Previously Unconsidered Evidence for John 8:1-11

[Nazaroo]

New! The thread has grown so long, I've placed a linked index here in the first post below:

Page 1: messages #1-10

Old Testament Quotation Structure hidden in John........#3-5
Codex Bezae ('D',5th cent A.D.) .....................................#9
Introduction to Von Soden................................................#10
​

Page 2: messages #11-20

General Discussions...............................................#11-12
Comparison to C.H. Dodd's Outline.......................#13-14
Codex Vaticanus knows of Passage!.....................#15-19
Current view & Framing the Question...........................#20
​

Page 3: messages #21-30

Background to Samuel Davidson's Attack..............#21-25
Davidson's 'Internal Evidence' against...................#29-30
​

Page 4: messages 31-40

Critique of Davidson (cont.).......................................#31-34
Miniscule 2813 (11th cent.).............................................#35
Link to Willker's Textual commentary..............................#38
Photo of P66 & links to Hills, Tregelles/Metzger............#39
Link to Art. on Johannine Authorship...............................#40
​

Page 5: messages 41-50

Majority Text Variants & Link.............................................#41
​

Critique of Davidson(cont.) &link to ei mh article.............#42
Link to independant analysis of 8:1-11.............................#43
Grammatical Discussion..............................................#44-47
Scrivener's Textual notes............................................#48-49
More Grammar..................................................................#50
​

Page 6: messages 51-60

More Grammatical discussion..................................#51-52
Link: Burgeon's Defence of 8:1-11................................#53
More Background to Textual Assault........................#54-55
Link to Pickering's New stemma & NT book..................#56
Rebuttal by 'Justified'.................................................#57-59
Response by Nazaroo.....................................................#60
​

Page 7: messages 61-70

Response to 'Justified' (cont).....................................#61
Correction.....................................................................#62
Rowell: effect of 'critical notes' on believers..............#63
Typical Critical Greek text inaccuracies......................#64
A.T. Robertson on John 8:1-11 ................................ #65-67
​

Page 8: messages 71-80

Analysis of Robertson's attack...................................#72-73
Parallel case in Aramaic Studies................................#74-75
Refutation of Robertson.............................................#76-77
Modern Attack on 8:1-11............................................#79
Analysis of Modern Attack..........................................#8
​

Page 9: messages 81-90

Analysis of Modern Attack (cont.)................................#81-82
Counter-Critique & Response.....................................#83-84
Introducing Bart Earhman's propaganda (& link).............#85
Analysis of Earhman's propaganda.................................#90
​

Page 10: messages 91-100

Discussion of belief background ...................................#91-96
John 8:1-11 and Mark's Ending............................................#97
Link to other critiques of Earhman........................................#98
Internal Evidence: Link to John ch.6.....................................#99
Tregelles undermines his own case against 8:1-11!.........#100
​

Page 11: messages 101-110 -

D.A.Carson's Confession of duplicity............................#101
Connection between John and Revelation!..................#102-103
Culpepper on the evolving structure of John................#104
Links between John 8:1-11 & John ch.6.......................#105
Symbolic Interpretation of 8:1-11..................................#106
Chiastic Structures surrounding 8:1-11.........................#107
Chiastic Connection to Revelation.................................#108-110
​

Page 12: messages 111-120

More Chiastic Structure around 8:1-11....................#112
John's Use of Prophecy...........................................#113
Anderson's Two Edition Theory & Critique ............#114-118
Deep Chiastic and 'Seven' patterns in John...........#119-120
​

Page 13: messages 121-130

Critique of Two Edition Theory (cont.).............................#121-125
Johannine parallels with 8:1-11........................................#126
Bultmann's Rearrangement of John................................#127-...
​

Page 14-15: messages 131-150

Analysis of Bultmann's Rearrangement (cont.)...............#132-150​

Page 16: messages 151-160

Analysis of Bultmann (finish)............................................#151-152
POV (Point of View) Analysis of John.............................#153-156
Content analysis................................................................#157
Neyrey on John 21 and its significance...........................#158-160
​

Page 17: messages 161-170

Nature of the Addition of John 21....................................#161-163
Pickering's 'Textual Cleansing' & statistics.....................#164-170
​

Page 18: messages 171-180

The Missing Link: the Lectionary Stream.........................#171-175
Link to Discussion of Bultmann.........................................#174
Link to Reconstruction of Text for John 8:1-11................#176
Dead Sea Scrolls support Early Fathers!.........................#179
​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

LINKS TO OTHER THREADS IN CHRISTIAN FORUMS

Believer's Commentary on John 8:1-11
Textual Evidence for John 8:1-11
Previously Unconsidered Evidence for John 8:1-11
Reconstructing the Text of John 8:1-11
Why Wasn't the Adultress Stoned?

