Previously Unconsidered Evidence for John 8:1-11

[Nazaroo]

Due to some slight errors in the coding, and a poor testing procedure, some of you may not have been able to get those last pages displaying properly in your version of Firefox.

We have since fixed a few code bugs,
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Depending upon whether you want to install Unicode, or not bother and just go with the SYmbol font, you can choose either page to browse.

There still may be some effort in getting UNICODE to work with Firefox if you have never installed it or don't know much about how to deal with browser settings.

For those who have difficulty, we suggest using the version of the page that simply displays the SYMBOL font.

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Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

Craig Blomberg's 1993 article on the Historical reliability of John is online here:

Blomberg on John <-- Click Here.

In it, Blomberg reviews the various aspects of this question, and the changes in critical opinion over time.

 

[Nazaroo]

Petersen's article (from Sayings of Jesus, 1997) has been cited by us in the other thread.

While Petersen is weak in regard to the textual evidence as we have shown, his main purpose in his article is to bring to our attention the surprising evidence found in the Protevangelion of James (PJ).

Petersen has a soft, but postive case that the author that book (Protevangelion of James) knew and used John's Gospel as and inspirational source for his own work.

While the evidence concerning John 7:53-8:11 is obviously very weak and fragmentary, the fact is that it becomes stronger when taken together with other evidence that the Protevangelion of James (PJ) knew of and used John's Gospel.

"The Protevangelion Jacobi [PJ] is an apocryphal Christian romance, dating from the 2nd half of the 2nd century. ...

The plot of the PJ is well-known; it is sufficient to say that Mary, a young girl pledged to the Temple, must leave when her first menses occurs. By lot she is placed in the care of an older widower, Joseph.

When Mary is later discovered to be pregnant, a crowd of Jews brings her and Joseph before the Priest to be tried by ordeal [numbers 5]: he drinks a poison, and is sent into the wilderness. When he returns alive - a sign of his innocence - Mary is put to the same test.


When she too returns alive, the Priest pronounces the words given above - which, allowing for the plural (umaV that is Mary and Joseph) in place of the singular, and transposition of the last two words, are an exact parallel for the text of John 8:11:

(PJ): oude egw [kata]krinw umaV​

(8:11): oude egw se [kata]krinw​

The question poses itself: Is this parallelism the result of chance, or does the [PJ] betray knowledge of the story which now stands in the Gospel of John?

(Petersen, p. 204-205)

Petersen goes on to show other evidence that the PJ knew about John:

...form criticism comes to our aid, revealing a wealth of parallels between the PJ and the PA:

(1) In both, the words are part of a "confrontation story".

(2) In both, the accusation is one of sexual misconduct, and

(3) in both the accused is female.

(4) in both , the accusation is made by the same group: the Jews, especially religiously scrupulous Jews.

(5) In both, the accused is presented to the judge for a ruling; in nether story does the judge interpolate himself into the situation.

(6) In both, the scene is the same, in that the accused woman is brought by a crowd to stand before a male religious figure.

(7) In both, the words are spoken as the dramatic climax to a tension-filled scene.

(8) In both, the woman is acquitted, despite overwhelming evidence of her 'guilt' (according to John 8:4, the woman is 'caught' in the act of adutery; in the PJ it is visually self-evident that Mary is pregnant [XV.1: "Annas (the scribe who alerts the authorities concerning Mary)...saw Mary with child"]).

Because of the form-critical congruity of these features and because of the virtually verbatum literary agreement, we are driven to conclude that some sort of dependance exists between the PJ and the PA.

Furthermore, we may stipulate that the form of the PA (John 8:1-11) from which the PJ borrowed these words must have been similar to the form the episode now has in the Gospel of John, in that the transgression was

(1) explicitly sexual in nature,

(2) the accused was presented by a mob to the authority figure for judgement, and

(3) the story contained the words "Neither do I judge you".

