John 8:1-11

The almost unanimous voice of modem criticism pronounces the narrative before us to be no genuine part of the Gospel of John. The section is wanting in the oldest and most trustworthy MSS. of the Gospel, and in several of the most ancient versions. It is passed by without notice in the commentaries of some of the earliest and most critical fathers of the Church. It is marked by an unusually large number of various readings, a circumstance always highly suspicious. It is full of expressions not found elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel, some of the chief of which will be noticed in the comment. It interrupts the flow of the section where it occurs, John 8:12 connecting itself directly with that part of chap. 7 which closes with John 7:52. Finally, MSS. which contain the section introduce it at various places, some at the close of the Gospel; others after chap. John 7:36; while in a third class it has no place in John at all, but is read in the Gospel of Luke, at the close of chap. 21. These considerations are decisive; and the narrative must be set aside as no part of the work in which it occurs. How the section found its way into the place which it now occupies it is impossible to say. Various conjectures, more or less plausible, have been offered on the point, but all of them are destitute of proof. It does not follow, however, that the incident itself is not true. We know that an incident, very similar to this, probably indeed the same, was related in the early Apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews; and this circumstance lends probability to the belief that the events actually happened. But the great argument in favour of the truth of the story is afforded by the character of the narrative itself. It bears t he almost unmistakeable impress of a wisdom which could not have originated with the men of our Lord's time, and which (as is shown by the objections often made to it) the world even in our own time hardly comprehends. It may be noted in addition that the incident bears in its spirit a striking similarity to that recorded in Mark 12:13-17 (Matthew 22:15-22; Luke 20:20-26). Bishop Lightfoot adduces strong evidence to show that the story was one of the illustrative anecdotes of Papias (Contemp. Review, vol. xxvi. p. 847). If so, it must have been in circulation from the very earliest times.