Previously Unconsidered Evidence for John 8:1-11

So much for the external evidence, so fraudulently offered.
What about the 'internal evidence'?

Once again we find something strange going on:

Some have suggested that the reason why this pericope is missing is because it seems to breach the seventh commandment. So scribes would intentionally omit it in order to preserve the unity of the Bible.

... These theories follow the common types of scribal errors, but there is no evidence to support them. There is no evidence, whether from marginal note or commentary, that these verses were deemed by scribes to be too morally imprudent to be included in the Bible.

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You'll pardon me for re-splitting and restoring the two separate threads running through this paragraph, which were blended to create an additional distraction and smokescreen.

This is an old hypnotic / political technique, to bamboozle the audience while selling snake-oil. Seeing the two separate arguments separately exposes clearly the fraud:


"Some have suggested..."?

Why hasn't she told us who? The answer is simple: The 'some' are three of the most important and earliest witnesses to the shenanegans being played with the text: Ambrose, Augustine, and Jerome!

Augustine says,

"Some of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, I suppose from a fear lest their wives should gain impunity in sin, removed from their MSS the Lord's act of forgiveness to the adulteress."

And Jerome adds,

"in the Gospel of John many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, contain the account of the adulterous woman."- and he of course included it in the Latin Vulgate as Holy Scripture, having found it also in the Old Latin.

And there are other later witnesses. But the point is, what better witnesses could be hoped for? Who knew more as to what was going on in the 4th and 5th centuries to account for the minority of ancient manuscripts which omit the verses, and at the same time the near unanimous rejection of the omission by the churches (except the Syrians of the Far East)?

Yet she can boldly say (lets hope she's just misquoting her professor):

"There is no evidence, whether from marginal note or commentary, that these verses were deemed by scribes to be too morally imprudent to be included in the Bible."

- after she has just referred to the evidence above, so widely known? Who could possibly so misleadingly state the case, unless they meant to deceive? Technically, yes, no public (liturgical) commentary comments on the verses, since they were not publicly read, and you don't comment during a service on what nobody has heard. And perhaps 'technically' one might also claim that there are only one or two marginal notes that fall into the category of 'evidence' here.

But this is such a dirty method of hiding the very evidence you are citing and its significance, that it can hardly be accidental.

Another reason for its omission is suggested by the fact that John 7:37-8:12 was used for the liturgy on Pentecost and it was judged expedient to do away with the unnecessary and inappropriate incident of adultery.

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...Also, these theories fail to take into account why the descriptive verses of 7:53-8:2 were also omitted.

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And again, a weak point is made to appear fatal to the opposing arguments, and the sources are left unnamed, unreferenced, uncredited. In fact, the strong arguments referred to in favour of the verses were made by a dozen near-famous textual critics, all recognized experts. And these men knew all about the variants. Every one of them to a man presented plausible explanations for those variants: certainly more plausible than the proposal that the verses were later 'additions' to John.

No argument to date is a complete or perfect account of what has happened in the history of transmission. But there are good arguments on both sides of the case here, that should be properly presented and accredited.

In making one's own case for or against these verses, it is dishonest not to acknowledge or account for the counter-evidence and arguments properly and fairly.

The point is, this is not just a case of sloppy footnoting, or incomplete documentation of sources.
This is deliberate deception as to the nature and sources of the counter-evidence, counter-arguments.

In a word, fraud. (again.)

Verses 7:53-8:2 seem to immediately follow the antecedent narrative. Also, in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus there is no transition between 7:52 and 8:13, making the flow of the text seem awkward. In later manuscripts there is usually a two to three word transition at the end of 7:52. This may or may not fall under the second common category where the more difficult reading is preferred to the easier one.

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Damned if you do, Damned if you don't:

Here in an incredible but modern and quite sophisticated switcheroo, the critics have apparently caved in and admitted that the Gospel without the passage as presented by the two 'oldest and best' witnesses is almost nonsensical with the seam crudely reclosed from the obvious hernia operation. The scar, which for 200 years was simply denied in homage to the Gods Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, is now praised as a 'beautymark'!