All of these features, - while present in the PJ and in the Gospel of John's version of the story - are not only absent from Papias/Eusebius and Didymus the Blind, but specifically contradict their information; therefore, we may reject them as possible sources of the words.

The words "Neither do I judge you" are, then textual evidence that three constitutive elements of the PA, as it is now known to us from the Gospel of John, were known in the 2nd half of the 2nd century, the date assigned to the PJ.

(Petersen, 206,207)

[/quote]

 

[Nazaroo]

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words.

Those who want to make something of the insertion of the PA into Luke must overcome the largest body of hard MSS evidence ever found for any passage, which places it firmly in John:

This chart does not and need not represent all the transmission lines of all text-types. But it is obviously the line of transmission of the Byzantine/traditional text-type, and it includes the Latin (and versional) counter-part of the transmission of the Gospels.

The exponential curve is the natural extrapolation, since the nature of the copying and multiplying of MSS will be Fibonacci-like (bunny rabbits breeding).

It is reasonable to extrapolate from such a large, wide and diverse group of MSS and traditions, that the placement of the PA in John is much earlier than any placement in Luke.

In fact, the only evidence that it was ever in Luke earlier than about 900 A.D. is a handful of old 'lectionary' readings in the text of Family 13. However, this evidence is very weak and indirect, and simply can't sustain the thesis that the original location for the PA was Luke.

While the versional evidence is weak and secondary for the PA in John (the Syriac for instance seems to have originally been without it), the historical fact is, that the versions and the churches that used them were clearly dependant upon and deferred to the Greek tradition (the original language of John). They quite happily corrected their texts to the main lines of transmission. But since the Syriac etc. inserted the PA into their versions by the 5th century, they testify to a strong tradition of the PA in John by this time.

At best, Family 13 suggests that someone saw the similarity in language and context to the previous verses in Luke, and placed it there. This probably happened long after the PA was accepted into the lectionary tradition.

Those advocating that the PA is an insertion in John also claim that it was first inserted into the Lectionary tradition, and found its way from there. This itself is a weak thesis, but if true, the MSS suggests again that the passage was placed in John, and placed more firmly and popularly, than its apparent later insertion in Luke.

This is why the majority of scholars, even skeptics, don't make much of the insertion into Luke in the late 12th century, except to try to use this as evidence that the PA somehow 'floated' around. But even here, the idea is a flimsy one.

It seems more likely that the 'blip' on the radar is just the result of an experiment performed in ignorance, late in the MSS history.

 

[Nazaroo]

Amongst the more absurd claims made as alleged textual evidence against the Pericope De Adultera (John 7:53-8:11) is the quiet listing without comment of the infamous P45 as omitting the verses.

P45 is no doubt an ancient papyrus, or rather a handful of pages from one.

But is it any kind of witness concerning the PA (John 8:1-11)?

P45 consists of pages of several books, including John. Typically, a catalogue will list the contents of P45 as follows:

John ....4:51, 54, 5:21, 24, ....10:7-25, 10:31-11:10, 11:18-36, 43-57;

This appears to be several large portions. In fact it is a joke. The entire first NINE CHAPTERS of John are entirely missing, except a tiny fragment having bits of a couple of verses on each side (Jn 4:51,54, and 5:21,24).

Otherwise, only two other pages of John remain, each with a chunk of text (on each side, for a total of a lot less than 4 pages, out of an estimated 40 or so, perhaps 60.

Here are the four sides of the two pages of John from P45: The first page only begins at John chapter 10:7-25 (minus some chunks of text):

Claiming this papyrus as a 'witness against the passage' is probably best described as unscientific.

(1) So much is missing (the entire first 9 chapters, except a fragment of ch.5) that any attempt at reconstruction, or of contents of pages, or even rough estimates of the length of missing text, is all but hopeless.

(2) As the collators of the latest edition of the text admit, "The location of the bottom margin is uncertain" on every page! This means we can't even be sure how much text was on each side of the surviving two pages, let alone how the text might have been spread across the previous 30 pages or so.

