Following the death of Fred Phelps in 2014, we wrote Card Talk on another card within this periscope: "Casting the First Stone" (John 8:7).
That Card Talk was a reminder that all of us have issues, are sinners, and blindly judging or condemning others (to say nothing of celebrating their death), is not in line with being a follower of Jesus. Our sin causes harm to others, just as much as the actions of bigots hurt the oppressed. But it is by the grace of God we can all be and do better.
However, that Card Talk did not delve into this passage as a whole, displaying the reality of Jesus' love and His awareness of our assholery. So we'll do that now.
Jesus and The Woman Caught in Adultery
John 8:1-11 (NRSV)
Early in the morning he [Jesus] came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them.
The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him,
“Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”
They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him.
Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.
When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them,
“Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.
When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her,
“Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
She said,
“No one, sir.”
And Jesus said,
“Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
The Two Problems with this Text
There are two problems that arise when considering this story: the textual and legal considerations.
The Textual Problem
The scholarly consensus is that this text is not original to the Gospel of John, but was a later addition.
The earliest, most reliable Greek manuscripts and authorities available, do not contain John 7:53-8:11 within their pages/scrolls. The early church fathers and commentators on the Bible are also silent when it comes to the existence of this story. That is, no one is talking about, preaching about, or Card Talking about this story like the others in the gospels. While some Latin sources do attest to the inclusion of this story, those were written 300+ years later than the others.
As a result, there has been debate on whether this story should have been included in the Bible, or whether it was merely misplaced from another text. Some argue that it belongs right where it is, others want it placed directly after John 7:36, while others want it placed directly after John 21:25 with some changes to the text. Still other have argued that it was written by the writer of Luke's gospel and should be placed after Luke 21.38. In any event, one (divine) way or another, this story made it into the final cut. So we have to do something with it.
The second problem deals with the content and the characters: the reason Jesus was able to call "bullshit" on the religious leaders in such an unique manner.
The Legal Problem
Remember the context of the story: the scribes and Pharisees bring Jesus a woman caught in adultery. They reference the Torah-- "the law Moses commanded"-- in pronouncing the punishment of stoning. Here are the passages they would have had in mind:
If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death. ~ Leviticus 20:10
If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman. So you shall purge the evil from Israel. - Deuteronomy 22:22
Based on the Scripture above, some would also ask the obvious question: if she was caught in the very act of adultery, that means she wasn't alone. So where is the man? The salient legal question at this juncture is whether the woman is married or not.
Under the law (Torah), adultery in the Bible is a question of exclusivity and ownership. A married woman's sexuality is "owned" by her husband, but not vice versa. Thus, if the woman is not married, she has committed adultery and is under the potential sentence of death. If she is married, then both she and the man are under that potential sentence, because the man has violated the sexual "ownership" of another man. However, even if she was married, it is not outside of the realm of possibility that men in a patriarchal system could come to an arrangement on how to proceed, leaving the man out of it, especially given the socio-political maneuverings of the scribes and Pharisees to trap Jesus. We know the whole thing is a set up. If Jesus orders her stoning, He upholds Jewish law, but breaks Roman law, as the Jews living under Roman occupation did not have the unilateral rights to capital punishment for adultery. If Jesus condemns the stoning outright, He breaks Jewish law and can be discredited as soft on crime, not the "law and order" messiah, or involved with Roman collaboration and collusion.
Jesus knew it was a set up, but He still needed to answer. Which, of course, He did by saying very little. We believe what He wrote was just as powerful.
What Did Jesus Write in the Ground?
Without looking at any of the accusers, or the partially dressed woman, Jesus first bends downs and writes the names of all those assembled in the sand before calling for the sinless among them to cast the first stone.
He then bends back down again and begins writing the sins of each man beside their names.