Yes, the evidence that the passage is genuine, so long denied, is now simply evidence that the passage is fake. Amazing that. What evidence could ever be presented in a court like this? It reminds us of the trials of Manson and his gang, where to get a conviction on Manson, they claimed he 'controlled' his followers: then to convict them, they 'proved' he didn't!

The End Justifies the Means(?):
This may be true for crafty lawyers, but most Christians would strongly object to this philosophy (I hope). And what is the 'end' here? To eject the Pericope de Adultera at all costs! What kind of goal is that?

That's right, in case someone tries to use one 'canon' or rule of textual criticism to reinstate the passage, the critics can pull out another arbitrary but contradictory one to neutralize it and maintain face while doing an 'about-face', or ordered retreat.

the more difficult reading is preferred to the easier one.(?)
The old 'canon' (which was never a 'common category' or general rule) was based upon the idea that 'a scribe was more likely to emend a difficult reading or perceived error than introduce a difficult reading with a plain one in front of him.' This would be true (only) for deliberate but small emendations or corrections.

Can this possibly apply as any kind of explanation for the deliberate invention and insertion of an entire story or paragraph? Give us a break. Even the author knows this is ludicrous, but tries to give it a spin anyway!

As we have seen, the passage has been in many different places in the Gospels. It is very possible that the original text of John 7-8 was rather disjointed and that this passage was added to even things out and to expound upon the disagreements between Jesus and the Pharisees.

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"As we have seen, the passage has been in many different places in the Gospels."(?)

Again the lie is repackaged and slipped in where sloppy readers will perhaps just nod their heads, relying upon hypnotic suggestion rather than facts.

To ease the pain, the exaggerated claims of Bultmann and Dodd are trotted out but without acknowledging the source, in case it spooks the orthodox. All in all, it looks like a tale nurses tell children just before jabbing in the needle: "This may prick a bit..."


"this passage was added to even things out" (?)

What? Now we are supposed to imagine that a whole story was added to John, to smooth out a wrinkle? Wouldn't a simple sentence or two have done the same thing? Can arguments get any more implausible than this? Why not smooth out another five 'rough' patches with a half-dozen great anecdotes from the oral traditions? John is so brief, it could use beefing up...

This passage is a good example of why the sheer number of manuscripts that support a reading is not a conclusive way of determining the reading of the original text.

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Really? Or is the exact opposite the case?

Many study Bible’s point out the fact that this pericope is present in over 900 manuscripts of John. This in and of itself seems convincing for the genuineness of the passage except it ignores that the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society critical editions of the New Testament are unanimous that the passage was originally not a part of the Gospel of John.

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Wow: The two votes of NA/UBS overwhelmingly override the combined testimony of the majority of manuscripts of all ages, the versions, the early fathers, the Latin Vulgate, the acceptance of nearly every major branch of the church for 1400 years, and the united lectionary tradition.

But what can you do? They have 'Metzger'. Good thing we remembered that.

The number of early and good manuscripts that support the omission gives a high level of certainty to exclusion of this pericope.

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Or gives a high level of suspicion over the Alexandrian manuscripts of the 4th century, and a high level of absurdity for the opinions of the critics in control of the NA/UBS text.

Conclusion:

This 'piece', planted on the internet, was obviously either ghost-written by a devious but clever proponent of the UBS text, or a professional essay writer who knew just what the professor wanted to hear. In either case its a total fake from A to Z.

The closing statement, geared to reassure bible believing Christians that the 'assured results' of textual criticism are just dandy, reveals the true purpose and person(s) behind the document, just as surely as the bad grammar and childishly unrealistic statements in the Protocols of Zion betray that forgery.

Buyer beware.

You do finally have something useful to say here. It is not a simple interpolation. It's actually more similar to problems of source criticism and the tradition criticism in the Old Testament and New Testament than it is to a simple text criticial problem.