(3) There is no way of telling even how many pages were used for the first half of John's gospel, let alone how the verses were laid out.

(3) The guess that P45 did not contain our passage is based upon a rough similarity of its text to other Egyptian papyrii which omit it.

(4) But this too is near-worthless, because there isn't enough surviving text to establish a text-type or grouping.

(5) The modern editors (publishers) of the manuscript describe it thus: "P45 would appear to belong to one of the periphrastic text-types.". That is, the little bit of text that is known is too wild and unstable to give any confidence of its readings.


(6) And even the oldest papyrus that actually omits our passage (P66) also shows a plain awareness of its existance. So even if we draw a parallel to other manuscripts which leave out the verses, it is as likely as not that P45 also marked the passage with some kind of dot or pointer to the omission. There is no reason to conclude that P45 did not know about the verses.


(7) P45 is rendered useless in the same way that Codex A and Codex C are, since we cannot say whether any of these MSS also did not have a short space or some mark or marginal note indicating that they knew they were omitting the passage, or on what grounds they may have done so, if they did.

To call P45 a 'witness for omission' of the Pericope de Adultera is as ludicrous as assuming the average beggar on the street has $20,000 cash in his pocket, so we'd better not give him 50 cents for a cup of coffee.

.

 

[Nazaroo]

If there weren't enough problems centering around claims about what P45 might have contained, we only need observe that scribe of the first side of the first surviving page spaced his lines out nearly twice as far apart as the lines written on the backside.

Thus even with a single page, the amound of actual lines of writing between the Recto (right side) and the Verso (next page) varies by as much as a third of a page!

This can be observed from the first two photos above.

 

[Nazaroo]

I am going to quote from the following article a significant amount. It is a good discussion of the interpretation of John 8:1-11, but that is NOT the reason I quote it here.

I was initially tempted to place this reference in the commentary thread on John 8:1-11, however what I really want to draw the reader's attention to is the remarkable INTERNAL EVIDENCE of COMMON AUTHORSHIP between John 8:1-11 and the Johannine TRIAL before Pilate. This is once again little considered evidence for authenticity of the passage:

Anthropoetics III, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1997)

Writing in the Dust: Irony and Lynch-Law in the Gospel of John

Matthew Schneider

Department of English
Chapman University
Orange, California 92866


...
III

The two aspects of the pericope de adultera upon which this essay has so far concentrated--the famous saying and Jesus' writing in the dust--have something in common: both seem calculatedly ambiguous and ironic, requiring of the hearer a degree of interpretive intrepidity far beyond that of even the most obscure of the synoptic parables. In fact, the ambiguity of this pericope extends past obscurity to enter into the realm of irony, not in the narrow literary-critical sense of meaning the opposite of what one says, but in an existential sense akin to that developed in Soren Kierkegaard's doctoral dissertation, The Concept of Irony. Kierkegaard begins his examination of the unsuspected depths of irony with an observation about questions that emerges as remarkably pertinent to this essay's interpretation of the story of the woman taken in adultery:

It is manifest that the intention in asking questions can be twofold. That is, one can ask with the intention of receiving an answer containing the desired fullness, and hence the more one asks, the deeper and more significant becomes the answer; or one can ask without any interest in the answer except to suck out the apparent by means of the question and thereby to leave an emptiness behind. The first method presupposes that there is a plenitude; the second that there is an emptiness. The first is the speculative method; the second the ironic (36).
​