Related threads:
Asterisks and Obelisks: Critical marks in Ancient Manuscripts
Codex Vaticanus
Codex Sinaiticus
The Last 12 Verses of Mark

 

[TrevorL]

Howdy Nazaroo,

Greetings. I hope to consider your post and chart more thoroughly. I believe that this passage is part of the record and also in its correct location. This is verified by the local circumstance that this was at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. The Sanhedrin had been meeting deciding the fate of Jesus. At the end of their meeting, which was also the end of the Feast of Tabernacles it says:
John 7:53 (KJV): "And every man went unto his own house."

Part of the requirements of the Feast was that they had to dwell in booths, a temporary residence to remind them of their wilderness wanderings, when their dwelling was with God, in tents. The Sanhedrin had conspired against Jesus because they felt that their status and "permanent" position was threatened. They may have kept the feast in externals, dwelling in booths or tabernacles, but they had not reflected this in their attitude to God, or in their pilgrimage.

In contrast, Jesus whose dwelling was with God, who had nowhere to lay his head:
John 8:1 (KJV): "Jesus went unto the mount of Olives."

The contrast is even more prounced in some translations:
John 7:53-8:1 (1901 ASV): "And they went every man unto his own house: but Jesus went unto the mount of Olives."

Kind regards
Trevor

 

[Nazaroo]

TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THIS THREAD CONTINUED.....

Page 19: messages 181-190​

Connection to Daniel.....................................................#181-182
Link to John Paul Heil on Internal Evidence.................#183
Link to Davidson (1848).PDF on Jn 8:1-11.........#184
Commentaries on John 8:1-11.........................#185
Lightfoot and Hoskins......................................#186-188
Willker's "Lukanisms" evaporate.........................#189
Morris' "internal evidence" empty........................#190
​

Page 20: messages 191-200​

C.K. Barrett's evidence slim................................#191
Brown offers a few points...................................#192
Lindars dissappoints..........................................#193
Tasker has little to add.......................................#194
Keener gives no insight......................................#195
Contributions of Commentators summarized..........#196
Burge shows the poverty of modern scholarship.....#197
A good hard look at 'DE' as 'evidence'...................#198-200
​

Page 21: messages 201-210​

Jerome and Constantine..Hort vs. Reality...............#201
Real source and direction of transmission..............#202
Jerome in proper perspective................................#203
Link to Scrivener on Syriac version.......................#204
Link to Analysis of Hort's mishandling evidence.......#205
Constantine the Murdering Dictator.....................#206-207
Eusebius under Constantine's thumb....................#208
Davidson & Hort misconstrue Euthymius...............#209
Davidson, Hort, Metzger botch Didymus................#210
​

Page 22: messages 211-220​

Link to Cadbury on 'Lukan Origin' theory...............#211...​

_______________________________________________________




Excellent points. The intimate connection with the preceding and following material is again serious internal evidence for the authenticity of the passage.

"The evidence that the passage is a very early addition is overwhelming."

Not in my view, obviously.
Lets leave the external evidence aside for now. Most of the external evidence is not evidence germaine to the authenticity of the passage at all. It's just evidence concerning the subsequent history of the passage *after* its obvious existance. That evidence must be interpreted in the light of the history of the political, social and doctrinal views of the people manipulating the textual stream of transmission in the 4th and 5th centuries.

The internal evidence is overwhelming for its authenticity as part of John's gospel. Although as long ago as 1848 Samuel Davidson made as good a case as could be made against its authorship, based upon an analysis of vocabulary and phraseology, but it was extremely flimsy. (An Introduction to the New Testament Vol 1 1848 pg 359-360.)