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And you also finally have something useful to say here. You are quite right. This is a form-criticism/redaction-criticism problem, not a textual one.

Is there a (real) doctor in the house?

she is only applying a single, simple text-critical canon rather than analysing the pericope in terms of narrative traditions.

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I would rather debate with a thousand Bultmanns over this intelligently, than listen to the nonsensical parrotting of textual critics.

When I am finished demolishing the modern textual-critic point of view, I promise to have a go at a realistic approach to this 'source-criticism' problem.

He said that the passage in question, John 8:1-11, was added sometime in the 14th century. He also claimed that in an earlier manuscript there was a note that it should be added to subsequent manuscripts.

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For your information, the passage stands in the Codex Bezae for instance, a bilingual Greek and Latin Codex from the 4th or 5th century, which shows a very interesting and primitive text in many places.

To this we may add that it is discussed in reasonable depth by Jerome (circa 350 A.D.) who standardized the Latin Vulgate and included the passage. His testimony is also very important to the textual question since he, like Origen, had access to many Greek and Latin manuscripts much older than himself. Concerning these, Jeromes states explicitly that the Pericope de Adultera was found in many Greek (and Old Latin) manuscripts in his time. This would extend the reach and the existance of the passage in its normal place in John back to at least the 2nd century A.D. at least in many textual streams of transmission.

No one disputes the verses found themselves in copies of John from the 2nd century onward. The majority of manuscripts from all sources have the verses in their natural place.

I have never liked this passage because it makes Jesus seem like some kind of a guru or a mystic. Writting some mysterious words in the dirt never seemed consistant with the way Jesus confronted people

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The problem of Jesus writing in the sand is indeed mysterious and enigmatic to a modern reader. However this remarkable feature is common to many other parts of John that are not in question from a textual critical point of view. That is, it is indeed a possible identifying mark of John's style, whether it annoys us or not.

Other examples of 'mystery' or 'confusion' found in John are the reference to "out of his belly shall flow living water", The "What is that to you and me?" when Jesus speaks to His mother at Cana, etc., and the list could be multiplied into dozens of such 'mysterious' problem passages in John.

In fact, similarly 'difficult' passages are found in all the synoptic gospels as well, and the phenomenae are best explained as mostly a result of our lack of background knowledge and our modern point of view.

So this cannot be interpreted as a mark of 'inauthenticity'.

What makes a good investigator?

One of the most important skills a modern investigator needs to be impartial, scientific and effective, is the ability to put aside personal likes and dislikes, as well as the 'intuitions' and 'hunches' that really most likely stem from his own modern and narrow background. For instance, many people have dismissed Matthew's 'quote' that the messiah "shall be called a Nazarene" was actually a mistake. That is, Matthew appears to quote a scripture that doesn't even exist in the Old Testament (Massoretic Text). So many assumed Matthew was either quoting a book that is now lost, or was not included in the 'canon', that is a non-inspired forgery, or else that Matthew himself made up the quotation. A closer investigation however, clears the matter up as much as it can be, by pointing out that many places in Isaiah in the Hebrew strongly suggest the 'Nazarene' label, at least in the Hebrew! If Matthew was relying upon a Hebrew Text, and originally wrote in Hebrew/Aramaic himself, or relied upon a Hebrew source, then there is really no mystery here, even though to an English reader of the bible this is actually completely unsolvable.

BornFromAbove said:

hello mr. nasaroo are you the same man who posted on www . theologyonline com/ because the post there seems entirely different...i dont seehow these relatetogether. thankyou luv BFA!

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Yes that was me.
Here I have been mainly discussing the INTERNAL evidence for the Pericope de Adultera. In that thread, you will find I have examined extensively the EXTERNAL evidence, and also I have posted a long and deep commentary on the verses. This is why the threads seem different, I expect.