Jesus' first utterance is a response to a direct question posed by the Scribes and Pharisees, and his second utterance is comprised of two questions he directs to the erstwhile victim of the mob, with whom he is now left alone: "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" Strictly speaking, these are rhetorical questions, since their answer is obviously provided by the context in which they are asked. The shamed crowd has trudged off, having abandoned in embarrassment their grim purpose. While, as Duncan Derrett observes, the text fails to provide any explicit guidance as to whether Jesus' tone in asking these questions is "sarcastic or humorous" (25), it seems likely that a faintly wry smile of irony--the look that says "Ah, I knew it" or "Just so"--crossed his face at that moment. The credulous woman answers the questions, which in the context of what has just occurred illustrate the unacknowledged ethical dimension of Kierkegaard's concept of the ironic mode of questioning. The ambiguity of Jesus' words and actions in the presence of the mob ironizes the menacing scene constituted by those who would condemn the woman to the extent that their scene is disassembled, leaving an emptiness behind. Or, to put it another way, the ironic distance Jesus is careful to put between himself and the woman's accusers has the ultimate effect of exposing the ultimately debilitating internal contradictions of "lynch law."

In addition, irony provides an important thematic and formal link between the interpolated story of the woman taken in adultery and the rest of the Fourth Gospel, which, for all the resolute Christology of its famous opening sentence--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"--presents us with a picture of Jesus at his most human: loquacious, emotional, occasionally bitter and mocking, and almost always teasingly ambiguous when he speaks. It is, after all, only in John's gospel that Jesus' troubling rebuke of his mother at the wedding in Cana occurs: informed by Mary that the wine has given out, Jesus responds "Woman, what concern is that to you and me? My time has not yet come" (2:3-4). It is also only in John that we find the encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, in which Jesus may or may not declare himself the Messiah. The woman says to Jesus "'I know that Messiah is coming' (who is called Christ). 'When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.'" Jesus' response in the original Greek is ego eimi, ho lalon soi: does that translate (as most Bibles have it) to "I am he (that is, the Christ), the one that is speaking to you?" Or is it just "I am the one that is speaking to you?" as if to say, "Don't talk to me of the Messiah now; listen to what I am saying to you."

By far the most striking and extended example of irony in John, though, comes in the trial before Pilate, longer and far more detailed here than in the synoptic gospels. As in the story of the woman taken in adultery, irony and verbal ambiguity arise in the context of a capital accusation. Unlike the lynch mob in the pericope de adultera, however, Jesus' preistly accusers admit--though not to Pilate, of course--that their real motivation for bringing the charge of sedition against Jesus is not to punish him for his crimes but to secure Jewish unity at the expense of a scapegoat. In chapter 11, the infamous Caiaphas berates his fellows on the high council with "You know nothing at all! You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die than to have the whole nation destroyed," a statement which persuades the elders "from that day on" to plan to put Jesus to death. The Roman governor's ignorance of this conspiracy initially places him in something akin to the impartial stance Jesus assumes when called on to judge the woman taken in adultery. His anthropological intuition, though, is no match for Jesus': that this is the case is indicated by Pilate's mode of questioning, which is, in Kierkegaard's terms, predominantly speculative rather than ironic:

18:33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?" 34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?" 35 Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?" 36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." 37 Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." 38 Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
​

There is a great deal of psychological and anthropological significance packed into this subtle and complex verbal dance, the complete elucidation of which lies beyond the scope of this essay. For our purposes, it is necessary first of all to notice that irony and ambiguity once again arise during a forensic examination--that is, at a time and place in which discursive clarity assume life or death importance. Second, it is noteworthy that Pilate's famous ironic question--"What is truth?"--produces an emptiness similar to that revealed by Jesus' questions to the adulteress: without staying for a reply, the Roman governor leaves his captive and returns to the crowd to report "I find no case against him" (18:38). Again, questioning in the ironic mode reveals the moral emptiness of the charges brought against the scapegoat. But the events of the next few hours will demonstrate that there inheres yet another wrinkle to what the pericope and Pilate's examination reveal as irony's ethical dimension. By turning away from his interlocutee after asking his sardonic question, Pilate pinpoints the distinction between mere mockery and the revelatory irony Jesus employed to disperse the crowd in the pericope. In this context, mockery is irony's pale and ineffectual shadow, as is illustrated when Jesus, mocked and scourged as the "King of the Jews," truly has his body broken and actually dies on the cross.
IV

