Arguing about Barabbas, here and elsewhere, I found myself looking around for source material, and found this, in the library I work at–
Liking the way Mr. Aus writes, I kept reading, and my favorite of the three papers was the one about a story in the Gospel of John that Aus (and nearly all scholars) agree was not originally there. And it’s quite different from the other two, and indeed (best as I can tell) from most of what Aus writes, where he basically says “This didn’t happen, it’s not meant to be taken literally, and isn’t based on anything that really happened in Jesus life.”
His take on The Woman Taken in Adultery is that it’s a relatively accurate account of something that really did happen. That Jesus really did have a woman brought to him who had been caught in the act of adultery, and that she really was going to be stoned to death, and that they just happened to see Jesus as they took her to the place of stoning, and thought “Let’s get two birds with one stone.” See how Jesus would respond. Catch him out.
But there are inherent puzzles to the story. For example (according to Aus, who has made a close study of Jewish religious literature), the penalty for a married woman cheating on her husband was not death by stoning. That was the penalty for a betrothed girl losing her virginity to someone other than her husband-to-be (perhaps rarely imposed, and if Jesus’ mother was actually accused of this…..)
For another, why wouldn’t the man (just as guilty under Jewish law) be there as well? Lots of people have asked this question, and particularly women.
Aus’ answer is so ingenously simple, you’d think everybody would have come up with it–suppose the man was a pagan? It’s Passover. Jerusalem is packed with Roman soldiers, there to keep the peace. Doing what soldiers everywhere and always have done–looking to get laid, spend their pay (and probably unmarried, due to Roman military tradition).
The men who want to stone this woman are pushing their luck just trying to kill her–they would hardly dare to lay hands on somebody who wasn’t Jewish. According to Aus, they could only stone this woman right after she was caught in the act, and hope to get away with it–that the Romans would look the other way.
And they wouldn’t be stoning her for adultery, but rather with adultery with a GENTILE. With a foreign occupier. The charge is really more about disloyalty than sexual immoralty–ever seen those pictures of French girls with their heads shaved, after the liberation of Paris? You think that was as bad as it got?
A Jewish woman who has relations with a non-Jew is breaking ranks–not only giving aid and comfort to the enemy, but also creating the potential of having a child with a man who does not believe in the Jewish God, and since she has a family, who is to say they will not also be tempted to leave the faith? It is a serious betrayal, and to believers, one worthy of death. Let’s not pretend this is only a Jewish thing, or only something you’d see happen in ancient times.
So they take her to the temple to stone her, as their interpretation of the Jewish Law demands, and Jesus is there, preaching to a crowd, and they don’t like him. Aus thinks these men were Zealots–not necessarily violent revolutionaries, but not the Temple authorities, either. Men who want Roman authority overturned, somehow. And not tolerant of dissenters. Jesus bothers them. They’d like to see him try to explain to that crowd (who would just be ordinary Jews, not understanding why the husband of this woman couldn’t just divorce her and get the bride price refunded), why this woman needed to die. Either he has to show he’s not so compassionate after all (and claim for Jews the right to perform executions), or he has to explain why it’s okay to break the law of Moses.
Jesus understands the trap being set–he also sees the fear in the woman’s eyes. He would like to save both of them. How can he do this?
Aus believes the writing in the ground was the beginnings of two verses from the Torah. The leaders of this group would be highly versed in scripture. They would know what he was writing just from the first few words. Wouldn’t need to write the whole thing out. Obviously you’re on shaky ground deciding what he wrote, but Aus thinks it was Malachai 2:11 and Hosea 4:14. The latter, in particular, is interesting–
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And then he says the thing. About he who casts the stone. Words that have burned themselves into the collective conscience of humankind. Words no person could possibly forget, or misquote, no matter how many years passed, should they have happened to witness their being said.
He’s caught THEM in the act, you see–of hypocrisy. Even if they personally have never committed adultery, they have looked at women other than their wives with lust. They’ve thought about it. The thought is as much as the deed. They are making this woman pay for their own sinful nature, and that of other men.
These are not stereotypical angry Jews, dreamed up by an angry Christian evangelist, years after the crucifixion, but real men who are as sincere in their faith as Jesus is, who had a reason for their actions. They are not without conscience. Presented with this argument, from the tradition they share with Jesus, feeling the force of his strange charisma, they feel ashamed, their wrath abates (helped along by the understanding of the very real consequences they could face if they go through with the stoning), and they walk away. The rest of the mob melts away with them. The moment has passed. The woman remains. Wondering, no doubt, what the hell just happened. Wondering who this man is, who has just saved her life.