But with the passage removed from the gospel, its entire structure from macro to micro -level falls apart.
No less compelling is the quality and genius of the passage itself.
Obviously you've been lied to about the nature and meaning of the evidence. You have my sympathy.


I have uploaded one of my charts: shown is the 'Sitz im Leben' of the Pericope, its placement in the Gospel of John.
This pericope is given a queenly throne second only to the Great Commandment itself.
The chart is part of my book and is copyrighted by me the author,
however fellow Christians are freely granted an unlimited licence to use it
for their study and edification, and reproduce it for teaching purposes.

This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the internal evidence entrenching the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery in the gospel of John.

 

[justified]

This is verified by the local circumstance that this was at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. The Sanhedrin had been meeting deciding the fate of Jesus. At the end of their meeting, which was also the end of the Feast of Tabernacles it says:

This is all fine and dandy except that the feast was finished -- they would not go back to their booths. Moreover, the text reads οικον "home" not σκηνοπηγια, "tabernacle" (cf. 7:2).

Lets leave the external evidence aside for now. Most of the external evidence is not evidence germaine to the authenticity of the passage at all. It's just evidence concerning the subsequent history of the passage *after* its obvious existance.

Agreed. But nevertheless, it's the only non-subjective data we have on the topic. You know, since you like to make a deal about subjectivity.

That evidence must be interpreted in the light of the history of the political, social and doctrinal views of the people manipulating the textual stream of transmission in the 4th and 5th centuries.

What evidence do we have of this history? I do hope you'll explain more.

The internal evidence is overwhelming for its authenticity as part of John's gospel. Although as long ago as 1848 Samuel Davidson made as good a case as could be made against its authorship, based upon an analysis of vocabulary and phraseology, but it was extremely flimsy. (An Introduction to the New Testament Vol 1 1848 pg 359-360.)

I sincerely dislike it when someone without a name comes a long and bashes an established and well-regarded author with almost no evidence.

I have uploaded one of my charts: shown is the 'sits enleben' of the Pericope, its placement in the Gospel of John.

German, sitz.

This is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the internal evidence entrenching the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery in the gospel of John

I hope so, because we're going to need more:

1. Group 1, The "Common Introductory Formula" --> probably a very poor choice of words since John begins entirely unlike the rest of the gospels. Moreover, in the other gospels it is the narrator who quotes the verse, not John himself.

2. Group 1, Ps. 69:9 [10] --> might as well be about Zeal as about Jesus. But I get your point.

3. 1:51 contains a conglomerated quote from Genesis.

4. Group 2, Ps. 78.24 is also a quote from Exodus 16. Also, the quotation is NOT about Jesus. Jesus replies it is about the Father, regardless of who/what the bread is meant to represent here.

5. Group 2, Ps. 82:6 -- not really about the people, is it?

6. Forgot John 12:27

7. 12:40 is about the people only, not Jesus.

8. 13.18 is about Judah/s and the disciples, not "the people."

9. 15.25 is about the people only, not Judas.

10. Again, "the people" is a hard case here -- "the people" in John is a special category. Here the phrase is about the soldiers...

11. 19.36,37 are about Jesus only, not the people.

Generally, it's a creative piece of work. But the methodology and conclusions are stretched and you display an ignorance -- whether of knowledge or by choice -- of the work that has previously been done on the structure of the Fourth Gospel. Moreover, structure in ancient texts is not marked the way you have attempted to do here -- and anyway your 'structure' is rather unwieldy in terms of regularity and symmetry.

 

[Nazaroo]

But the methodology and conclusions are stretched and you display an ignorance -- whether of knowledge or by choice -- of the work that has previously been done on the structure of the Fourth Gospel. Moreover, structure in ancient texts is not marked the way you have attempted to do here -- and anyway your 'structure' is rather unwieldy in terms of regularity and symmetry.

Your points about the individual quotations are quite reasonable.

I haven't displayed any ignorance of the work of redactional and form criticism of John, as far as I know.

This is just ONE MORE layer of structure built into the gospel, obviously unknown to you. It displays exactly the level of 'fuzziness' it should, given the author of John isn't going to reduce the prophetic fulfillments he has in mind just to make the hidden O.T. structure more symmetrical or sharper in definition. This would reduce the gospel to a repetative cartoon style of gospel, much like a sunday school coloring book.