Peace, Nazaroo

mark kennedy said:

I am arriving late in the discussion, forgive me if I am clueless on the detailed discussion going on here. Some time ago I heard this interview by Terri Gross with Bart Ehrman on his new book 'Misquoting Jesus'. This is the link you are interested in listening to the interview yourself:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5052156

He said that the passage in question, John 8:1-11, was added sometime in the 14th century. He also claimed that in an earlier manuscript there was a note that it should be added to subsequent manuscripts.

Grace and peace,
Mark

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I have thoroughly checked out your link and this clown, and have carefully transcripted the entire audio interview. I was shocked, but not surprised to find that you heard him correctly indeed, and this man essentially stood up and told bare-faced lies:

Here is a typical piece of misleading propagandizing trash being pushed onto the unsuspecting public.
It is no wonder that ordinary Christians are confused about John 8:1-11, when they are being lied to as blatantly as this without the 'expert' even batting an eye as he speaks the most carefully crafted horse-manure, of a quality that would make an advertizing-copy writer blush with shame.

Note that the 'interviewer's questions are of course written by himself, and he just can't resist praising himself for them at least once. (For promo, interviewees often present a list of prepared questions.)

This guy makes Goebbels look naive:

Bart Ehrman's book "Misquoting Jesus" 2005

Promotional Audio Interview for book, Exerpt on John 8:1-11

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5052156

Q: Lets look at one of the classical stories in the NT..that you say was changed, changed by scribes: and this is the story of the act of adultery, tell the story as we know it.



Ehrman: Well, its a terrific story, [reassuring positive spin] its found in the gospel of John, chapter 7 and 8, the Jewish leaders have caught a woman committing adultery and they bring her to Jesus, and they set a trap for Jesus. They ask him, they say, "According to the law of Moses this woman should be stoned to death. What do you say?" So Jesus is put in this predicament because if he says, "No have mercy on her", as you would expect him to say, since hes been preaching a doctrine of love and mercy, - if he says that, then he's breaking the law of Moses: but if he says go ahead and stone her, then obviously he's violating his own teachings of love and mercy. And so what's he to do, well he stoops down and starts drawing on the ground and he looks up and he says, "Let the one without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her", and then he stoops back down and starts writing again, and slowly one by one all of her accusers leave until he looks up and sees that she's alone and he says then to her, "is there no one left to condemn you?" And she says, "No lord. no one", and he says "neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more."


Q: What's historically questioned in this story?


Ehrman: Well its, the whole story its a very interesting story for a lot of reasons, interpreters have puzzled over it over the years, one of the leading questions is, If this woman was caught in the act of adultery, where's where's the man? (chuckle) - because according to the law of Moses both of them are to be stoned to death but apparently they've only come away with the woman. So there are interesting interpretive questions.
The bigger issue is whether in fact this is a story that belongs in the bible or not. As it turns out, even though this is a favourite story of people who read the bibles and who make movies about the bible for hollywood, [non-experts...] this story probably was not original to the gospel of John.

The earliest manuscripts we have of the gospel of John don't have this story.

[the best lie is the truth mistold!
Dates are carefully avoided as a false impression is built up...]


And none of the Greek writing church fathers, (the NT of course itself was written in Greek,) none of the Greek writing church fathers who comment on the gospel of John include it in their commentaries until the twelfth century. So twelve hundred years after the book itself was written.

[the listener is led to think the story was unknown even by the Greek fathers until the 12th century.
In fact, the 'story' is found in John in the majority of manuscripts from the 4th century until the 14th! Over 600 mss have the verses in their normal position without any question of doubt attached.

You might note as well that the reason Greek Commentaries on the scriptures in the Middle Ages left out commenting on John 8:1-11 is simple. The ancient commentaries were not commentaries in the sense we have today, where you go and buy one and take it home to read. They were public lessons on what section of scripture was read during the service. Many other passages, like Jude and all of Revelation were also left out of the normal public reading during the year, because they were not deemed appropriate to worship service. This has nothing to do with the authenticity of these books and passages.

The Greek commentaries left out John 8:1-11 because they cannot comment upon what was never publicly read to the congregation.

