The So-CalledPericope De Adultera

Abstract

No one who is at all familiar with New Testament studies can fail to be fascinated by the extraordinary range of problems surrounding the so-called pericope de adultera, which appears in some translations as John 7.53–8.11 but which ‘has no fixed place in our witnesses’. ‘By a happy chance’, as the late Barnabas Lindars put it, ‘this fragment from an unknown work has been preserved in the MS tradition of John.’ Its absence from most reliable MSS, and the diversity of readings within the minority of MSS which include it at some point, are sufficiently problematic to prod the creative imagination of critical scholarship into remarkable productivity from time to time, and any new MS discovery is sure to reinvig-orate debate on this particular cause célèbre.

Recent and Previous Research on the Pericope Adulterae (John 7.53—8.11)

“…An additional problem is an assumption contained implicitly in Ehrman's argument. That a version of PA, or any other tradition, does not reference an element attested elsewhere does not prove that the source lacked that element (and thus that there is actually a different source for each version); only that, even if the source (Though I offer this critique independently, it is also made by McDonald 1995: 419; Lincoln 2005: 527.) Appropriately, Meier (1991: 301 n. 79) observes, 'Ehrman's theory of the existence of three different versions of the pericope by the 4th century remains highly speculative', while Lührmann (1990: 301) claims Ehman attempts to reconstruct PA's pre-history in 'einen überaus unklaren Weg' ('an exceedingly unclear way').…”