By the way, contrary to your assertion, I have identified very clear O.T. structures in all four gospels and Acts. They were alll laid out according to the plan of their respective authors/editors.

I sincerely dislike it when someone without a name comes a long and bashes an established and well-regarded author with almost no evidence.

Well, you're going to be extremely unhappy for a long time on this planet. And I'm sure you're going to dislike it even more when your dislikes are considered wholly unimportant and irrelevant to scientific matters.
That looks like a lot of hurting, until you lose some ego.

Interestingly, there are so many 'established and well-regarded authors with almost no evidence' that its hard to avoid them.

 

[filosofer]

I have uploaded one of my charts: shown is the 'sits enleben' of the Pericope, its placement in the Gospel of John.

Just to be clear: the phrase is German, but it is Sitz im Leben, and means "situation in life or setting".

In Christ's love,
filo

 

[Nazaroo]

Just to be clear: the phrase is German, but it is Sitz im Leben, ...

sorry about the typo, which seems to have caused such unecessary distraction. Normally I catch most of the typing errors.
Of course this completely undermines my credibility as a typist in these matters.

peace

 

[justified]

Well, you're going to be extremely unhappy for a long time on this planet. And I'm sure you're going to dislike it even more when your dislikes are considered wholly unimportant and irrelevant to scientific matters.
That looks like a lot of hurting, until you lose some ego

It's simply etiquette, man. You don't get articles published with a sentence like that. Honestly. It wasn't too long ago when I wrote like you do (at least in terms of rhetoric) -- but I had a mentor who wouldn't let me get away with it. And for that I am thankful.

By the way, contrary to your assertion, I have identified very clear O.T. structures in all four gospels and Acts. They were alll laid out according to the plan of their respective authors/editors.

I'd like to read them if you're willing to share.

 

[Nazaroo]

I have added two photos of Codex Bezae,
showing John 7:53 - 8:11 in situ.
This ancient uncial is one clear witness to the inclusion of the verses in their traditional setting of John, without any 'brackets', scholia, or marginal notes by the original scribe(s) to indicate in any way that the passage was not recognized as genuine.

The Codex Bezae is a dual-language bible. On the left is Greek, and on the right Latin. The scribe who executed the copy was clearly bilingual, and understood both sides of the manuscript (Greek and Latin). It is clear that occasionally he allowed his bilingual skills to influence both the transcripting of the Greek and the Latin. Because of this, in some areas the manuscript is more like a paraphrase or an Amplified NT. However, the text of John here is very stable and close to the traditional Byzantine (majority) text type.

Codex Bezae is admitted to be about as old as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, with all three approximately dated between the 4th and 5th centuries in their manufacture.

All these files are printable versions, jpgs at 8x10 inches in size at about 150dpi, and only about 100k each in size on disk. Download them, print them, and enjoy!

EDITED: I have moved these offline to save space for diagrams.
You can find them on TC-Alternate-List (Yahoo Groups).

 

[Nazaroo]

There doesn't seem to be a decent translation of Von Soden's work from the German into English, so I am going to try to take on the task myself here.

Von Soden's work is critically important in assessing and understanding the evidence concerning John 7:53-8:11, because he was the only textual critic who could and did hand-collate the thousands of manuscripts available that are extant for this passage. From this massive project, which he took on in order to accurately reproduce the gospel of John for his critical edition of the New Testament, he reconstructed a very detailed genealogical tree for the manuscripts,which allowed him to evaluate the variants using a very fine and subtle scale.

No one has duplicated this feat since. Early on, John Burgon, Dean of Chichester had hand collated several thousand manuscripts and fragments, and later Scrivener, who produced a fantastic and detailed two-volume Introduction to the New Testament describing the major manuscript evidence. This was to be followed by another careful researcher, Colwell, on a more modest scale.

But only Von Soden really knew the manuscript evidence concerning John so intimately. Textual critics studying the Byzantine text-type rely heavily upon Von Soden's work, and in spite of minor complaints about it being out of date, even those publishing modern critical editions,like the Hodges-Farstadd text, find his exhaustive collations essential.

