Friday 18 February 2011

Up Pericope

I have been reading with interest (after Eileen pointed it out to me) the article by "Clayboy" on the Woman Caught in Adultery. Of the story itself, of course, I find little interest in one way. Effectively those around Jesus are living out David's lament that "there is none that doeth good, no, not one." And do we not see this every day? People blundering into perdition, turning from the right path, narrow as it is - onto the superhighway that leads unto destruction. People having tattoos, against the strict Word of God. "Sugababes" - whatever they are. All I know is, judging by the name, they're not something I would include in a godly diet.
But no - what interests me about Clayboy's posting is when he says the "story is a free floating piece of Jesus tradition which is canonised as much by lectionary as a later manuscript editor". Free floating? Maybe in my special waterproof rubberized version of the Good Book, which I use for reading in the bath. But I thought that Clayboy was trying to suggest that the passage itself was of indeterminate location.
I rushed straight to my King James version of the Bible. There the story is, in John 8 - just where I expected it. But maybe, I thought, Clayboy - if that is his real name, which I doubt - means that the passage has wandered about over time? Maybe in earlier versions of the Bible it was somewhere else? So, with great fear and trepidation, I dusted off my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Obadiah Parslow's old King James Bible - opened only for the recording of Parslow family births and deaths.  And then only gently and wearing special gloves. At John 8 - I found the story of the woman caught in adultery. With, written in the margin, the comment from Obadiah himself that I remember so well from my childhood and which has guided me in my life - "she still deserved a good stoning, though". Definitely, definitely in John 8.

So what could Clayboy mean? In a fit of modernist liberalism, I turned to the passage in the New International. Which told me that the earliest manuscripts and many other witnesses do not have this passage here in John. I should point out that I was actually looking - may my soul be preserved from danger - in "Today's New International Version", which I am surveying for my forthcoming pamphlet on Gender Confusion. I can only note my surprise that it was still a woman who was being threatened with a stoning, rather than a person of indeterminate gender and sexuality. Indeed, I was half-expecting that the men might be referred to as "those sexist beasts". But the key point here is that - in its attempt to sow doubt in the hearts of the faithful - the TNIV has referred to manuscripts earlier than the King James. And therefore this has no impact on its status as Scripture or indeed in its rightful place in the Bible, in John 8. Because it is right where God (and His Brittanic Majesty, King James, acting on His behalf) put it.

I feel that it is settled. And now if you must excuse me. I am still on the What Would Jesus Eat diet. This morning I have eaten sour grapes and they have put my own teeth on edge. And would that it were just my teeth.

1 comment :

  1. According to Haenchen's commentary (in the Hermeneia series), ' The history of the transmission of the text shows that the pericope of the woman taken in adultery, 7:53–8:11*, is lacking in the oldest uncials and the papyri. It was inserted later in various places in the Fourth Gospel and even after Luke 21:38*. It does not, therefore, belong to the earliest text. The situation is similar in the case of John 5:3b*, 4.'

    That seems fair enough, and if it turns up in a manuscript of Luke then it's reasonable to say that the early copyists probably didn't know where to put it!

    The only thing is that John seems to have developed very considerably over time, and I wonder whether it's a little artificial to set the date of the earliest manuscript as a cut-off. The pericope's good theology; the Reabbis were saying much the same thing at around the same time, and maybe we shouldn't just ignore it.

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