The basis for this interpretation? The footnote to John 8:8 (in the NRSV) reads, "other ancient authorities add the sins of each of them." Saint Jerome and Ambrose also made similar claims. However it makes sense and explains why the men beat a hasty retreat, as vs. 9 says, "one by one, beginning with the elders": the oldest had the most sins and picked up on what was happening quicker.
Both/And Theology: Grace and Truth
At the end of the story, Jesus and the woman are the only characters left. Not even Jesus' disciples are present. Oh, did you think He wouldn't write their names down too? Jesus wrote everyone's names in the ground: the scribes, the Pharisees, the disciples, and all the people who gathered around to listen and learn from Him. Perhaps this is why Jesus spent so much time ignoring the scribes and the Pharisees in the passage: He had a lot to write. But it is surely why only He and the woman are left: everyone leaves because everyone has been indicted.
Jesus tells the woman that He doesn't condemn her, and that she should stop sinning. We can assume He is not only referring to the adultery. She, like all of us, probably has more than one secret shame, as well as patterns of unholiness.
While the debate rages among Bible nerds (like us) about what to textually do with this passage, there should be little question about whether this text displays the Jesus we all (should) know and love. The Jesus of "both/and theology.
The Jesus John's gospel testifies to in its opening:
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.... From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. . (John 1:14;16-17)
The scribes and pharisees came with the letter of Moses' law for ungodly purposes. Jesus responded with the law's spirit, which is full of grace ("I don't condemn you"), and the law's truth ("what you did was wrong, stop it").
both/and theology: "I love you, now suck less."
The scribes and the Pharisees weren't wrong: the woman had sinned. But their purpose in revealing her sin was not in the interest of community holiness, redeeming the woman, healing a broken family, or mending broken relationships. Their goal was condemnation, and not even the woman's: Jesus'. She was merely a means to an end. A pawn. They dehumanized her more than the married man she was sleeping with.
Jesus knew all this and responded accordingly.
Perhaps we can learn the finer points of both/and theology.
Perhaps we can be like Jesus.
Perhaps we should, we can, suck less and love more.
But what do we know: we made this game and you probably think we're going to Hell.
Postscript:
Something We should probably leave alone, but just can't.
If you've arrived here because you did a Google search specifically on what Jesus wrote in the ground, you may have stumbled upon a page (or two, or three) which includes some version of the following proposition: when confronted with sins of members from the community, Jewish priests were required to write the name of the sinner, and the law which had been broken in the dust of the floor of the Temple, or anywhere in the Temple so long as the marks were not permanent.
Or something like that. We just want to state for the record:
This is utter bullshit.
We did extensive research to verify this claim. We went through Christian sources. We went through rabbinic sources. We asked clergy friends of different denominations and religions. And this claim is nonsense. It seems like the idea came from one individual, was re-posted by people in the comment sections of a few other websites, and then someone with a little (little) more gravitas presented it as biblical truth. But beyond this ersatz "scholarship", we have found no support for this claim anywhere. Anywhere. At all. None.
It is bullshit.
Why Do We Care?
Why point this out, especially as this claim is not terribly far from what we outline above? Because we do not claim authority based on Jewish law or tradition. Our argument is based on the textual evidence and that, honestly, it would be in line with the manner in which Jesus deals with His haters throughout the gospels.
More importantly, if such a practice were real it would most likely have been recorded in Exodus, trumpeted in Leviticus, and then possibly repeated in Deuteronomy. It would have at least come up in one of the many, many, many places in the Hebrew Bible when someone is accused of a transgression against another individual, the community, and/or God. AND some rabbi, somewhere, throughout all of recorded Jewish theological history, would have written about it, say in one of the Talmuds. But there is nothing. Nothing. Not one thing.
Again, why would we point this out?
Because we HATE when Christians make up Jewish lore to spice up their sermons.
It's an ugly practice that is repeated more times than often is noticed. Also, it is anathema to everything we are about in terms of honest biblical scholarship. There is enough #FakeNews running around these days, we don't need to have the Bible fall victim to the same.
#BibleResponsibly
/rant.