This meaningless fact has been presented as though it had significance for the textual question, but it has none.
]


This shows that the early manuscripts simply didn't have the story.


[Sure it does...except NOW the early mss referred to here are NOT the 5000 Greek manuscripts from the 4th century onward to the 12th, but rather a handful of mss from Egypt along with codex Aleph and B.]


So then the question is how did we get the story? Well in the Middle Ages, apparently a scribe knew the story, had heard of the story someplace, through somebody telling the story and wrote it down in the margin of a manuscript.


[Of course, that's when it happened, in the 'Middle Ages' the 'story' was accidentally copied from the margin...NOT!

Actually, if the story was 'added', it must have been added BEFORE THE 4th CENTURY, since from that point on it was accepted as scripture by 90% of Christians all over the Civilized world. ]


And some other scribe came along and saw this story in the margin of a manuscript, and then transferred it into the manuscript itself, in the gospel of John. And from then on that manuscript got copied, and one of the subsequent copies of that manuscript, is the, was the copy that was used then by the King James translators when they translated the bible, so that this story has become totally familiar to people who read English, but it wouldn't have been known at all to Greek reading Christians reading the gospel of John in the ancient world.


[What 'Greek speaking Christians in the ancient world' can he mean? NOT the scribes of Medieval Europe has he has falsely implied here:

THOSE scribes knew all about the passage and copied it faithfully into just about every Greek mss of John made for the entire thousand year period that could credibly be called 'the Middle Ages'.
By 'ancient world' we have now magically switched back to 2nd Century Egypt instead of Medieval Europe... how did that happen?]


Q: Can you explain a little bit more what might have led a scribe in the twelfth century to add this story?


[Great gag: Set up the Interviewer to do your lying for you, then if you get caught you can blame her...hmmm. blame the woman...familiar?]



Ehrman: Well its a terrific story.


[My faith is shaken...help me doctor.
More speech, Wormtongue! King Theoden is waking up...]


Ehrman: In the gospel of John right at this point, Jesus is condemning his opponents for not judging one another fairly by not having a right judgement, and this is a story that in a way encapulates that idea, that judgement is to be a righteous judgement and that mercy is more important than judgement, and so this illustrates the point being made in John chapter 7 and 8, and I suppose a scribe was reading John 7 and 8 and thinking about it and thought you know this story I've heard fits right in here, I'll put it in the margin, uh for it then later to be copied into the text.

[Yeah, that's what must have happened....]


Q: I mean, did the scribes have that much freedom in the work that they could just add a story?


Ehrman: Well its shocking but uh, you know, its shocking to my students just how often these scribes would change their texts. We, we tend to think that, - in our setting, today when a book is produced, its always the same book, so I can go out and buy a copy of the Da Vinci Code, and it doesn't matter what city in America I buy the copy, its exactly the same copy word for word the same, and so that's what we expect of our books.

[Of course, we 'laymen' Christians are just dumb enough to swallow a plug for the Da Vinci Code while we're here. The professor mentioned it...it must be good. It is interesting to note that many Catholics are suggesting we read the book or go see the movie... I wonder how much money they have invested in it?]


But in the ancient world they didn't expect their books to be like that because they knew that these things were always being copied by hand, and that mistakes were always being made, so that the very first copy of a book probably had mistakes. And then the person who copied that first copy, copied the mistakes, and added some of his own mistakes, and then that third copy was itself copied, and its mistakes were replicated then down through the line and so mistakes multiplied through the copying process. Some scribes felt completely free to change their texts. And would add stories, or take out stories, would add lines, take out lines - we know this happened, this isn't just speculation - the reason we know it happened is because we have these thousands of surviving manuscripts, and when you look at these thousands of manuscripts, the striking thing about them is just how different they are from one another.


[Yeah, and the most amazing thing about these 5000 manuscripts is the hundreds of times that arbitrary stories are just added and subtracted, you know about the size of a passage like John 8:1-11...Happens all the time. or perhaps Not at all...]