Of course, being able to read Von Soden in English would make his work available to a wide audience. The basic problem is that it is not just 'German' but a very technical German in a specialized field, and so requires special care and expert knowledge to properly translate.

I am offering a preliminary translation here, without claiming it to be definitive. Just to open up Von Soden's work to English researchers.

--------------
EDIT: I have started a new thread for Von Soden's work in this section.
I will continue with that translation there.

 

[daveleau]

There is variety in the manuscript evidence regarding this passage. Some early manuscripts have this passage, while some do not. Other early manuscripts have a blank space for this passage like they were waiting to add it later. It does make sense that this passage would fit into the structure of John as you have pointed out Nazaroo. It also makes sense that there is motive for those copying the Scriptures afterwards would remove it because they were afraid that the passage might be construed as a support for adultery or prostitution. I am fully convinced that this passage is supposed to be there because of these arguments. The earliest manuscripts have many additions and subtractions. I see no reason to believe that this was not another example of a subtraction. As for the addition of the passage, I see no motive for the addition of such a passage since it does not support anything other than the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

John is a book of worst case scenarios. Jesus saves the outcast among outcasts (woman at the well.) Jesus saves those with the worst physical calamities (man at Bethesda and man born blind.) Here, Jesus saves one of the worst sinners under the Law in the woman caught in adultery. It fits the style of John's writing, and is surely in its rightful place in Scripture.

 

[Nazaroo]

It also makes sense that there is motive for those copying the Scriptures afterwards would remove it because they were afraid that the passage might be construed as a support for adultery or prostitution. I am fully convinced that this passage is supposed to be there because of these arguments. ... As for the addition of the passage, I see no motive for the addition of such a passage since it does not support anything other than the grace of God through Jesus Christ.

I think you are right on the money with this.
This seems precisely what happened to the Pericope de Adultera.
We only need look at the attitudes of the early fathers to see it flashing at us like a neon casino sign.

John is a book of worst case scenarios. Jesus saves the outcast among outcasts (woman at the well.) Jesus saves those with the worst physical calamities (man at Bethesda and man born blind.) Here, Jesus saves one of the worst sinners under the Law in the woman caught in adultery. It fits the style of John's writing, and is surely in its rightful place in Scripture.

Again, your description of John is a close to perfect as to the character of the content. And no doubt John created a lot of unhappy and uncomfortable people because of his in-your-face presentations of the 'undersirables' of society being helped rather than abandoned.

My respects to your insight and wisdom regarding the circumstances surrounding John.

peace.

 

[Nazaroo]

But the methodology and conclusions are stretched and you display an ignorance -- whether of knowledge or by choice -- of the work that has previously been done on the structure of the Fourth Gospel.

...just to pick up on this and clarify:

I have here a chart showing the complimentarity as opposed to conflict of the two known structural systems:

(1) The Narrative Structure identified by C.H. Dodd in his classic "The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel", and

(2) The hitherto unobserved O.T. Quotation Structure in John discovered by yours truly.

...

 

[Nazaroo]

I believe John the Evangelist deliberately chose to have the two independant structural systems overlap and interlock. This was his way of providing safeguards to prevent the mutilation and breaking apart of his gospel, or allow its reconnection in the event of tampering.

Had John combined the structures so that they aligned in their deliniation of the 'sections', there would be no reason or way to perceive that there were actually two, and the danger of dividing the text physically according to a perceived difference in their content and purpose would not be alleviated.

By choosing *two* independant systems, John allows the perceptive reader to see that any literary divisions in content are not to be interpreted as physical divisions. Dividing John into physical sections along the lines of either structure destroys the other structure. Two independant hidden structures are necessary and sufficient to ensure that physical separation or dislocation cannot be accomplished without loss of structure.

John's purpose here I believe has succeeded. In ancient times, such hidden structures would be best left undiscussed except orally among the faithful entrusted with preserving and copying the gospels. The structures in John have no key didactic purpose which would be necessary to understand the gospel. The contents and teaching of the gospel are not obscured, or significantly enchanced, other than in the organization of the ideas and themes in the reader's mind.

