The other two examples from dialogue are best taken together, to get a flavour of what Davidson is really proposing here:
(8) & (10): "In the Law, Moses to us commanded that such be stoned (to death)!"
So reads the traditional text and most variants.
...versus Davidson's conjecture:
"In the Law to us Moses, - It is written : to stone such a one (to death)."
I have included Davidson's other variant (9) here, to see if any merit can be had for it in conjunction with his other proposals, in case they add unforseen support to it.
It's worth a pause here, to imagine just what Davidson is here proposing:
A gang of armed men with bodyguards, second in authority only to Pilate and his soldiers, boldly confront Jesus with His own men in the only venue where they might succeed in trapping Him. They are hoping to embarrass and humiliate Jesus, perhaps even incite the crowd to stone Him as a false teacher or prophet.
They are dragging along a hysterical woman against her will, in obvious fear of being lynched by the crowd or executed publicly, and throw her down in front of Jesus in the middle of His speech to the crowds.
Now we are to imagine that John, in recording the words of these men, (even I suppose if John has invented the story) would have had them sort of approach Jesus in a kind of 'fellow preacher buddy' way, and as if one were checking the traffic light before crossing the street, shuffle a bit and shyly stutter,
"(uh, Jesus?) ...in the Law Moses- (- uh,) It is written. - (um,) such to stone, (you know..)"
Never mind the grammatical absurdity of it, which is as bad in Greek as it is in English: (strike 1).
Is this how the leader of a gang of violent men casting a woman onto the ground is going to speak? By anybody's (even John's) imagination? (strike 2).
The fact that a few effeminate scribes in the 8th or 9th century actually made (only) one of the suggested emendations only underlines its implausibility.
Davidson's idea for this stilted phraseology is inspired by John 20:31, where indeed John in the narrative uses "It is written". How we are to imagine John would have the Pharisees speak in the same unimaginative and artificial way here boggles the mind. (strike 3).
The only other place similar in John is the expression of Pilate, "What I've written, I have written." (John 19:22) But this in no way parallels the situation here in this pericope. There Pilate isn't talking about scripture, and uses the 1st person, to point out the futility of changing the sign on the cross, now that everyone has already seen it.
This contextless conjecturology completely misconstrues what needs to be demonstrated, and what the evidence might look like. (strike 4).
These three examples together form the most conjectural, and least plausible cluster of ideas Davidson has offered so far. The suggestions each receive one 'x' for being in dialogue, another for being grammatically and absurdly artificial, and a 3rd 'x' for completely ignoring the context and content of the story.
3 strikes and they're out.
I can find no plausible positive support for Davidson's suggestions here.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 21st December 2005 at 03:44 PM.
kateleifqh (*) ...................................afiesqai ( euromen m6) en mesw estwsa (*) ..........................mesh estwsa plhn ....................................................ei mh (L) katekrinen (*) ..................................ekrinen (m6) _________________________________________________________________________
(*) an unstable part of text involving variants (D) a part of the recorded dialogue (the Pharisees) (L) a Lukanism normally only appearing in dialogue (var.) probable readings exist supporting the conjecture
_______________________________________________________
A Second glance at Davidson's list shows that at least 6 of the examples are in fact in found in Von Soden's "m6" text, one of two dominant forms of the pericope throughout the Medieval period. This means that Davidson's evidence really has more bearing and use in helping us to possibly choose between the two texts as to priority and integrity and reconstruct the direction and nature of the textual corruption. But the very fact that these conjectural proposals are actually supported by some of the text-types that include the pericope is fatal to their application as evidence against 'authenticity'.
This group of variants we will return to when we come to reconstruct the history and text of the pericope.
Connection to Previous Text
But it is worthwhile now to make a brief note concerning the first three variants. These variants all have to do with how the pericope is connected to the previous narrative.
Whether or not the passage is authentic, we know already from Von Soden's careful analysis that this area of joining suffers heavy variation, due to the fact of the passage being repeatedly taken out, and put back in, the manuscript lines of transmission. Any variation here, can and will be accounted for by properly understanding that process, and only by so doing.
The use of this portion of the pericope for attempting to establish authenticity is hopelessly premature, since the process of disconnection and reconnection did so much damage.
For example, if the passage were to stand alone, then of course the relation to verse 7:53 would not reflect a connecting morphology, whereas if the passage originally stood there, the natural assumption would be that the connecting morphology belonged there. If that connection is structurally necessary, then it is disengenious to try to force it conform to the 'style' of John against its own primary function.
That would be like saying that John would not have connected the passage to the preceding narrative because it did not suit his 'style'!
Remaining Cases
The (7/12) 'en (tw) mesw ' versus 'eiV to meson /mesh ' question which involves two of the remaining cases I will leave for now since it is again a question of style versus purpose: The description of the position of the woman relative to the crowd, the followers, or the arresting party is a technical problem which does not properly compare to other cases in John. In those something quite different is meant, such as "within you/among you" and the language surrounding such cases is a special theological terminology.
(6) paV o laoV (*) ..................paV o ocloV (var.)
These two phrases are not synonymous in either John or Luke, or even Matthew. On the one hand, 'translation Greek' or a Semiticism is suspected, and on the other, they have connotations in meaning and a usage which has been studied extensively. Both Luke and John have more than a big enough vocabulary to contain both phrases, and enough intelligence to apply them appropriately.
To argue John would restrict himself to one phrase only is absurd, and would be equivalent to saying a modern American couldn't have used the phrase 'folk-song' in a sentence, since he has previously often quoted, "We the People..." in several books.
The only two cases left standing in the list are:
(4) "orqrou ......": (At DAWN He came again to the temple...)