It may be observed from the above analysis of the scene between Pilate and Jesus that irony's structuring role in the Fourth Gospel is ultimately paradoxical, since what serves in the first case to avert a violent outcome appears to produce one in the second. How can this be?
Solving this riddle requires recognizing what the two episodes reveal in juxtaposition. In both, the essential function of the originary scene--the generation of meaning out of crisis--may be observed. In employing verbal irony and gestural ambiguity to divert the attention of the woman's would-be lynchers from the object of their malicious intent, Jesus demonstrates the fragility of the sign/signified relationship which the lynching hopes to establish. The crowd, provoked by the scribes and Pharisees, want the dead body of the lapidated adulteress to serve as a guarantor of the authenticity of the Law which they feel has been delegitimized first by the Romans and then by Jesus. That is, they want to make the body into a sign that will derive an unshakable stability from the permanence of the woman's death. The law of Moses, say the scribes and Pharisees, "commands" this. Jesus' response is consistent with his statement in Matthew 5:17 that he came not "to abolish the law or the prophets." To reveal through ironic detachment the law's cognitive and linguistic sources is not, strictly speaking, to abolish the law. It is, however, to show how the law, as a system of representations, is vulnerable--perhaps even fatally so--to deconstruction. In the pericope, Jesus destabilizes the hoped-for sign--and thereby spares the woman--not by merely questioning the crowd's right to execute her or by suddenly superseding the old law with a new. Rather, he approaches the question of the law anthropologically: he tacitly asks the crowd, "What is a law? What is the relationship between the law and the language in which law is expressed? What, if any, essential characteristics of social interaction are exemplified in setting up systems of law and punishing transgressors?"

Schneider on John 8:1-11

In Schneider's rich and penetrating analysis of both passages, we are immediately struck with the obvious: that both passages were composed by the same hand.

 

[Nazaroo]

Bart Ehrman and his people have attempted to block access to the article exposing his lying in the public media.

In the meantime, a copy of the article detailing his attempt to mislead the public about John 8:1-11 is available here:

Bart Ehrman on John 8:1-11 Exposed <-- Click here.

Save the file to your hard disk.

The hostility toward the article is understandable. Here is a quote from it:

"North American Jewish lobbies have always relished taking shots at Christianity, especially fundamentalist Christianity. And Ehrman's book falls neatly into the category of undermining Christian interests. It is no surprise that Ehrman has acquired volumnous free airtime to promote a book that essentially slags the Holy Bible.

Even honest, conscientous Jewish analysts have documented this widespread attitude from North American Jewish interests for us. For instance, the Jewish domination of the inappropriate content industry, and the almost irrational psychological drive behind it is well documented, and can be found for instance here:

JQ: Anti-Christian Motive in Jewish Domination of inappropriate content <-- Click Here.

Bigtime Jewish comedians like Jon Stewart have no trouble at all inviting people like Ehrman onto their shows, shamelessly promoting their anti-Christian message, even if it cheats their own audiences out of the comedy they tuned in for. As long as it slams Christianity, its a free service.

In the nearly two years that Ehrman has had, fending off criticisms for his fraudulent presentations, one would hope to see some remorse, and some cleaning up of his act. But that is simply not the case.
Ehrman continues the same misleading propaganda war."
:

 

[Nazaroo]

We have created a webpage that displays photos and gives details about the ten earliest manuscripts for John, and which have a bearing upon John 8:1-11.

Top Ten Early MSS for John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here!

peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Psyka]

thx for a photos

 

[Tildyd]

I am going to quote from the following article a significant amount. It is a good discussion of the interpretation of John 8:1-11, but that is NOT the reason I quote it here.

