:5 : πολυς οχλος ερχεται προς αυτον (a great crowd came unto Him)
Jn 8:2 : πας ο λαος ηρχετο προς αυτον (all the people came unto Him)

Jn 6:6 : τουτο δε ελεγεν πειραζων αυτον (this He said testing him)
Jn 8:6 : τουτο δε ελεγον πειραζοντεν αυτον his they said testing Him)

Jn 6:10 ανεπεσειν...ανεπεσαν...οι ανδρες (sit down, the men sat down)
Jn 8:6 : ο δε Ιησους κατω κυψας (but Jesus bent down...)

Jn 6:21 ...εγενετο το πλοιον επι της γης (... upon the ground )
Jn 8:6b ........ κατεγραφεν εις της γης (... in the ground )
______________________________________________________

It becomes obvious that whoever composed John 8:1-11 was intimately familiar with and extensively used John chapt. 6 as a template (or vise versa). But this is exactly the habit and pattern of the composer of 5:1-47, and 7:15-24, namely John the evangelist himself.
Once again it becomes clear that this cannot be any kind of naive 'insertion' of a story previously unrelated to John, by some scribe or editor trying to preserve an 'ancient tradition' or 'authentic oral story'. Either the gospel was extensively and carefully rewritten to include the pericope, or it was always an integral part of John's gospel.

Culpepper versus Zervos
It may not have quite struck the reader how incredibly profound the evidence accidentally noted by Culpepper is, compared to the blatantly artificial and strained attempt of Zervos with the Protoevangelion of James. (See our article on Zervos on the website)
After 43 pages of struggle, Zervos was only able to produce one short phrase of three words, that can connect John 8:1-11 with the Protevangelion of James.
Yet when we compare John 8:1-11 with John chapter 6, we are able to come up with at least three long clauses of near verbatum agreement in the original Greek, as well as about twenty (!) thematic or bite-size connections, resonances or parallels:

Click to Enlarge: Backbutton to return

To understand the power of this connection, we need to realize how unique it is.
Of course we can set up parallel accounts between Gospels, especially when as in the case of the Synoptics, they have borrowed from each other or used common materials.
We can even find short parallels some distance apart when general themes are used repeatedly, or when deliberate chiastic patterns are embedded in a Gospel, such as the O.T. quotation patterns in John.
But we can't just arbitrarily take any two sections of a Gospel and get these kinds of concentrated interconnections.
For instance, no other section or passage in John can be aligned with either chapter 6 or 8:1-11 and be found to have this kind of heavy interconnection. John 8:1-11 is heavily connected to John 6, and not to anything else!.
This is clearly a significant finding, and it simply means this: John 8:1-11 was composed using John 6. It could never have been an independantly 'floating piece of tradition' that somehow ended up between 7:52 and 8:12 by an arbitrary or accidental interpolation of some scribe or a series of errors.
It could NOT have been composed out of the Protevangelion of James, or the Egerton Papyrus, or from the Story of Susanna. It could NOT have been composed by anyone other than the final redactor or issuer of the Gospel of John.
The Pericope de Adultera is heavily dependant upon John 6. But its more than this: Our passage is dependant upon chapter 6 exactly the same way as chapter 7 is dependant upon chapter 5, as Culpepper has shown us.
This means that whoever was imitating John knew more about John than 200 years worth of textual critics and analysts.
But when we combine this fact with the new knowledge about the structure of John itself, from the multi-level chiastic connections to the O.T. Quotation structures, it becomes clear also that the version of John we have is also completely dependant upon 7:53-8:11 for its own coherence and structural integrity.
John 8:1-11 is glued to John and John is glued to 8:1-11 in such a way that it is impossible to pry them apart without doing violence to both.
Who could have done this? John the Evangelist, whoever he may be.

The Critical Text is shown to be Mutilated
Simply omitting Jn 7:53-8:11 just damages the hidden connective structure, without completely removing it.

This means that the text of Aleph and B (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) cannot be original, since their text retains the broken structure.
Even with minor differences in the text for the rest of John, the above list of connections remains essentially the same when we use either codex B, or a modern critical edition of the NT, or even the Textus Receptus.
Once again, the text of a handful of 2nd-4th century documents artificially prepared for liturgical service is shown to be a secondary, mutilated text.
The discerning Christian who wants the most accurate and logically consistent text of John's Gospel will opt for the traditional or Received text which includes the Pericope de Adultera (John 7:53-8:11).
Those stuck with inferior 'critical' editions of the NT like the UBS text should try to trade them for good copies of the Greek text, like the Robinson/Pierpont text, now being distributed free on the internet.

(exerpted from our Culpepper Internal Evidence page)

mr.srivener

Pericope de Adultera: blog

Adam Clarke: New Collection Available at LOGOS

Apocryphal Gospel of Peter and Jn 8:1-11

The following is an excerpt from the Article by Nazaroo on G-Peter.

Gospel of Peter:& John 8:1-11

Luke and the PA

G.A. Clark on the PA and TC

John's Connection to Mark and the PA

Mark as a Base Outline for John

Shared Backbone

Mark / John Interconnections: Part I

Mark / John Interconnections: Part II

Conclusion

Pat Robertson on Adultery and Alzheimers

James Snapp Jr's Observations on Asterisks

Obscurantism on the PA

Ezra Abbot's Corrections to Scrivener re: PA

Malan on the PA (12 Ancient Versions with Notes!)

T. S. Green (1856) on the PA

AC Clark on the PA

Richard Heard (1950) and the PA

Richard Heard on John 8:1-11

Heard on John 8:1-11

Chapter 10: The Gospel of John

Baljon (1898) on PA: State of Art and state of confusion

Scholz and MacMichael (1831-1854) on the PA

Cambridge U., A. Plummer, and the PA

Adam Clarke on the PA

The English Hexapla on the PA

Trollope's Cogent stance on PA

Plummer (1886): 80 variants in 12 verses? not likely

19th cent. confusion over Jn 7:53-8:11

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 8)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 7)

W. Webster (1855) on the PA

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 6)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 5)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 4)

Metzger on the PA...again.

James Snapp Jr. on textual evidence for the PA

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 3)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part 2)

Hubner's garbage on the PA (Part I)

NEB Nonsense on the PA

The Interesting Case of Codex Delta (Δ) and the PA

Codex Δ - Sang. 48

Recent Disinformation about the PA

T. Manson (1952) on Jeremias and the PA

Mapping the Spread of the PA

M. Scott with evidence of Authenticity for PA

The Egerton Fragment and the PA

Fragment 2: Recto (→)

Old Latin Manuscript r1 (6th cent) photos of PA

New Internal Evidence for PA (V) John Smoother without PA?!

New Internal Evidence for PA (Part IV) Culpepper: Linguistic Crosslinks

Internal Analysis

Gospel of Peter:
& John 8:1-11

Mark / John
Interconnections: Part I

Mark / John
Interconnections: Part II