Monday | Week 7

This passage, an encounter between the teachers of the law, Jesus, and the woman caught in adultery, is one of my favorites. It’s as if Jesus uses this encounter to provide a “show-and-tell” of how to apply the teachings from the Sermon on the Mount to a real life situation. 

However, prior to the next few days of digging into this passage, a few words are in order about the unique history of it.

For those of us that grew up reading the King James Version, this story was no different than all the others. It was in the Bible, and therefore God’s revealed Word. Later I switched to a more modern language Bible, the New American Standard. It has brackets around this passage and the following footnote: “Later manuscripts add the story of the adulterous woman, numbering it as John 7:53-8:11.”

Rather than just adding a footnote, the New International Version (most commonly used at Redeemer), makes an even more obvious statement. It puts these verses in italics and inserts a comment prior to this passage that states: “[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]”

I checked multiple other widely read versions of the Bible, and they all had similar comments.

So what to make of this? A well-known and beloved Bible story, yet the Bibles in which it occurs go out of their way to state the early manuscripts of John didn’t include it. (In the research I did looking into this, early church leaders didn’t question the voracity of this story, but merely where it should occur within the Gospels.)

I will give my personal take on this:

  1. Jesus clearly had many personal encounters that were not written down by John. (John concludes his Gospel with these two sentences, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

  2. This story was widely believed to be authentic, and early church leaders wanted it included within the four Gospels.

  3. This location within John’s Gospel seemed like an appropriate place to put this true story.

  4. Praise God they included it! 

Discussion Questions

  1. Why do you think the question posed to Jesus was, as John tells us, “a trap”? (v.6)

  2. In the past, is there a time you could relate to what the woman was feeling?

  3. How about a time you could relate to what the Pharisees were thinking?

  4. Is offering forgiveness, but then saying, “go and sin no more”, something only Jesus has the right to do? Can we offer similar forgiveness and counsel?