I was initially tempted to place this reference in the commentary thread on John 8:1-11, however what I really want to draw the reader's attention to is the remarkable INTERNAL EVIDENCE of COMMON AUTHORSHIP between John 8:1-11 and the Johannine TRIAL before Pilate. This is once again little considered evidence for authenticity of the passage:



In Schneider's rich and penetrating analysis of both passages, we are immediately struck with the obvious: that both passages were composed by the same hand.

I don't agree with you

 

[Nazaroo]

There are two trials in John: the woman's, and Jesus' own trial.

Schneider notes they share a special and deliberate irony and ambiguity. His anthropological analysis,
however, becomes yet more internal evidence that the two passages were composed by the same hand.

We have converted our original post into a stand alone article:

Schneider on John 8:1-11 (1997) <-- Click Here!

Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

The Apostolic Constitutions are an ancient document used for instruction of laymen and clergy by the early Church in the 3rd or 4th century A.D.

It was composed out of even earlier documents, such as the Didache.

But the first Books or Sections of the Ap.Const. are believed to be the oldest.

It is in Book II, Section III, paragraph 24, that this document actually quotes John 8:1-11, as authoritative Holy Scripture, with the expectation that the reader will plainly recognise it:

And when the elders had set yet another woman which had sinned before Him, and had left the sentence to Him, and were gone out, our Lord, the Searcher of the hearts, inquiring of her whether the elders had condemned her, and being answered "No", He said unto her: “Go thy way therefore, for neither do I condemn thee.” ( John viii. 11). 7

Plainly the author/compiler of the Apostolic Constitutions knew and believed in the authority of our passage.

We have put the whole section in a handy html article along with a good discussion from the Catholic Encyclopedia Online, and the translator's preface here:

Apostolic Constitutions on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here!

Enjoy!
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

Lately textual critics opposing John 8:1-11 have started a new tactic.

Instead of quoting Metzger (over and over) as the 'authority' on John 8:1-11, they have started citing an obscure German work by Becker (1965).

This is actually a mediocre piece, originally a Ph.D thesis from the 50s turned into a book. But now it is being cited as the'authority' on the textual and other evidence for John 8:1-11.

However, readers will be interested to know that there are far better and more reliable works that are also newer available in English, so Becker is actually redundant.

Nonetheless, some insight can be gained from examining some of Becker's arguments, which turn up in various articles in the scholarly literature from time to time. For instance, Petersen, and now Gibson are citing Becker (Petersen actually discusses Becker, although not always translating helpfully into English).

A good start toward understanding Becker is this review in English, which we have exerpted and then footnoted, to give a good idea of the contents and flaws of the original German work.

Becker on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here.


Peace
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

We have put together one of the earliest documents showing the doctrines of the Apostolic church!

The Didache, purported to be the teaching of Paul and Barnabas before the council of Jerusalem.

We have provided the Greek text, translation and a commentary all in one easy to read HTML page:

Didache! of the Apostles <-- Click Here!

Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

There are two trials in John: the woman's, and Jesus' own trial.

Schneider notes they share a special and deliberate irony and ambiguity. His anthropological analysis,
however, becomes yet more internal evidence that the two passages were composed by the same hand.


We have converted our original post into a stand alone article:


Schneider on John 8:1-11 (1997) <-- Click Here!


Peace,
Nazaroo

Earlier, we discussed the surprising evidence of common authorship in the way the two trials of John are handled. John 8:1-11 on the one hand, and the trial of Jesus Himself on the other. In both cases, there is intense and repeated irony, on an almost verse-by-verse basis.
Whoever wrote John 8:1-11 copied precisely the style of the John who wrote the closing chapters covering the trial before Pilate.

This could even be examined in more detail, a project for a future article.



Here I would like to present the supporting observations of Gail R. O'Day, as she makes a penetrating analysis of John in her book, Revelation in the Fourth Gospel (Fortress Press, 1986) p 25 forward:

"...how can one recognise and interpret irony?

The answer lies in the signals which the auther himself or herself provides as pointers to ironic intention. ...two cautions must be given.

