Day 3: John 7:53-8:11
Stories: Woman Caught in Adultery
Curiosities:
1) This passage does not exist in the earliest manuscripts available to us of the book of John. This doesn’t mean the story is not true or didn’t happen. It could have been added later by whomever edited the book of John (possibly done by the elders of Ephesus) by the will of John himself, or because it was a story John had spoken so often. The story is not contradictory in any way to Jesus’ teaching or doctrine on anything and provides an interesting insight into the lives of the Pharisees, something John routinely points out.
2) Why didn’t Jesus condemn the woman? Wasn’t it in the law? Didn’t Jesus say that He came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it? What did this mean?
3) What did Jesus write in the sand and why did He do it?
Paradoxes:
1) Why did the Pharisees bring only the woman, instead of both the man and woman? According to the law, they both were supposed to die.
The Mosaic law had a very interesting command for men who were jealous that their wives had been unfaithful. Jesus writing in the sand here was indicative of that command, found in Numbers 5:11-31.
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