Why would his writing that make the woman’s accusers walk away?  Seems like it would make them grab Jesus and take them both to the place of stoning.  

Roger David Aus has a much more convincing idea of what Jesus wrote–the beginnings of verses from the OT that condemn hypocrisy among men condemning women for sins they themselves are guilty of–and reminding them that even an adulterous thought is sinful.  

I know you believe John wrote the Pericope, but basically no scholars believe this.  It was added much later–and is very likely a living memory of a moment in Jesus’ life.  Not symbolic, because symbolically, it makes no sense.  The woman never even thanks Jesus–she just gets out of there.  We aren’t told she acknowledged who John believes Jesus was.  She just wants to get out of there alive.  And he understands that.  

Again, we see that the real Jesus was so much more than someone like John could ever understand.  

Stephen said
brenmcg, that’s as good a hypothesis as any I suppose.  Most if not all the stories about Jesus in the NT were invented using OT narratives as templates.     

It’s getting hard to decide which of you is craziest.

No scholar believes that ‘most if not all’ the stories were invented, but of course neither of you cares about real scholarship.  It’s about imposing your wackadoodle ideas on everybody else. 

Bren, your non-response doesn’t deserve a separate answer.  The text, as parsed by people who know what they’re talking about, didn’t originally include the Pericope.  Which does not remotely resemble any story in the OT.  

Roger David Aus, who delights in coming up with OT stories that NT stories were based on, went the other way with the Pericope–he said it was almost certainly a genuine memory of Jesus.  

Why don’t we learn what he wrote in the ground?  Because nobody knew, except the handful of educated Jews he wrote it for.  And he wrote it to shame them into realizing they were about to commit a horrible sin.  

Why don’t we learn that the woman repented, and became a follower of Jesus?  Because nobody knew that either.  It’s a legitimate memory–with legitimate gaps.  

bren, remind me of a single thing you’ve asserted here that wasn’t guesswork?

If the detail is purely symbolic, then obviously it doesn’t matter what he wrote–you can fill in the blanks yourself, and that’s what you did.  That’s all you did.  But again, what does what you think he’s supposed to have written have to do with the woman who was brought before him, fearing for her life?  What does it have to say to the question these men are putting to him, wanting to see if he can get out of the trap they’ve set for him?  And he sets a trap for them–turns it back on them.

And she lives.  To the Jesus in this story, that’s all that matters.  That she is given the chance to go and live her life better, and maybe he’ll see her in the Kingdom.  He’s not handing out any tracts.  He just wants to save her life, because death would take away her chance to find her way.   And he also wants these fellow Jews not to become murderers out of a misguided sense of justice.  What he writes for them has to be something that will touch their consciences–make them question their action.  Maybe they can enter the Kingdom too.  

Whether it happened or not (if it didn’t, it simply makes no sense for later Christians to have made it up, since it’s a horrible story for the purposes of proselytization), I can’t think of a more powerful anecdote.  Or a more truthful one.  

And it’s not a story John would have told, whether he knew it or not, because you’re right–John is only really concerned with making us see Jesus was the Incarnate Word of God, perfect in every way.  But that’s not what this story says.  It says quite the opposite of that.  

Because when Jesus says “Then neither do I condemn you” he’s saying he’s a sinner too.

Is that really so hard for you to understand?  If you have ears, HEAR!

I said ‘To the Jesus in this story.’  I happen to believe that’s the real Jesus, but if you can read, surely you can see what I’m talking about here.  Stories happen to be something I know a fair bit about.  They are the oldest surviving means people have to bring across complex truths.  (You seem to have a problem with complexity.  Well, that’s the fundie upbringing.)

What other motivation could he have?  He’s putting his own neck on the block by intervening.   Sure, the crowd might think less of him if he says go ahead and stone her, but who says he has to say anything?  A good demagogue knows how to doubletalk his way out of it.  Jesus talks his way into it.  He will not stand by and let her be dragged away to the place of stoning.  But to save her life, he has to save their souls from this damnable act.  

And what motive did people have for preserving this story?  Jesus basically tells this woman taken in adultery that she should try to live better.  The implication being that it’s not about becoming a follower of Jesus, accepting him as messiah, Son of God, God, whatever.  It’s about living right.  

How the hell do you get people to convert to an unpopular faith, that incurs a fair bit of hostility, when your message is “Oh you’d be fine if you didn’t convert, it’d just be nice if you did”?  Good reason this wasn’t in any of the original gospels, but somehow they refused to let go of it–the memory stuck, and it eventually snuck its way into the gospel it least belongs in.  

Why didn’t somebody rewrite the story?  The woman becomes Jesus’ follower, the men who were going to stone her acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher (obviously John wouldn’t rewrite it that way).  

Because they were afraid to.  Because this is the Jesus that nobody wants to understand–but everyone feels a certain awe about.  This is the Jesus who speaks across the generations–who asks us questions we have no answers for.  But still feel like we should, somehow.  

And you refuse to hear.  As is your right.  Well, just walk away.  Like the men who wanted to stone her did.  Shaking their heads.  But still wondering……..

Insults is all you deal in much of the time, Stephen.  I was only trying to speak your native tongue.  Well, I never was much of a hand at foreign languages. 

Neither of us is without sin here.  And anytime you want to stop with the stones, fine by me.  You didn’t respond to anything I said before, so why would now be any different?

Always a tar pit with you.

(I’m fluent in pun.)