This I will leave until the commentary on the content of John, since this is quite rightly identified as a rare and unusual word, but again in our view not arbitrary, but having an important purpose.
(13) "plhn .............ei mh " ("except" versus "if not"):
This is a grammatical question, and we will deal with it next.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 22nd December 2005 at 07:31 AM.
We are also informed that escatwn is an unsuitable antithesis for presbuterwn.
That is, "...from the eldest...even unto the last." is supposed to be a shocking logical gaff, unlike the John we know.
Of course we can appreciate that when you have spent your life learning Classical Greek as a second language, for the purpose of reading the logic of Plato and Aristotle,the NT can seem annoyingly unstructured. It doesn't read like a philosophy text at all, and keeps raising disconcerting personal ethical questions. And so we can understand, and perhaps sympathize when Oxford professors get a little frazzled.
But lets actually ask the right question: Is this 'non-sequitous' thinking alien to John?
Oops, here are some examples:
John 3:10: "Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"
4:1-3 (The non-sequitous reason why Jesus left Judea and Galilee)
4:10 (the unbelievably unfair ridicule of the woman for her 'lack of knowledge')
4:37 (the impossibly obtuse connection between the OT quote and Jesus observation)
5:15 (Jesus scolds the cripple in a way that implies his own sin crippled him)
6:35 (in case you doubt the confusion Jesus' teaching causes, check 6:52,60! )
10:1 (Which refers to a mysterious party never subsequently identified)
10:34 (Jesus strange use of the OT to support His messianic claims!)
12:7-8 (The bizarre reason given to 'lay off' the woman with the perfume)
The list could easily be quadrupled. The point is, if anything, non-sequitous or faulty, improperly connected logical statements are the NORM in John, in both dialogue and narrative!
Never could someone so misread the style of John as to miss this repeatedly used dialectic gimmick!
"Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?"
We find the evidence presented to be in FAVOUR of the authenticity of the passage, and fine the professor $5 for wasting the court's time.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 22nd December 2005 at 08:57 AM.
Davidson offers a further list of words and phrases alleged to be unlike the expression of the gospel writer, this time without offering any alternative conjectures that would presumably be more in John's style:
_________________________________________ oi grammateiV kai oi farisaioi kaqisaV edidasken autoiV (*) kateilemmenhn (*) egrafen epemenon erwtwnteV (*) anamarthtoV (D) suneidhsiV (*)
________________________________________
(*) textual variants (D) taken from dialogue
________________________________________
The only thing to do with this group is just translate them into English,
to give the ordinary reader an inkling of what Davidson is unhappy about here:
"the scribes and Pharisees" (John would never use this handy phrase to identify the parties..) "and standing He (Jesus) taught them" (can't have John display any awareness of the Sermon on the Mount!) "caught in the act" (John must not permit the spokesman for the Pharisees any 'legalese') "wrote" (Jesus' act is notably unusual - as unusual as His behaviour elsewhere in John!)
"they persisted questioning him" (They've gone to the trouble of trapping a woman in adultery, and brought her out at the most opportune moment, and I suppose they will just go home now, since Jesus isn't interested. NOT! Of course they persisted questioning him! What else could we expect, and John report?) "the sinless one" (too orthodox a doctrine? too contrived a statement?)
(and the final example seems only to appear in Davidson's copy of the pericope, so we'll just leave that...)
Well, you be the judge.
If we strip out all these words from the pericope it will no longer be about an adulteress, but possibly about a cleaning lady who pilfered our mistress' purse.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 17th January 2006 at 12:08 PM.
Just for a break from the internal criticism,
here's another nice manuscript containing John from a private collection,
recently made available.
here we can see the Percope De Adultera in its natural place.
The marginal markings are Lectionary Reader's Notes,
not critical remarks. However the likelyhood is high that
at some point in the history of these verses,
the Lectionary marks were misconstrued as Alexandrian textual instructions,
and the passage was accidentally excised.
This would go a long way to explaining the known textual history of the verses.
The passage continues on the overleaf:
Enjoy!
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 24th May 2006 at 04:33 PM.
For a thoroughly modern review of the TEXTUAL evidence surrounding the Pericope de Adultera, here is a link to a complete article just recently published on the internet: (PDF format: You need Adobe Acrobat Reader to view the file)
Please note this is not necessarily a thorough or accurate explanation or interpretation of that evidence. It is however, an article reflecting current textual-critical trend and opinion.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Below is an image of page NB (52) of Papyrus 66, a codex of John's Gospel from about AD 200. The text begins in the middle of the word εραυνησον ("search") in John 7:52. On the second line the sentence ends with a punctuation mark and is immediately followed by Παλιν ουν αυτοις ελαλησεν ο Ις ("again Jesus spoke to them") in 8:12, omitting the The manuscript has been annotated by a scribe who used diagonal strokes to indicate a word-order variant in the first and second lines, but the Story of the Adulteress is omitted without any notation.
A recent defence of the authenticity of the Pericope de Adultera is online here:
The point made here regardless of one's opinion of the thesis, is that John clearly went through two or three revisions, and this makes it almost unique among the gospels.
First there is the eyewitness source testimony, then the main evangelist setting things down in a gospel, and finally the community posting a last chapter and preserving one last episode by the sea after the Evangelist's death. This is clear from the internal evidence of the last chapter itself, and its ajoinment to the first 20 chapters of John.
Since John underwent editing on at least one, possibly two occasions, this would have been the moment when the pericope was either added or subtracted from the gospel. If the gospel (as is generally believed) originated in the Gnostic groups or was early adopted by them, and then accepted by the rest of the church after these groups were also accepted in, then that would be the time to 'clean up' John, and attempt to remove the Pericope de Adultera, which did not fit in with the Patriarchical agenda of the early church fathers.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
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