Restoring Apostolic Faith

Introduction: The Brackets We Can’t Pretend Not to See

Open a critical Greek New Testament to John 7 and you’ll meet two honest brackets around 7:53–8:11. They’re not a wink; they’re a warning light. The earliest Greek evidence for John moves from 7:52 straight to 8:12. That’s not a conspiracy; that’s the manuscript record. Yet the story of the adulterous woman is older than “medieval add-on” caricatures. It’s an early, beloved Jesus tradition that floated across communities before it took up residence on John’s page—especially in the Latin West. If you care about telling the truth about Scripture’s history without sanding off its edges, this is the case study.

I. The Textual Landscape: What the Earliest Witnesses Actually Say

The big four that omit it. Our earliest continuous Greek witnesses for this stretch of John—P66 and P75 (2nd–3rd c.), plus Codex Vaticanus (B) and Codex Sinaiticus (א, 4th c.)—move directly from 7:52 to 8:12.^1 When the strongest early witnesses align, the burden of proof for originality becomes steep.

A “floating” pericope. Where the story appears, it moves. In various Greek and Latin manuscripts it’s found (a) after 7:52 (the familiar spot), (b) after 7:36, (c) after 8:12, (d) at the end of John, and even (e) in Luke (often after 21:38).^2 That’s the fingerprint of a secondary, mobile tradition—not an author’s fixed paragraph.

A Lukan accent in Johannine space. Internally, the Greek has Lukan vibes. Terms like hoi grammateis(“the scribes”) are never used in John but are standard in the Synoptics. The flow and idiom feel more like Luke-Acts than the Fourth Gospel’s characteristic diction.^3 This doesn’t prove Luke wrote it; it signals non-Johannine texture.

Modern editions tell the truth. The Editio Critica Maior (ECM) and NA/UBS editions print the pericope with double brackets and an explanatory note. Translations follow suit: printed, bracketed, footnoted.^4

Bottom line. As Johannine autograph, it’s out. As early Christian Jesus tradition, keep reading.

II. Loose Texts in a Living Church: How the Story Circulated

The best contemporary reconstruction is simple and stubborn: this scene was an independent Jesus story—oral and likely written in some form—circulating by the third century, deployed pastorally long before it was sewn into a Gospel codex.^5

A 3rd-century church order deploys it. The Didascalia Apostolorum (Syriac, early 3rd c.) exhorts bishops to imitate the Lord who neither condemned the woman but instructed her to sin no more—explicitly invoking the episode to urge pastoral clemency toward repentant sinners.^6 In other words, the story functioned in church discipline before it functioned as a fixed Johannine reading.

A 4th-century Alexandrian exegete knows it “in certain gospels.” Didymus the Blind writes: “We find in certain gospels a woman accused before the Lord of many sins; and the accusers departed, and the Lord said, ‘Neither do I condemn you.’”^7 That phrase—in certain gospels—is a smoking gun. He knows the story; he doesn’t anchor it in our fourfold canon.

From memory to lection to margin to text. Once a story becomes part of public reading, scribes routinely harmonize codices to what congregations hear. Lectionary edges create natural “landing zones” for mobile pericopes. Over time, marginal cues (“read here”) bleed into the main text. The odd placements of the pericope—especially those that line up with feast or pericope boundaries—make far more sense against liturgical practice than against theories of mass excision. ^8

Scribal habits matter. Scribes add beloved, useful material far more often than they excise it. The Pericope Adulterae’s diffusion—especially where preaching loved it—is exactly what you’d expect if you know how manuscripts grow in the wild.

III. East and West: Two Instincts, Two Book-Cultures

In the Greek East, early silence; later caution. Origen’s commentary moves seamlessly from John 7:52 to 8:12. Chrysostom’s homilies do the same. That tracks the Greek manuscript tradition: early omission, later awareness. Medieval Byzantine figures like Euthymius Zigabenus know the story yet treat it gingerly (“in some copies”)—a respectful foot in both worlds.^9

In the Latin West, early embrace; eventual ubiquity. Jerome reports the pericope in “many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin,” and includes it in the Vulgate, effectively canonizing it for Western use.^10 Ambrose and Augustine preach it. Augustine also offers the most famous (and most over-quoted) line about its history: that some removed it out of fear it might seem to give license to adultery.^11 That is a pastoral inference, not a documentary report. The early Greek absence is better explained by non-originality than by widespread surgical excision. Still, Augustine’s speculation reveals a lot about how the West was using the story—and why it stuck.