Nowadays, with the invention of printing, and the essential contents and form of the gospels secured for the usage of Christians universally, the structures can be noted and discussed without loss of security for the integrity of the documents.

In the end times, knowledge shall be greatly increased.

Peace.

 

[Nazaroo]

In an unforseen twist of irony to the embarrassment of one of textual criticism's most 'certain' pronouncements, and an expose' worthy of God Himself, the infamous Codex Vaticanus (B) has become the earliest witness for the existance of the Pericope de Adultera, placing its certain origin earlier than the 4th century at the very least!

Textual critics will be scrambling to cover their donkeys over this one.

3. The Significance of the Discovery:

Since most lines of Vaticanus contain only 15-18 letters of text, an umlaut in the margin was a sufficiently specific notation to permit anyone with access to a manuscript containing that variant to identify it.

Manuscripts containing the variants noted by umlauts were probably in the library of the scriptorium where the codex was written, so both the riginal scribe and others subsequently using the codex there could dentify them. Extant textual variants make it possible in many cases to identify the variant that the scribe probably intended to note.

These umlauts demonstrate both that the scribe was aware of these variant readings and that he or she regarded them as sufficiently important to note. Notation of textual variants should not be surprising since this practice was well established even in Sumerian and Akkadian texts.29 Origin’s Hexapla and Bishop Victor of Capua’s Codex Fuldensis also employ symbols which combine dots with other pen strokes to note textual variants.30

There is a remarkable convergence between the text of Vaticanus and the surviving text of the Bodmer papyri, especially p75, "copied about the end of the second or the beginning of the third century."31



In light of this convergence, it is reasonable to conclude that the original scribe of Vaticanus copied a manuscript closely related to the Bodmer papyri. Thus, the scribe must have copied either a very old manuscript or one that was based on a very old manuscript. Umlauts marking the location of textual variants throughout the manuscript prove that the scribe had access to more than one manuscript.

Presumably, then, the scribe chose to copy one particular manuscript because it appeared to be old or because of its reputation as preserving an ancient or more original form of the text. This helps explain the remarkable similarity of its text to that of the Bodmer papyri. It also fits the scholarly consensus that Vaticanus is a remarkably good guide to the original form of the text.

These umlauts offer new light on a host of textual questions such as the following two examples:

First, the chocolate-brown umlaut at the end of John 7:52 is at the point where the account of the woman taken in adultery traditionally occurs. Thus, although Vaticanus does not include this account, this umlaut, presuming it was traced over an original one, provides the earliest evidence for the presence of this account here in the text of John, even earlier than Jerome’s reference to its occurrence in many Greek codices.
...


...The discovery that eleven umlauts unambiguously match the original ink of Codex Vaticanus has four significant implications for textual criticism.

1. It demonstrates that its scribe was aware of textual variants and believed them to be sufficiently important to note.


2. It supports the view that its scribe desired to preserve the most original form of the text possible.


3. The third implication follows from the evidence for the originality of the Vaticanus umlauts in general and from two correlations between umlauts and documented textual variants.


First, in the vast majority of lines where Vaticanus has umlauts, other manuscripts preserve signi. cant variants.

Second, the frequency of significant variants in these lines is far higher than in lines without umlauts. These two correlations provide a statistical basis for the first time for concluding that the majority of variants that were available to the scribe of Vaticanus have survived in other manuscripts.


4. These umlauts are windows that give insights into the history of the text before Vaticanus, even for passages where no early papyri have survived. Demonstration of the originality of these umlauts enhances respect for the scribe of Vaticanus and breaks new ground for NT textual criticism.


(THE ORIGINALITY OF TEXT-CRITICAL SYMBOLS IN CODEX VATICANUS by PHILIP B. PAYNE Edmonds WA and PAUL CANART)

Note that already the critics are putting the spin on the findings that somehow the reputation of Codex Vaticanus is enhanced. Of course it may very well be that Vaticanus' reputation will now go up in direct proportion to how much the reputation of critic's previous conclusions go down! This news may be good for Vaticanus fans, but not for the results of textual criticism.

Second, one can only observe with incredulous amusement that while Vaticanus' value does indeed now rise as a source of evidence for the existance and penetration of variant readings, this is NOT true for the text it contains! The existance and popularity of opposing readings can only weaken codex Vaticanus' witness for its own text!