So what are you suggesting here, that we should just ignore that story of adultery, that that story has less currency than other stories in the NT, or that we should just see that as a story that was added later and take it as that, I mean how does that affect your reading of that passage in the bible, what do you make of it?



Well, its a very good question [I have to praise myself here] and I think Christians who see the bible as authoritative have to make a decision - what is it that they think is authoritative? Is the original text as it was originally written, is that authoritative? If thats authoritative, thats a problem because we don't have the original texts, in many instances. But on the other hand, does somebody want to ascribe authority to a text that was clearly and certainly added later to the bible, such as the story of the woman taken in adultery?


[I plumb forgot...did he actually clearly and certainly prove anything or just lie about the facts and present them in the most misleading manner yet seen, even judged by the amazing shenanegans of 19th century critics?...]


If you ascribe authority to these stories that were added later to the bible, where do you draw the line? Does it mean anybody can add something to the bible, and then it can count as scripture? This strikes me as a very difficult theological problem that theologians probably need to work on a little bit to tell people what actually is the bible that is being trusted as the authoritative scripture.

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What an incredibly dirty liar this man is. He cannot possibly be simply 'mistaken', after having spent years studying the manuscript evidence.

Burn this book.

WAB said:

As Naz says in one of his posts, "Do you really seriously think the majority of textual critics would sign the Apostle's Creed?.... The majority of textual critics are self-confessed heretics and agnostics..." This is true.

At another location, there is a reference to "murky origins" for the Gospel of John, and that from Naz.

There is no question, that both "Naz" and his antagonist "justified" have education far beyond my own, but all that this thread has done is promote doubt as to the authenticity of God's Word.

As anyone can see, each has provided "proof" of their position. And their positions are 180 degrees in opposition to each other.

So... where does this leave the "uneducated" as to which side to believe? I believe there is a wonderful answer to that question. Part of it may be derived from the Scripture found in 2nd Corinthians 11:3...

"But I fear, lest somehow as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." (NKJV)

Because without doubt someone will object to this reference because the word "simplicity" is derived from the Greek haplot'es which means: "folded together", yet the meaning is clear. If we have been "folded together" with the Lord Jesus Christ, we are able to trust His Word, because since He transmitted it miraculously, so He is able to preserve it miraculously.

All Scripture is "God-breathed", i.e. "given by inspiration"
in spite of what "scholars" have to say about it.

If not, then which part of the Word can you trust, and which part must you reject? And that includes the passage in the Gospel of John being argued over.

Shalom.... WAB

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Perhaps surprisingly to WAB, I agree with him wholeheartedly here:

My remark about 'murky origins' has probably been misunderstood, so let me clarify:

I have no doubt at all where the Gospel of John came from. It was written either by John the Apostle or Nicodemus, or both together, as members of the early church community, for the inspiration of God-seekers, Jewish messianists, and all believers.

When you engage in sophisticated arguments with naturalistic thinkers, you often must necessarily and only temporarily adopt their viewpoints, for the purposes of testing, or to show where such assumptions logically and inevitably lead. This does not mean I would adopt those viewpoints myself, but rather to show that they are incorrect.

All scripture is indeed inspired, and the Gospel of John is definitely scripture, and so is this passage (John 8:1-11). There is no need to doubt the immense value of these verses.

You can cross out the misleading footnotes in most modern versions. They are useless and harmful to the faith.

WAB said:

Yes, Naz, you did surprise me, at least in part. And for which I am grateful, and do praise the Lord.

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I will also praise Him. Not every scholar is an enemy of the Gospel.

You say... "When you engage in sophisticated arguments with naturalistic thinkers, you often must necessarily and only temporarily adopt their viewpoints..."

Using that logic, one would have to convert Paul's statement in Galatians 2:11 to the following... "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I adopted my thinking process (only temporarily you understand) to the viewpoint that he was presenting..."

To the contrary, here is what the Word of God actually says... "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed."