‘Neither’ does he condemn her.  He is grouping himself in with them, and with all humanity.  He has no more right to judge her than  they, and of course, he believes the person you should be most concerned with judging is yourself.  That resonates throughout the synoptics (though not John).  Take the log out of your own eye first.  “Why do you call me good?”  Judge not, lest you be judged.  It’s a very consistent theme, and you see it here, even though none of the synoptic authors wrote this story, any more than John did.  He has also felt illicit desire, and for him to judge her would be morally wrong.  He merely asks her to try and do better, as he has done. 

The story was written, I affirm, by the people in it, and Jesus merely wrote his own part.  And here we are, thousands of years later, arguing about it.  Probably most people in the temple courtyard never even knew what was going on.  But here we are, along with who knows how many others, still talking about this brief insignificant episode in the life of a Galilean peasant–and in the life of a nameless woman, whose reaction to all this we can only guess at. 

Remarkable. 

Roger David Aus questions whether stoning was the usual punishment for adultery, based on his exhaustive studies of the literature.  He believes that was mainly for betrothed maidens who lost their virginity to someone other than their betrothed (yes, it’s hard not to think about Mary, but let’s not go there).  And even in that case, probably not enforced all that stringently.  

The point of the story is, Jesus either has to defend adultery (he clearly does believe it’s a sin–“Let no one split apart what God has joined together” ), or he has to show a lack of mercy that the crowd will rightly say goes against his message of compassion–and would make him an accomplice to the killing.  It’s a test because they can use either answer to discredit him, regardless of what he believes.  Sure, he could argue the fine legal points, but that isn’t going to change anyone’s mind.  The more talk there is about what she did, why she’s there, the deader she gets. Jesus wasn’t terribly fond of lawyers, but he was himself frequently faced with accusations and he had learned how best to turn them back on the accusers. 

Aus argues her real crime, what aroused the anger of these zealots, bitterly opposed to Roman rule, might have been sleeping with a soldier or functionary.  A pagan.  The city would be full of them, their pockets full of denarii.  The actual crime was consorting with the enemy, which would answer the old feminist question “What happened to the man taken in adultery?”  They wouldn’t dare lay hands on a Non-Jew–they would be getting pretty close to the line stoning a Jewish woman, when the Romans reserved the death penalty for themselves.  (Which might partly explain why they were open to Jesus’ persuasion–for all we know, they wanted him to talk them off the ledge–they’d done this in a fit of anger, and now they realized they might be arrested, and if they were zealots, doing this at Passover, what were their odds be of escaping crucifixion?)

I agree, of course, that he wouldn’t stone her for any reason, or seek any punishment at all (the most typical punishment would be for her husband to divorce her, and we know Jesus didn’t even believe in that), but you’re still missing the point of his words.  We are all sinners.  Only one without sin is justified in passing judgment.  And he is not without sin. (“Why do you call me good?”) Therefore, he could not condemn her even if he wanted to.  He is not simply showing mercy.  He is making a point to all who are still there listening.  He is refusing to put himself in a superior moral position to her.  Otherwise, why bother to say he also will not condemn her–why not simply say “Go and sin no more”?  He is saying God is the only true judge–and that ain’t him.  

Now I know very well why you’re stubborn on this point–you want to believe this story was originally in John’s Gospel, and of course the author of that gospel would not have agreed Jesus was a sinner.  But in this case, why would ‘John’ allow such ambiguity, and why would there be no contrition from the woman–or even a thank you?  Why did she just leave?  Why do we not learn she became a follower of Jesus?  And wouldn’t ‘John’ have wanted us to know what Jesus wrote in the dirt?  And wouldn’t he  have given Jesus a whole hell of a lot more lines?  Before and after that story, Jesus is waxing poetic, going on endlessly about how great he is.  But here, he speaks four sentences.  None of them long.  None of them about him.  Because it’s not about him.  It’s about her.  

This is not John’s Jesus.  

And while I can’t prove it, I feel quite free to believe–this is the real Jesus.  More than any other story in the gospels, when I read it, I can see it.  His presence is palpable.  I never feel that way about John’s Jesus.  Because John’s Jesus is a spirit–this is a man.  

And if there are still people two thousand years from now, they’ll still remember his words.  And no doubt still be arguing over them.  😉

If anybody can be like Jesus, without being the Incarnate Word of God, that means John didn’t put that story in there.  In all gospels, Jesus does believe we can behave properly, or what’s the point?  Jesus was never really a human being in John–of course he’s perfect, and always was, never sinned even once.  But the Jesus in the Periocope knows he has sinned–and believes he’s found a way out of sinfulness.  Of course he wants to share that.  But it’s her choice, and he’s not lecturing her, as he lectures the paralytic from the pool at Bethesda.  Not that we know where ‘John’ got that story, what earlier sources he had.  

In the other story, we have no reason to think that man committed any sin–Jesus believes most people are sinners, but most people aren’t blind or crippled or leprotic.  In other gospels, Jesus seems to associate certain physical afflictions with sinfulness, but it’s a bit unclear what he means by that.  

In the Pericope Adulterae, it’s not ambiguous at all. She lay with a man who was not her husband.  And she was not physically afflicted for it.  She’s perfectly healthy, far as we know.  And she does not thank Jesus (because she’s frightened half to death, probably in a state of shock at what has been done to her).  Jesus performs no miracle–he just sizes up a dangerous situation, finds a solution, and tells her to try and do better.  

Whoever did put the Pericope in John might well have tweaked the story to match up with other parts of John, but it was not originally in there.  

But anyway, you have admitted your sin.  You are twisting everything around, as usual, to get the result you want.  You start with what you want to be the truth, and manipulate everything else to prove what you already ‘know.’  

And am I correct in thinking that just as you believe Matthew the disciple wrote Matthew, you believe John the disciple wrote John?  Even though there’s nothing in either text to back that up?