John 7:53-8:11

Rachellecobb   -   March 1, 2020

This morning Pastor Will preached on John 7:53-8:11, and you may have noticed that in your Bible this passage is either italicized or in brackets. This is because it is a disputed passage of Scripture commonly believed by biblical scholars to not be original to John’s writing. Here are some reasons for this:

1. The story is missing from all the Greek manuscripts of John before the fifth century.
2. All the earliest church fathers omit this passage in commenting on John and pass directly from John 7:52 to John 8:12.
3. In fact, the text flows very nicely from 7:52 to 8:12 if you leave out the story and just read the passage as though the story were not there.
4. No Eastern church father cites the passage before the tenth century when dealing with this Gospel.
5. When the story starts to appear in manuscript copies of the Gospel of John, it shows up in three different places other than here (after John 7:36; 7:44; 21:25), and in one manuscript of Luke, it shows up after 21:38.
6. Its style and vocabulary is more unlike the rest of John’s Gospel than any other paragraph in the Gospel.

For more, read this thorough article on Desiring God.