The Adulterer Story… if it even happened.

John 7.53 – 8.11.

Today’s passage is known by scholars as the Pericope Adulterae, the Adulterer Story, about a woman caught committing adultery, whom Jesus was expected to judge, and didn’t. It’s a really popular story in Christendom, and even pagans know the line, “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Jn 8.7 KJV It’s used as the basis for a lot of live-and-let-live, “who am I to judge?” beliefs.

Two things though.

• That’s not what Jesus meant by “He that is without sin.” I’ll get to that.
• This entire story isn’t found in the earliest copies of John. Nor the gospels. It got added in the 300s. It’s a textual variant.

That second thing tends to really freak out Christians when I point it out to them. But just about every copy of the bible but the KJV points this out. The whole passage is put in brackets, or prefaced by “The oldest copies of John don’t have this story.” Some more daring bible translations even put the whole thing in the footnotes, and John 7.52 is immediately followed by John 8.12.

The greenish text is a reminder this comes from the Textus Receptus. The UBS6 has a version if it, but since it’s all spurious I figure it doesn’t matter if it includes the Textus’s additions to the text.

John 7.53 – 8.11 KWL

7.53{Each person goes to their house,

8.1and Jesus goes to Mt. Olivet.

2At dawn Jesus again goes to temple,

and all the people come to him.

He sits to teach them.

3Scribes and Pharisees bring Jesus a woman

caught red-handed in adultery.

They stand her in the middle.

4They tell Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught

in the act of adultering.

5In our Law Moses commanded us

to stone such people to death. Lv 20.10

So what do you¹ say?”

6They’re saying this to test Jesus,

so they might have an accusation on him.

Stooping down, not paying attention,

Jesus is writing on the ground with his finger

7while they continue to question him.

Then Jesus stands and tells them,

“The sinless party among you:²

Throw the first stone at her.”

8And again Jesus bends down

to write on the ground.

9One by one the listeners leave,

convicted by their consciences,

beginning with the elders.

Only Jesus, and the woman in the middle, are left.

10Standing, seeing no one but the woman,

Jesus tells her, “Woman, where are they?

No one condemns you?”¹

11She says, “No one, sir.”

Jesus tells her, “I don’t condemn you¹ either.

Go, and from now on don’t sin.”}

The senators dismiss the Galilean prophet.

John 7.45-52.

You might remember a few verses back, the Judean senators sent their ὑπηρέτας/ypirétas, “underlings” (KJV “officers”) to either go seize Jesus, or at least quiet him. Jn 7.32 Instead, to the great annoyance of the senators, the underlings came back empty-handed, too impressed by Jesus to oppose him.

John 7.45-49 KWL

45So the assistants are coming

to the head priests and Pharisees,

and these leaders are telling them,

“For what reason do you² not bring Jesus?ᴾ

46The assistants answer, “No human ever spoke this way.”

47So the Pharisees answer them,

“You² weren’t deceived too, were you?

48Not one of the leaders believe in Jesus.ᴾ

Nor any of the Pharisees.

49But this crowd, not knowing the Law,

is damned.”

The way I translate verse 49 never fails to get a strong reaction from people. “Damned” tends to be used as a profanity, so your average Christian’s knee-jerk reaction is, “You swore.” Not they swore; not the Pharisees. They’re used to bible translations where the Pharisees only said “cursed.” It’s my fault for using the no-no word.

But this is what ἐπάρατοί/epáratí means. When it’s used in ancient Greek literature, it’s to describe how the gods divinely destined certain humans and city-states for destruction ’cause they did something the gods forbade, like desecrating graves or violating a divine command. When the Pharisees said the crowd is epáratí, they meant the LORD was gonna destroy these people for not knowing the Law of Moses; at least not to the level Pharisees did.

Now wait; isn’t the whole point of Pharisaism to teach the general public the Law? To perpetuate the Law and biblical literacy in Israel, lest the cycle start all over again as God’s people slid back into apostasy and idolatry? Of course. So whose fault is it these people don’t know the Law? Who hadn’t been doing their duty to disseminate truth?—or whatever passed for truth among Pharisees, anyway.