Why should this be true? Why not just another story where Jesus wins out over those who try to trap him into a mistake, concocted well after the fact?
As Aus reasons, because of what follows. Does the woman become a follower? The story doesn’t say (later stories would say she was Mary Magdalene, which makes no sense at all–if she had become a follower of Jesus–who was going to die in a few more days anyhow–we’d surely have heard about that).
Does Jesus ask any penance of her, any admission of sin on her part? No, he just tells her to go and sin no more. It was her right to make bad choices, and he only asks her to make better ones.
This is why, Aus believes, that none of the gospels originally featured this story. It was known to have happened, but it was troubling. Is Jesus saying that such a serious sin can be so easily forgiven? By this point in time, Christians themselves are concerned with the breaking of ranks. Forgiveness is well and good, but they’re just as concerned with sexual morality and corp discipline. Jesus was hard for even them to understand, sometimes.
But the story endured, probably in a written form we don’t have anymore, and it eventually made its way into John’s gospel, where it does not belong, because John would never have liked a story where Jews who don’t believe in Jesus can be reasoned with, can show remorse, can admit a mistake, can be human. John would have either left it out, or rewritten it to his liking.
This is not proof, obviously. And I am leaving out most of Aus’ argument, obviously. I strongly recommend you read the article yourselves, see if his reasoning appeals to you. It can never be proven beyond a doubt. And really, isn’t this harder to believe than any of the miracles? Isn’t this more of a miracle than any multiplication of loaves and fishes, walking on the water, raising the dead, water into wine? To take hatred and anger–and turn them into self-understanding?
Ask yourself this–do you want to believe it?
Or are you afraid to?
Happy Easter.
Per Leviticus 20:10 both the adulterer and adulteress are put to death, so there’s a hole there.
In general, though, it’s hard to tell what the legal situation is in a particular place and time without a lot of examples from that specific place and time. There’s what’s written down and there’s what’s actually practiced. Lynch mobs weren’t legal, but they happened.
I think the original writer, whoever that was, was a great story-teller and having a woman served his narrative purpose better. Women may have been seen as weaker, needing more protection, more likely to turn to prostitution (not mentioned but could be implied) and less likely or unable to speak up for themselves. Also, many have made the case that women held a prominent place in the early Jesus movement (more prominent than the society outside the movement) so the accused being a woman might have appealed that way as well.
Even if it were a historical incident, the gentile angle just doesn’t resonate with me. You’d think such an important detail would have made its way into the story, if it were actual history. At least in John’s version, it seems to fit well within the arc of Jesus versus the Jewish leaders so one wonders if the Jewish authorities holding back that the woman had committed adultery with a hated Roman would have been an ever greater trap for him, so John would have mentioned it had the story come down to him that way.
Then again, it could be both historically accurate and not so at the same time. Someone (leaving that amorphous) could have been brought to Jesus for the question and Jesus may have uttered that perfect line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. A later writer could have filled out the story and peopled it in a way that suited his narrative purpose.
Robert said
godspell, you may be interested in looking up Bart’s article on the possibility that this story may have been transmitted in two different traditions or this guy’s attempt to build upon Bart’s work:Bart D. Ehrman, however, made a groundbreaking contribution several years ago (“Jesus and the Adulteress,” New Testament Studies 34 [1988]: 24–44) by demonstrating the likelihood that PA as we have it in John’s Gospel is in fact a conflation of two earlier stories, one found in Papias and the Didascalia, and the other found in Didymus and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Erhman noted that all of the Lukan features of PA John are found in the former of these (what I’ve termed “PA East” = John 8.2-7a, 10-11).
My article builds on Ehrman’s contribution by arguing that PA East and the Lukan special material (the so-called “L” source, which is that material unique to Luke’s Gospel) have remarkable similarities in their style, form, and content. Citing distinctive parallels in each category, I conclude in my article that “in terms of style, form, and content, PA East so closely resembles the L material that PA East almost surely would have been part of an original L source” (p. 247). Given a shared Syro-Palestinian provenance, I contend that a single line of transmission from L to the Didascalia is in fact quite plausible.