Pattern, not paradox. East: earliest textual guardianship, omission in the oldest witnesses, caution even when known. West: pastoral uptake, lectionary cement, textual incorporation via the Vulgate’s gravitational pull.

IV. What the Last Decade Clarified (2019–2025)

If you’re hoping for a newly discovered papyrus that restores the pericope to 2nd-century John, you’ll be waiting a while. The consensus has not shifted. What has sharpened is how we tell the story of the story.

1. From yes/no authenticity to social transmission. Modern work (e.g., Knust & Wasserman) reframes the question around memory, liturgy, and copying: a loose story becomes a read story becomes a written story—then becomes a Johannine story in some streams. That model matches the floating placements, patristic citations, and lectionary logic.^12

2. From “suppression myth” to scribal reality. The claim that early copyists deletedit to avoid moral laxity is tidy but thin. The Greek manuscript record’s early silence, combined with known scribal tendencies to add edifying material, makes accretion a better explanation than erasure.^13

3. ECM has mapped the terrain. The broader collations behind the Editio Critica Maior don’t vote; they show. And what they show—again—is early omission in Greek, multipositional inclusion later, and a Western lectionary spine that explains the staying power.^14

V. Theology Without Spin: What the Passage Says (and Doesn’t)

Even if you bracket Johannine authorship, the theological pitch of the scene is profoundly canonical:

• Mercy that unmasks hypocrisy. “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone.” The line shames weaponized righteousness without diluting the Law’s moral gravity.

• Holiness without denial. “Go, and from now on sin no more.” Mercy does not shrug at adultery; it refuses mob justice while calling the sinner out of it.

• Law and witness. The public shaming is halted; the requirement of witnesses is re-situated; the intent of the Law (justice that is righteous, not performative) is upheld. This aligns cleanly with Jesus’ treatment of sinners across the Gospels (e.g., Luke 7; John 4), even if this precise narrative is textually mobile.

So preachable? Yes—with candor. Teach your people to love Jesus’ voice here while understanding the passage’s textual status.

VI. Canon, Authority, and the Supplemental Shape of Tradition

This is where I believe the larger thesis of this site hums: what we call “canon” did not crystallize in a vacuum-sealed lab. It formed in worshiping communities, copying and proclaiming living texts. The Pericope Adulterae is a miniature of that process: a supplemental tradition—ancient, credible, pastorally potent—that eventually settled inside John in the West while remaining outside early Greek John.

That does not threaten inspiration unless we confuse “God-breathed” with “one and only transmission pathway.” The early church didn’t treat Scripture as a museum exhibit. It treated it as the living rule of faith—copied, preached, sung, and, yes, sometimes augmented by treasured memories that bore the ring of the Master.

The honest way forward is the same way modern critical editions handle it: print it, bracket it, footnote it. Truth and tradition can sit at the same table without lying about how they met.

VII. How to Teach and Preach This—Without Hand-Waving

1. Start with the apparatus. Show the double brackets in a reputable edition. Explain why they’re there in two minutes—no drama, just data.

2. Walk the witnesses. One slide: P66, P75, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus (omit); Codex Bezae and later (include, various placements). Mention the Luke location. The “float” tells the story.

3. Quote the Fathers briefly.

• Origen passes directly from 7:52 to 8:12—silence speaks.^15

• Didymus “in certain gospels … neither do I condemn you.”^16

• Jerome “in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin”—and he includes it.^17

• Augustine “removed by some … fearing leniency”—pastoral inference, not early evidence.^18

• Didascalia uses it to train bishops in mercy to penitents.^19

4. Name the pastoral point and the textual point—together. Mercy + holiness andmobility + non-Johannine origin.

5. Invite questions. Don’t over-defend. People smell spin. They respect candor.

VIII. Patristic Witnesses (Quoted)

• Didymus the Blind (4th c., Commentary on Ecclesiastes):

“We find in certain gospels a woman who was accused of sin before the Lord; the accusers, convicted by their own conscience, left, and the Lord said to her, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.’”^20

• Jerome (early 5th c., Letter / Notes on John):

“In the Gospel according to John there is found in many manuscripts, both Greek and Latin, the story of the adulterous woman who was accused before the Lord.”^21

• Augustine (early 5th c., De adulterinis coniugiis 2.6–7):

“[This passage] appears to have been removed by some who feared that their wives might be given impunity in sinning, as if the Lord’s mercy had granted license to sin.”^22

• Didascalia Apostolorum (3rd c., Syriac):

“Our Savior also, when the elders brought before him a sinful woman and left the judgment to him, did not condemn her; for he said to her, ‘Go, and sin no more.’ Therefore you, O bishop, receive those who repent.”^23

(Note: translations of patristic quotations are adapted from standard public-domain or scholarly editions; wording varies by translator.)