Thing is, in every holiness movement we’re gonna find a toxic faction of legalists who forget to be compassionate and gracious to those who haven’t been taught any better. Christianity definitely has ’em too. Some of us treat pagans like crap, like sinners just doomed to destruction. Some of us even claim God wants to destroy them; that the only reason God created ’em in the first place was to show off his greatness by dumping wrath upon them. It’s a totally messed-up worldview, based on out-of-context verses, but really it’s contrary to scriptures which plainly state God wants to save everyone. 1Ti 2.4 But among Evangelicals, it’s mighty common ’cause some of us find it way more fun to be wrathful than gracious. We forget if it weren’t for God’s grace, we’d be just as lost.

These Pharisee senators were in the very same boat. Pride made ’em presume they knew God better than the crowds. And that they knew better than to believe Jesus was Messiah. Certainly none of them believed in Jesus. “Do any of the rulers believe in Jesus? Or any of the Pharisees?”

Well one of ’em did:

John 7.50-52 KWL

50Nicodemus, who is one of the leaders,

who previously came to Jesusᴾ {at night}, tells them,

51“Our law doesn’t judge the person

when one’s not first heard from them,¹

and knows what they¹ do, does it?”

52In reply the leaders told Nicodemus,

“You’re¹ not also from the Galilee, are you?

Study and see that the Prophet

doesn’t rise up from the Galilee.”

Good on Nicodemus for speaking up, but y’notice the other senators’ rotten attitude, and you can see why Nicodemus likely didn’t bother to speak up often. Their immediate response was, “You’re not also from the Galilee, are you?”

Rivers of living water.

John 7.37-44.

The last day of the feast of Taberancles was treated like sabbath. Lv 23.36, Nu 29.35 Every day, God was presented a ritual food offering; on the last day they presented a ritual drink offering. The priests drew water from the Šiloakh pool (where they washed some of the sacrificial animals; where Jesus later sent a blind guy to wash himself) then walked round the temple’s altar with the water. Then the officiating priest lifted his hand to indicate the ritual was over.

This particular year, possibly right after the drink offering, this happened:

John 7.37-39 KWL

37On the great last day of the feast of Tabernacles,

Jesus stood and called out, saying,

“When anyone thirsts,

come to me and drink!

38One who believes in me, just as the scripture says,

rivers of living water will flow from their¹ guts.”

39Jesus says this about the Holy Spirit,

whom believers in him are about to receive.

The {Holy} Spirit has not yet come,

for Jesus has not yet been glorified.

As John said, this is a prophecy about the Holy Spirit, who wouldn’t come Ac 2.1-4 till after Jesus was raptured and glorified. Ac 1.9-11 Come to Jesus and receive the water of life; receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus’s statement galvanized the people, who were pretty sure Jesus was either the Prophet or Messiah… although as you can see, there was still some debate about his credentials to be Messiah. Some of the crowd believed nobody knew where Messiah came from; others knew Messiah totally came from Bethlehem. Problem is, this was Jesus the Nazarene, and they knew Messiah didn’t come from Nazareth.

John 7.40-44 KWL

40So, hearers of this message in the crowd are saying,

“This is truly the Prophet.”

41Others are saying, “This is Messiah.”

Some are saying, “No!

For does Messiah come from the Galilee?

42Doesn’t the scripture say this?—

‘From the seed of David and from Bethlehem,

the town where David comes from,’

comes Messiah.”

43So a schism came upon the crowd

because of Jesus,ᴾ

44and some of them are wanting to seize Jesus,ᴾ

but no one is laying a hand on him.

We know Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but I remind you this gospel doesn’t include Jesus’s birth story. He just shows up in his 30s to be baptized by John, gather students, and begin teaching. John states multiple times he came from heaven, sent by the Father, which was good enough for John. Not so much for the Jerusalemites, who were looking for any reason to disqualify him.

Still, Jesus is descended from David ben Jesse, Mt 1.1 and wasn’t just born in Bethlehem but had ancestors from Bethlehem; Nazareth was founded by Bethlehemites. His provenance definitely doesn’t disqualify him from being Messiah. But for doubters, any excuse will do. We get the same way nowadays; all humans do.

Can’t follow Jesus where he’s going.

John 7.32-36.

Frequently in John, the author mentions how nobody seized Jesus because his time hadn’t yet come. But it’s not that nobody tried to grab him and do away with him. In the middle of chapter 7, here’s a story where they gave it a shot.