God, through Paul, gives us the Scriptural means of confronting error. Of course Paul was unique, ...

Shalom... WAB

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I understand your concern. However, I have underlined what I think is the 'error' in this reasoning process.

Paul does indeed show an example of how a leader may confront hypocrisy and fear in his congregation, and even among other leaders of the body of Christ.

Yet this is not the only way Godly men may confront error. The Holy Scriptures give many diverse examples of techniques a Holy man may use to confront error:

(1) By Counter-Deception: For instance, when Nathan began an 'innocent' story of a man and his sheep. Or when another prophet disguised himself as a wounded soldier with a false story. Or when Elijah invited the priests of Baal to demonstrate the power of their idol in a 'bet' or contest, then slew them.

(2) By a 'Loaded' or even Childish Reasoning Process: In this technique, a plain or well-known example is presented, which is then shown to have unforseen consequences to the issue at hand.

For instance, Jesus pointed to a scripture where the Lord called men "Gods" to justify His title, Son of God. He also raised the law regarding rescuing oxen from a pit on the Sabbath to justify His work on that day. Many other examples could be given.

(3) By Physical Attack: As when an enthusiastic future leader simply ran a copulating couple through with a spear. Another prophet cut off the heads of five kings. And Moses himself had a man stoned for picking up firewood on the Sabbath.

So we can see that throughout Holy Scripture there are given as examples a variety of ways or approaches for interacting with those committing knowing (or unknowing) sins and/or misleading others. We would like to have such people listen to reason, but it is not always the case. When Moses called to the Israelites, "Who is on the Lord's side? Stand with me!" And some refused, perhaps even Moses was surprised by the speed and ferocity with which they were swallowed up by the earth by the power of the Lord.

WAB said:

Am aware of all of the examples you note. The only problem is that all of them, including the lesson Jesus taught, were under the old covenant.

Until the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord, He was operating under the old covenant.

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Your thesis here is interesting, and needs some exploring, in conjunction with your next point:

...Paul was a very learned man, but he came to the conclusion that those things which were worthy of pats on his back, were an impediment to his preaching of the Gospel. See Philippians 3:7.

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While I don't doubt the sincerity of both you and Paul on this point, I think "impediment" is inappropriate. What Paul means is that they are not an advantage in regards salvation, which is quite a different proposition.

Now as to the general thesis, that a New Covenant implies new techniques, this might specifically apply in my case (3) (physical force), and perhaps even (1) (legitimate use of temporary deception), but I think you are out of gas in applying it to (2), which at least includes the use of reason and logical argument for the establishment of teaching and doctrine.

And I myself in applying my talents in a scholarly role am only depending upon some variation of (2).

Finally, since you have appealed to Paul, you can hardly escape the fact that Paul almost entirely used arguments of logic, parallelism, allegory, and even non-Christian mythology in his efforts to reason with people and convince them of the Gospel. This is not just one of Paul's methods, but essentially his MAIN method of preaching and teaching. While his specific methods and thought patterns are essentially Jewish/Pharisaic, they are nonetheless not 'illogical' or lacking in their application of human reason. Also, one might even build a case that Paul mainly used 'Old Testament' methods of Jewish 'midrash' and commentary rather than any 'new' technique.

Likewise, here I am appealing to ordinary arguments of logic and reason, analogy and accumulative weight of evidence, as both Paul and O.T. prophets did to convince their hearers.

How can you object to this, after appealing to Paul's (New Covenant Dispensation) example?

posted by: mark kennedy(msg#89):

I am arriving late in the discussion, forgive me if I am clueless on the detailed discussion going on here. Some time ago I heard this interview by Terri Gross with Bart Ehrman on his new book 'Misquoting Jesus'. This is the link you are interested in listening to the interview yourself:

​

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=5052156

He said that the passage in question, John 8:1-11, was added sometime in the 14th century. He also claimed that in an earlier manuscript there was a note that it should be added to subsequent manuscripts.