Conclusion: Not John’s Original—Still Worth Hearing (Brackets On)

If you want a tidy tale, this isn’t it. The earliest Greek John did not include the pericope. But the church remembered this Jesus—exposing hypocrisy, disarming mobs, lifting sinners into holiness—and that memory found a home, especially in the West’s lectionary-shaped book culture. The right response isn’t panic or pretense; it’s honesty. Print it, bracket it, footnote it. Then preach the Lord you meet there—with the brackets still visible.

Endnotes

1. See the apparatus in Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012), at John 7:53–8:11; and United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 5th rev. ed. For a comprehensive collation, see the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) for John (INTF).

2. For placements in John and Luke (often after Luke 21:38), see discussions in Tommy Wasserman and Jennifer Knust, To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 21–52.

3. On internal style (e.g., grammateis; idiom parallels with Luke), see Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 187–189; also Knust–Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone, 79–101.

4. ECM for John (INTF); NA28; UBS5. Most modern translations either bracket or footnote the pericope with a note explaining the manuscript evidence.

5. Knust–Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone, esp. chs. 1–3.

6. Didascalia Apostolorum, Syriac text/ET; see R. H. Connolly, The Didascalia Apostolorum in English (Oxford: Clarendon, 1929), 62–64.

7. Didymus the Blind, Commentary on Ecclesiastes 223.16–224.5 (frag.), ed. U. Schmid; ET in Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 316; cf. M. R. James, Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1924), 158–59.

8. On lectionary dynamics and “landing zones,” see Knust–Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone, 151–201; and Gordon D. Fee, “The Pericope Adulterae and the Lectionary,” in Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 222–238.

9. Origen, Commentary on John (Book 19), ed. C. Blanc; Chrysostom, Homilies on John 52; Euthymius Zigabenus, Commentary on John ad loc., noting the passage appears “in some copies.”

10. Jerome refers to the passage in various notes; see Against the Pelagians2.17; also his remarks preserved in later catenae; cf. Henry Chadwick, Jerome(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 90–92.

11. Augustine, De adulterinis coniugiis 2.6–7. For context and assessment, see David C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 324–27.

12. Knust–Wasserman, To Cast the First Stone, esp. chs. 4–6.

13. On scribal habits (addition vs. deletion), see James R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 733–768.

14. ECM John (INTF); see also Klaus Wachtel, “The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method: A New Approach to Textual Criticism,” TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism 20 (2015).

15. Origen’s silence across John 7:52→8:12 is noted in standard commentaries; see also Metzger, Textual Commentary, 187–189.

16. Didymus, Comm. Eccl., see note 7.

17. Jerome, Against the Pelagians 2.17; see note 10.

18. Augustine, De adulter. 2.6–7; see note 11.

19. Didascalia Apostolorum, see note 6.

20. Didymus quotation adapted from the ET in Ehrman, The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings, 316.

21. Jerome quotation adapted; see note 10.

22. Augustine quotation adapted; see note 11.

23. Didascalia quotation adapted; see note 6.

Select Bibliography

• Augustine. De adulterinis coniugiis. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 5.

• Connolly, R. H. The Didascalia Apostolorum in English. Oxford: Clarendon, 1929.

• Fee, Gordon D. “The Pericope Adulterae and the Lectionary.” In Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, 222–238. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

• Jerome. Against the Pelagians.

• Knust, Jennifer, and Tommy Wasserman. To Cast the First Stone: The Transmission of a Gospel Story. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019.

• Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994.

• Origen. Commentary on the Gospel of John.

• Parker, David C. An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

• Royse, James R. Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri. Leiden: Brill, 2008.

• Editio Critica Maior (ECM), Gospel of John. Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (INTF).

• Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece, 28th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012.

• United Bible Societies Greek New Testament, 5th rev. ed.