John 7.32-36 KWL

32Pharisees were hearing the crowd

murmuring these things about Jesus.ᴾ

The head priests and Pharisees are sending their assistants

so they might seize Jesus.ᴾ

33So Jesus is saying, “I’m only with you² a little while.

I’m going away to he who sends me.

34You’ll² seek me and you² won’t find {me}.

You² can’t come to where I am.”

35So the Judeans tell one another, “Where is this Jesus about to go,

that we won’t find him?

He’s not about to go into the Greek diaspora,

and teach the Greeks, is he?

36What is this word which he says?—

‘You’ll² seek me and you² won’t find {me}.

You² can’t come to where I am.’ ”

Two people might’ve seized Jesus: Either people who were part of the government, or private citizens who decided to take matters into their own hands vigilante-style. In this case it’s the government. Whenever the gospels refer to the head priests and Pharisees, the authors mean the συνέδριον/synédrion, “senate,” the oligarchs who actually ran the province. It consisted of the head priests (mostly Sadducee) and the wealthier Jerusalem families (mostly Pharisee). If you thought the Romans were in charge, yeah they were, but they didn’t handle the day-to-day stuff; the senate did.

The Judean crowds didn’t have the authority to seize Jesus, but the senate did. So they sent their ὑπηρέτας/ypirétas, “underlings” (KJV “officers”) to go get him. Instead they got an answer from him they couldn’t understand: “I’m going away, and you can’t follow me.”

Not knowing where Messiah comes from.

John 7.25-31.

There are actually people who get outraged when prepositions are what I end sentences with. (Y’know, like the title of this piece.) It’s because they grew up with old-timey rules for grammar—and Latin and Greek are what those old-timey rules are based on. In those languages it’s kinda impossible to end sentences with prepositions; and if you want to maybe split an infinitive, their infinitives are one word (ire) not two (“to go”), so it literally can’t be done. Grammarians wanted to conform our language to theirs, but why?—the “rules” of grammar are meant to make English comprehensible, not tie us to languages we seldom speak. But enough ranting about grammar fascists.

Anyway, in the last John 7 passage, Jesus critiqued his opponents for wanting him dead because he cured people on sabbath. They pretended they didn’t really, Jn 7.20 but y’notice in the very next verses after that passage, i.e. today’s passage, the Judeans debated over who Jesus is, and were fully aware some of ’em wanted Jesus dead.

I should remind you: In the first-century Roman Empire, there was no such thing as freedom of speech and religion. If the local government passed a law against your religion, you could be beaten or killed for it. If the locals thought you committed heresy or blasphemy, sometimes they wouldn’t even wait for due process; they’d throw you off a cliff and throw stones down at you, same as they did Stephen. The only reason they didn’t drag Jesus out of temple and kill him right away, was ’cause a significant number of them realized Jesus is a prophet. If not the Prophet. If not Messiah himself.

John 7.25-26 KWL

25So some of the Jerusalemites are saying,

“Isn’t this the man whom they seek to kill?”

26and “Look, Jesusᴾ speaks openly,

and nobody talks back to him.”

“Perhaps the leaders actually know

that this Jesus is Messiah!”

Speculating the rulers really knew Jesus is Messiah, but were keeping it secret, is typical paranoid conspiracy-theory behavior. Yep, they did it back then too. But to their minds, it’d explain exactly why the leaders wouldn’t touch him. The Pharisees taught those who opposed Messiah would be destroyed with the breath of his lips. Is 11.4 (Paul later swiped this idea for 2 Thessalonians 2.8, and John transforms this into a sharp sword in Revelation 19.11.) In their End Times timeline, Messiah vanquished his opponents, took his throne, and ruled the world. So if the Judean senate suspected Jesus is this Messiah… well they wouldn’t wanna get vanquished. They wanted him to vanquish Rome, not them. So they let him be.

Others weren’t so sure he’s Messiah:

John 7.27 KWL

“But this Jesus—we knew where he comes from.

Messiah, whenever he comes,

nobody knows where he comes from.”