The hand of the scribe has truly reached 16 centuries beyond the grave to tip us off!

One final point about this must be made: The most unique case in NT textual criticism, has now been reduced to another similar case, that of the ending of Mark! What was assumed to be in independant and pristine witness against the passage, turns out again to be a colluder.

The most important witness against inclusion is found in possession of guilty knowledge of the existance and popularity of the passage. It is even possible that the scribe executing the copy of the older Alexandrian text did so with reservations, which could only be expressed in the form of diacritical notes of its departure from what he knew to be the right reading.

 

[justified]

From what I've read, the umlaut-in-margin theory is a crackpot idea. Care to argue?

 

[Nazaroo]

From what I've read, the umlaut-in-margin theory is a crackpot idea. Care to argue?

Sounds like you're going to offer an interesting attempt at staving off the damage... please go on!

 

[justified]

I don't have a great amount of experience with it, actually. I've never read that anything about the umlauts was proven, so I'm waiting to hear what, exactly, is apparently proven by this dude. Can you summarize?

 

[Nazaroo]

I don't have a great amount of experience with it, actually. I've never read that anything about the umlauts was proven, so I'm waiting to hear what, exactly, is apparently proven by this dude. Can you summarize?

In a nutshell, they have tested and shown that the most ancient and important layer of diacritical marks on the manuscript are the same ink, and therefore the same scribe as the original hand.

This means they are as ancient as the uncorrected text, but they clearly show the scribe's knowledge of a virtually complete set of (Byzantine) variants, probably from other manuscripts in the scriptorium where the exemplar was made.

Furthermore, although the scribe appears to have simply faithfully copied an Alexandrian papyrus from the 3rd century, he thoroughly deliniated its defects for posterity.

Finally, even though there was another later scribe who reworked and darkened the faded text, in all cases tested, the original ink lay under the reapplied touch ups overtop of the markings.

That sums it up. The bottom line is, the scribe of Vaticanus knew all about the Byzantine text-type and the 'majority' readings.

 

[Nazaroo]

In a previous post, I made the following statement:

"The internal evidence is overwhelming for its authenticity as part of John's gospel. Although as long ago as 1848 Samuel Davidson made as good a case as could be made against its authorship, based upon an analysis of vocabulary and phraseology, it was extremely flimsy. (An Introduction to the NT Vol 1 ,1848 pg 359-360.)"

To which a mysterious poster replied:

"I sincerely dislike it when someone without a name comes a long and bashes an established and well-regarded author with almost no evidence."

The time has come to provide and examine the evidence. So I am afraid we are in for a lot more 'Samuel Davidson bashing' in the next few pages. Hopefully our friend will be able to ride out the storm: I will pre-apologize now for any 'bashing' that takes place. This perhaps will help others cope.

But first I think we need to provide an overview and set the stage for the farce to come:

Introduction and Background to Internal Evidence

As noted in the other thread, Zane Hodges' pointed out the irony and absurdity of the modern text-critical position long ago:

The anomaly is impressive. On the one hand the passage is stigmatized as an unauthorized insertion in to the sacred text, while on the other hand it is frequently hailed as bearing the "stamp of truth."

To which we added, that the suspicion is strong that there is really a lot of posturing and shuffling going on here. The critics are afraid to openly attack the verses as a fraudulent insertion of spurious material, because they would turn away a large part of their Christian market base. (Call me jaded.)

However, since the critics have separated the problem of the authenticity of John 8:1-11 into two questions:

(1) Is the passage properly a part of John and authored by him?

(2) Is the passage an authentic event in the life of Jesus?

(i.e., a faithful tradition handed down by 'posterity' about him?)

...and have chosen to sidestep the 2nd question in a politically expedient manner, not so much from fear of being hit by a lightning bolt, but in fear of the reaction of the churchgoers who buy modern bible translations,
we also can deal simply (and at least for now only) with the first question.

This question naturally breaks down into two parts:

a) Does John know anything about the passage?
(which we have answered in part by an observation of Johannine structure)

and,

b) Does the passage know anything of John?

Which we are going to look at next.