First, signals to irony are often difficult to detect, because the essence of irony is to be indirect. A straighforward ironic statement would be a contradiction in terms. The ironist's challenge is to be clear without being evident, to say something without really saying it.(79) The author must therefore provide the reader with signals to the irony without shattering the tension between the two levels of meaning. (80)
The second caution is that the law of diminishing returns operates in ironic techniques (81). In other words, the more frequently one writes ironically, the less effective the technique becomes in jarring the reader's expectations and in leading him or her to reexamine the literal meaning. This fact explains the observation made earlier, that any form of speech is potentially ironic. Therefore, any catalogue of signals to irony will always be only suggestive, never a definitive list. ...
The most basic indication of irony is the presence of "some form of perceptible contradiction, disparity, incongruity, or anomaly." (82). This contradiction may be found in three separate areas, in the relationship between:

(1) the text and context,​

(2) text and co-text, or ​

(3) text and text (i.e. , between one level or aspect of the particular text or passage under consideration and another.)(83). ​

...​

(1) First, context refers to the background out of which, in which, and for which the author writes. This context may vary "from a single fact, to a whole sociocultural environment, from what is known or felt by the addressor and the addresse alone to what is universally accepted" (84) The specific signals that indicate a disparity between a text and its context vary accordingly, but several general principles apply.
One signal is a conflict of beliefs between those which we must assume the author to hold and those which he or she professes in the text under consideration (either in the author's own voice or in the voice of one of the characters).
We also suspecte irony when known historical facts are contradicted or historical probablilty stretched to the breaking point.
The reader may also suspect irony when there is a discrepancy between the text and accepted social standards, cultural norms, or moral values (85).
Second, co-text refers to specific literary context of the text, the context created by the author himself or herself. Booth points to the author's use of titles and epigraphs as possible signals of ironic intention.(86)
Similarly, when an author interrupts the flow of a text with his or her own comments, as, for example, ...John [the evangelist] does several times in the Fourth Gospel (e.g., 11:49-52), one can often suspect that the passage before or after the interruption is intended ironically.
D. H. Green has done the most systematic analysis of co-textual signals to irony, some of which include:

(1) The possibility of ​

seen employing the same technique. (87)​

...
Cotextual signals, then can be classified into two general groups:

(1) those which indicate the presence of irony through a disparity between the text and the literary context in which it is embedded and ​

(2) those which indicate the presence of irony through a continuity with other passages in the same work in which similar language and oppositions occur. ​

Signals to irony in both general groups are found in the Fourth Gospel.
The trial before Pilate (18:28 - 19:16) is an example of a scene in which the signals to irony are found in the disparity between the text and its literary context. The incongruity between the scenes with Pilate and Jesus and those with Pilate and the Jews (as well as the internal incongruities) indicate the presence of irony.
The dialogue between the man born blind and his Pharisaic interrogators in John 9:24 - 34 is a good example of the second classification of co-textual signal. The heavy concentration of ironic remarks in the passage (e.g., 9:27, 28, 34) puts the reader on notice that an ironic interpretation of the scene is called for (90).
The first two type of signal to irony we have discussed are intertextual: they arise from a disparity between the particular text under consideration and its context, in either a sociocultural or literary sense.
The final group of signals to examine are the intratextual. The intratextual signals to irony, those which indicate a disparity within different levels of the particular text itself, show the most resemblance to the analysis of irony in the rhetorical handbooks.
Quintilian listed several ironic methods: sarcasm, urbane wit, contradiction, and proverbs. (91).

The presence of such techniques remains a potential signal to the use of irony. Intratextual signals run the full gamut of literary and sytlistic techniques.

Some of the most important indicators are an abrupt change in style or tone, the use of words with double meanings and textual ambiguity, and the use of rhetorical questions, understatement, overstatement, parody, paradox, repetition, and metaphor.