Y’might not be at all familiar with this idea, “Nobody knows where Messiah comes from.” If you know the Christmas story, you know the Judeans totally knew where Messiah comes from: Bethlehem. And they stupidly told Herod where this was, so Herod had a bunch of babies murdered lest Messiah grow up and overthrow him. Heck, later in this chapter we see the Judeans knew Messiah comes from Bethlehem. Jn 7.41-42 So commentators tend to skip this verse, or try to explain it away by saying it’s actually about not knowing where Messiah spiritually comes from—which is also rubbish, because all the Messiahs come from God.

But let’s skip nothing, and answer the question of why some of ’em thought they wouldn’t know where Messiah comes from.

Fair judgment.

John 7.19-24.

Earlier in John 7, the Jerusalemites found Jesus teaching in temple during the feast of Tabernacles, and wondered where he got his education, ’cause he didn’t study in any of their academies. Jesus pointed out if we pursued God instead of our own bright ideas, we’d realize exactly where he got his education.

Then Jesus took a bit of a left turn: He brought up the reason he didn’t really wanna go to Jerusalem in the first place. Jn 7.1 He bluntly called the Judeans out for wanting to kill him.

John 7.19 KWL

“Moses didn’t give you² the Law,

and none of you² follow the Law.

Why do you² seek to kill me?”

Bear in mind there’s no legal reason they’d have for killing him. He never broke the Law. He broke Pharisee customs, and Pharisee interpretations of the Law, like crazy; but never the Law. Occasionally some preachers will claim Jesus did break the Law, because these preachers don’t know their bible. They’ve been busy teaching human-made “biblical principles” based on cherry-picked proof texts, instead of what’s actually in the bible. They’ll teach dispensationalism, and claim the Law was void by the time Jesus came around, so it’s okay if he violated it. Of course whenever they talk about “laws” Jesus supposedly broke, they don’t realize they can flip right to the Old Testament, look for these supposed “laws,” and find out they’re not laws; they’re Pharisee inventions. If Jesus ever did break the Law, that’d be sin. 1Jn 3.4 And Jesus didn’t sin, He 4.15 ergo Jesus never broke the Law. Never. You’re defying your own bible if you say so.

So they had no legal leg to stand on when it came to killing Jesus. But they wanted him dead just the same—because he defied their customs. In John, the reason they wanted him dead was he cured the man at the pool on sabbath. Their custom was to do nothing on sabbath; so much nothing, they didn’t even help the needy. In contrast, Jesus teaches it doesn’t defy sabbath to help the needy, and curing people on sabbath is not only fine, but righteous. It’s why our hospitals don’t close on the weekend!

Of course, teaching this just exposed the whole hypocrisy behind the Pharisee teaching: They forbade helping the needy on sabbath because they didn’t wanna help the needy. And hypocrites hate getting exposed like that. So they wanted Jesus dead.

And when Jesus straight-up called them out about that, they fell right back to hypocrisy. Even tried to gaslight him.

John 7.20 KWL

The crowd answers, “You¹ must be demonized!

Who seeks to kill you?”¹

More precisely, δαιμόνιον ἔχεις/demónion éheis means “You have a demon.” I remind you ancient Greeks believed demons are lesser gods, meant to help people; but the Jews rightly recognized they’re evil spirits and are no help at all. In fact they usually drove people insane, so their accusation doesn’t really mean Jesus has the devil in him; more like, “You’re crazy.”

Yeah, certain Christians claim the Judeans really did think Jesus literally had the devil in him. In the synoptic gospels, the Jerusalem scribes decreed Jesus’s exorcisms were done by devilish power. Jesus never performs an exorcism in John—and this isn’t that kind of accusation. It’s the culture’s presumption about how madness works. Nowadays we’d leap to the conclusion you’re off your medication (or really need some). Back then they’d think you had a critter or two, or a thousand, in you. Anyway we can dismiss the Judeans’ comment as mere hyperbole… for now.

But Jesus wasn’t crazy. He knew they wanted him dead, and had known it since they first started plotting. They’d eventually succeed. But he didn’t want them to think they cleverly slipped anything past him; he knew. They weren’t in control of the circumstances; he was.

Pursuing God’s ideas. Not our own.

John 7.14-18.

After Jesus decided he was in fact going to Jerusalem for Tabernacles, he went privately, (KJV “as it were in secret”) Jn 7.9 and at first people weren’t sure he was there. Till he started teaching in temple.