​

Grace and peace,
Mark

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I have thoroughly checked out your link and this clown, and have carefully transcripted the entire audio interview. I was shocked, but not surprised to find that you heard him correctly indeed, and this man essentially stood up and told bare-faced lies:...

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I have found a more sympathetic review of erhsmann's book here, for those interested in a peer review:

http://www.denverseminary.edu/dj/articles2006/0200/0206.php

sample from review said:

One surprising factual error occurs when Ehrman insists that Acts 4:13 means that Peter and John were illiterate (the term agrammatos??unlettered? in this context means not educated beyond the elementary education accessible to most first-century Jewish boys). But otherwise, the most disappointing feature of the volume is Ehrman?s apparent unawareness of (or else his unwillingness to discuss) the difference between inductive and deductive approaches to Scripture. The classic evangelical formulations of inspiration and inerrancy have never claimed that these are doctrines that arise from the examination of the data of the existing texts. They are theological corollaries that follow naturally from the conviction that God is the author of the texts (itself suggested by 2 Tim. 3:16, Jesus? own high view of Scripture and his conviction that the Spirit had yet more truth to inspire his followers to record). But if the texts are ?God-breathed,? and if God cannot err, then they must be inspired and inerrant.
Ehrman offers no supporting arguments for his claims that if God inspired the originals, he both could have and should have inerrantly preserved them in all subsequent copies.

Craig L. Blomberg
Distinguished Professor of New Testament
Denver Seminary
February 2006

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Peace, Nazaroo

Here's another little tidbit I previously overlooked myself in examining the internal evidence for John 8:1-11:

Hodges mentions some evidence along this line in favour of Johannine authorship:

...the Greek clause
"touto de elegon peirazwnteV auton" (8:6) is a virtual replica of the similar expression in 6:6,
"touto de elegen peirazwn auton". It is rather disheartening to observe how rarely writers who reject the Johannine authenticity of the narrative refer to this striking feature. Of course, it is easier to pass it by in silence since the presence of so clear a mark of John's style poses severe problems for those who fell the narrative is no part of the Johannnine Gospel. (Hodges)


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We can't pass up the opportunity in discussing the internal evidence for John 7:53-8:11, without mentioning Tregelles' fascinating confessions as to why he himself avoided any reliance at all upon the 'internal evidence'.
Samuel P. Tregelles, An Account of the Printed Text of the Greek New Testament (London, 1854), pages 236-243.

I do not rest at all on the internal difficulties connected with this passage, on the supposition that it is genuine Scripture; because, if it had been sufficiently attested, they would not present anything insurmountable.

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That is, the internal evidence against the passage is so weak and insubtantive, that he prefers textual evidence only:

The peculiarities of the language are indeed remarkable, and very unlike anything else in St. John's Gospel; but to this it might be said, that the copies differ so much that it is almost impossible to judge what the true phraseology is.

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Again, almost anticipating Samuel Davidson's case, Tregelles dismisses the attempt to gather internal evidence when the original text has not been securely established in the first place. That is, even in 1852, people like Tregelles knew that there were serious problems with trying to argue about internal stylisms before any of the hardcore work had been done. This was historically not done until Von Soden studied the manuscripts and variants in exhaustive detail around 1900, and Turner did a serious analysis of Johannine stylisms in 1925.

Perhaps the difficulties in the passage have been over-estimated: at least we have no reason to conjecture that any omitted it on account of such difficulties, any more than we have to think that any expunged it on doctrinal grounds, as suggested by Augustine.

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Here Tregelles makes the most interesting observation that it is highly implausible that anyone (ancient scribe or commentator like Origen) would have omitted the passage based upon its stylistic content. Why? because it was so nebulous and unclear that it could hardly be discerned, even by native Greeks immersed in the text!

Q. Well, what can all this mean?

A. There is no real case for any 'internal' evidence against the passage, except a few 'hapax legomenon' (words that appear only once), and the lack of a few dubious 'Johannine' features.