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By the way, I am very envious of your being able to work in a library. When I was writing my dissertation, I had a small office (but with a window!) right next to the section of books on Mark’s gospel and I sorely miss being having everything immediately available at my fingertips. Oh to be young again and to work in libraries of books!
Interesting to me that Bart recently posted a blog piece on this very subject–and didn’t mention his own paper. He did say that the majority of scholars thing this story is in some way historical, and he does not–but he didn’t go into details about why he dissents. And you know, 1988 was three decades ago, when Prof. Ehrman still believed a lot of things he doesn’t believe now. I’ll try to look it up. Aus’ article is very persuasive, and no scholar, no matter how eminent, is going to have the right end of the stick every single time.
AndyB said
Per Leviticus 20:10 both the adulterer and adulteress are put to death, so there’s a hole there.In general, though, it’s hard to tell what the legal situation is in a particular place and time without a lot of examples from that specific place and time. There’s what’s written down and there’s what’s actually practiced. Lynch mobs weren’t legal, but they happened.
I think the original writer, whoever that was, was a great story-teller and having a woman served his narrative purpose better. Women may have been seen as weaker, needing more protection, more likely to turn to prostitution (not mentioned but could be implied) and less likely or unable to speak up for themselves. Also, many have made the case that women held a prominent place in the early Jesus movement (more prominent than the society outside the movement) so the accused being a woman might have appealed that way as well.
Even if it were a historical incident, the gentile angle just doesn’t resonate with me. You’d think such an important detail would have made its way into the story, if it were actual history. At least in John’s version, it seems to fit well within the arc of Jesus versus the Jewish leaders so one wonders if the Jewish authorities holding back that the woman had committed adultery with a hated Roman would have been an ever greater trap for him, so John would have mentioned it had the story come down to him that way.
Then again, it could be both historically accurate and not so at the same time. Someone (leaving that amorphous) could have been brought to Jesus for the question and Jesus may have uttered that perfect line “let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. A later writer could have filled out the story and peopled it in a way that suited his narrative purpose.
As I tried to make clear, Aus isn’t saying there was no justification in Jewish law for executing adulterers, but that stoning was not the accepted practice (the most common method was strangulation). Leviticus doesn’t mention stoning adulterers. And the law specifically refers to Jews–males as much as females, and in some cases the heathen that a Jew slept with might be in danger as well–but not in Jerusalem under Roman rule.
Aus relied to a great extent on later Jewish writings, which he admits is problematic, but he thinks there was enough continuity there to get a good idea what people believed at the time. Since we have no record of any adulterer being stoned at that time–and it seems highly unlikely that all or most of them were, since adultery was clearly commonplace, and probably in Leviticus’ time as well–we must accept that this incident was not typical. Aus’ educated guess is that not adultery but adultery with a pagan, was the real bone of contention. They didn’t bring all those extra soldiers into Jerusalem during Passover for nothing, you know. And they would be out looking for sexual release, with money in their pockets, and it’s not that hard to figure out the rest, is it?
As we all should know, the fact that a principle exists in religious law doesn’t mean it is universally carried out in reality–think of all the good Catholics who have packed their daughters off to some distant watering spot to have an abortion (that nobody talks about afterward). Most Jews would have considered stoning this woman to death for adultery–even with a Roman–would be excessive. But he thinks these particular men were zealots–a term that gets much misunderstood–and out to make a point. They probably didn’t act in cold blood, nor did they set out to trap Jesus–they just saw him there, and maybe they were actually curious how he’d respond.
I think if it had happened the way you suggest (a quote attached to a more dramatic scenario), the story wouldn’t have survived as long as it did, without the gospel writers adopting and adapting it (which they never did).
Of course it would have been more complicated than that–Aus himself adds details those who originally told the story probably didn’t have, relating to what Jesus might have written–and you can come up with alternate explanations for how the situation came about in the first place–but overall, until I read a better argument, I’m going with Aus. Seriously, it’s a brilliant article. Maybe you’d be better qualified to parse the scholarship, but I think you’d appreciate it, even if you had nits to pick.
I believe it. Partly because it’s such a good argument. Partly because I want to believe it. And see no reason at all why I shouldn’t. If Jesus had never done anything like this–if he hadn’t impressed people with his courage and wit and compassion–we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.
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