I need to remind you synagogues were not “Jewish churches.” Today’s synagogues get that way sometimes, but in the first century they were Pharisee schools, created and run by Pharisees to ensure future generations knew the Law of Moses and followed it. Specifically, followed it the way Pharisees taught it; Jesus has his own interpretations. Hence they butted heads.

There were also prejudices among Judean Pharisees about the quality of education you’d find among Galilean Pharisees. So when the Judeans listened to Jesus, they immediately realized here’s a guy who knew as much as, if not way more than, any of their scribes. But Jesus grew up in the Galilee, in Galilean synagogues. Not Judean synagogues; not any of the Jerusalem academies of higher learning. Therefore he must surely be “uneducated”—a presumption they’d later make about Jesus’s students. Ac 4.13

John 7.14-15 KWL

14Now at the middle of the festival,

Jesus is going into the temple campus

and is teaching.

15So the Judeans are amazed, saying,

“This person knew the classics? How?

He wasn’t educated in academy.”

“The classics” is how I translated γράμματα/grámmata (KJV “letters”). The word literally refers to letters of the alphabet, but it’s a Greek euphemism for literature. Not automatically Greek literature—they weren’t saying Jesus knew Homer, Plato, Sophocles, and Thucydides—though the Judeans did study that stuff, and the Pharisees used the Socratic method to train their disciples in critical thinking. More likely they referred to Pharisee literature; the teachings of their rabbis which later became the Mishna.

Unfortunately, various anti-intellectual Christians make the very same presumption about Jesus and his students, and will regularly preach, “These were uneducated, illiterate men!” Then use this to justify their own lack of education—and how their ignorance shouldn’t stop them from coming to conclusions about science, economics, politics, or God. You’ve seen Twitter; you know what I mean.

As for “illiterate men”: These guys wrote the New Testament. And no, they didn’t just hire secretaries to make up for an inability to read: Synagogues taught reading. If you were gonna follow the Law, they expected you to be able to read it! Jesus could read, Lk 4.16 and what kind of sucky teacher would he be if he couldn’t? Or if his students likewise couldn’t?

Jesus was educated enough to engage Pharisee scribes on their level. Above their level; he knew more than them, and could quote their own rabbis back at them. Mk 7.11 But the reason he’s smarter and wiser than they, is because he knows his Father. And they didn’t. Claimed to, but didn’t.

John 7.16-18 KWL

16In reply Jesus tells them, “My teaching isn’t mine,

but from God who sends me.

17When anyone wants to do God’sᴾ will,

they’ll know about the teaching—

whether it’s from God,

or whether I speak on my own.

18Speaking on one’s own

seeks only one’s own opinion.

Seeking the opinion of the one who sent him—

this person is true,

and there’s nothing unjust in them.”¹

See, Jesus teaches the scriptures and the Law correctly because he cares about what God thinks of it. (And yeah, since he’s God, it’s also what he thinks of it. But that wasn’t what the Judeans needed to hear at that time.) He seeks his Father’s opinion on the matter. The Pharisees only sought their own opinions.

Like many people, Christians included, they were self-promoting: They wanted to be recognized for their own wisdom and insight, and be lauded as great teachers. And if you wanna stand out, you gotta be different. Not necessarily in a good way. It’s always easier to be weird for weirdness’s sake, to pitch novel ideas for novelty’s sake, to be a naysayer just to trigger controversy and debate, to claim “I’m just trying to be thought provoking” when really we’re just throwing intellectual grenades.

Many bibles translate δόξαν/dóxan, “opinion,” as “glory”—

John 7.18 ESV

“The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.”

—and yeah, there’s overlap in these ideas. People promoting their own opinions so they can become known as wise sages. Problem is, we’re wrong. When we teach our own ideas instead of God’s, we’re gonna teach wrongness. Not necessarily lies. Some of us, like politicians, lie to promote political allies or selfish agendas; the rest are unwittingly wrong, and spreading falsehoods because we never bother to fact-check ourselves. But in general we just promote wrong ideas, which is why I really don’t care for the ESV’s “falsehood” as an interpretation of ἀδικία/adikía, “not right” (KJV “unrighteousness”). It’s not mere falseness. We’re doing the wrong thing instead of the right thing. We’re unjust.

So why’s Jesus the best teacher ever? Because he seeks his Father. And, he points out, everyone else who truly and selflessly seeks our Father who sent us, gets it right.