None of these three classes of irony signals can adequately indicate the presence of irony by itself. Although Quintilian remarked that a disparity in any one of the factors that he listed - delivery, speaker, or subject - was a sure indication of ironic intention, one really needs the combined evidence of all three classes to recognise and interpret irony correctly. The signals provided by one class are enhanced and strengthened by those from the other two. The final confirmation of any one irony signal is always the integrated interpretation of the text itself. Or, as D. C. Muecke states,

"in any particular case of irony the irony marker can be confirmed as such only retrospectively, that is when one has understood the irony. But in this the interpretation of irony is not different from interpretation in general." (92)​

The Author/Audience Relationship
For Irony to succeed, that is for signals to be detected and the irony to be interpreted and understood, the author must establish a relationship with the audience. The author and audience must share some knowledge and perceptions; ...
The relationship created between author and audience develops in two directions. It builds on a shared frame of reference out of which both author and audience operate, and it is also strengthened through the process of sharing ironies.
Both parties to the irony - creator and recipient - must feel that they are "moving together in identical patterns". (93) Otherwise the irony will not work.

The relationship created ...on the basis of shared knowledge is always stressed in ...the work of Thirlwall (see pp. 20-21). Indeed, the basic definition of dramatic irony centers around the audience's superior knowledge of events and characters in the play, derived from its role as spectator and from the information with which the playwright supplies it:

"Dramatic irony in brief, is the sense of contradiction felt by the spectators of a drama who see a character acting in ignorance of his own conditions." (94)​

Discussions of dramatic irony are often misleading, however, because this shared superior knowledge is not restricted to drama. All authors and audiences of irony, whether in narrative, poetry, or drama, hold some knowledge in common.

Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

We have taken Godet's textual discussion and commentary on John 8:1-11 and annotated it with modern footnotes.

Godet was a famous French scholar who popularized the 19th century German higher criticism of the NT for Europeans.

He had a similar function to that of Samuel Davidson in the 1840s in England.

Normally Godet's work would have been ignored, but by poor timing, Davidson was rejected and avoided in 19th century England, and fell into obscurity.

At the same time, in the attempt to promote the Revised Version and its 'modern' counterparts in America, Godet's work was translated into English in the 1940s.

As a result, Godet's work got a second wind in North America, even as it was quietly forgotten in continental Europe.

It is available online and so out of date information again needs to be examined and refuted.

We have added 40 footnotes to Godet, placing his work in the modern context.

Godet (1864) on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here!

Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

Yes: We got hold of the rare Latin text of St. Jerome's Contra Pelagium, wherein Jerome quotes John 8:1-11 extensively and even gives textual critical commentary on the state of the manuscript transmission in his time.

Jerome on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here!

Enjoy!
Peace,
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

Philostorgius the Arian preserves for us critical circumstantial information regarding the transmission of the Bible and the attitudes of Bishops and the Emperor in the critical period between 325 and 425 A.D.

His Ecclesiastical History (425-431 A.D.) continues the History of Eusebius (who covers 1-325 A.D.)

Philostorgius got short shrift once the Trinitarians won the day. His work only survives second hand through the summary of Photius, patriarch of Constantinople, who saw the value of the information, in spite of his dislike of Philostorgius.

Philostorgius tells us of Emperor Constantine and his problems with adultery, and also some critical details regarding the Gothic Version of the Bible.

Philostorgius on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here

Peace
Nazaroo

 

[Nazaroo]

We have collected our comments on eight popular commentators spanning 60 years, to show their poor performance on the question of John 8:1-11.

In all cases, samplings of ancient arguments are made, with little to support them.

Such arguments, mostly from vocabulary and 'style' were refuted nearly a 100 years ago soon after they were proposed.

The result is that the commentators have simply wasted the reader's time and misled thousands, perhaps millions of Christians who looked to them for guidance on such an important issue.

The Clumsy Commentators on John 8:1-11 <-- Click Here.

Peace,
Nazaroo