The Difficulty
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” is among the most beloved scenes in the Gospels. Yet the passage (the pericope adulterae) is absent from the oldest and best Greek manuscripts of John, including P66, P75, Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Vaticanus. Where it appears, manuscripts mark it with asterisks or move it around — after John 7:36, at the end of John, even into Luke. Its vocabulary and style differ from the rest of John. Did a scribe add it? And if so, can we still read it as God’s word?
Responses
A Later Addition, Not Original to John
Tradition: Academic / Text-Critical Summary: The external and internal evidence strongly indicates the passage was not part of John’s original Gospel.
It is missing from the earliest and most reliable witnesses, the manuscripts that contain it disagree on where it belongs, and its style is non-Johannine. The consensus of modern textual scholarship is that it was inserted later. Modern translations (NIV, ESV, NRSV) accordingly bracket it with a note. Honest reading begins by acknowledging this evidence rather than hiding it.
Strengths
- Follows the clear weight of manuscript evidence
- Practiced transparently by virtually all modern critical editions
Weaknesses
- Unsettling to readers who assume every verse stands on equal footing
- Raises the harder question of what “not original” means for authority
Further Reading
- Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (2nd ed., 1994)
- Bart Ehrman, “Jesus and the Adulteress,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988)
- Chris Keith, The Pericope Adulterae, the Gospel of John, and the Literacy of Jesus (Brill, 2009)
Authentic Tradition Even If Not Originally in John
Tradition: Historical-Jesus / Conservative Summary: The story likely preserves a genuine memory of Jesus, “floating” in oral tradition before being written into John.
Even scholars who deny it to John often judge the episode historically plausible — it coheres with Jesus’ known compassion toward sinners and his confounding of opponents. Papias and later writers attest a similar story early. On this view it is an authentic apostolic-era tradition that found a fitting home in John, not a pious fabrication.
Strengths
- Distinguishes “not original to John” from “untrue”
- Coheres with the portrait of Jesus across the Gospels
Weaknesses
- Its origin and transmission remain uncertain
- “Probably authentic” is a judgment, not a manuscript fact
Further Reading
- Craig Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary (Hendrickson, 2003), excursus
- Daniel Wallace, “My Favorite Passage That’s Not in the Bible” (essay)
Received and Canonical in the Church’s Use
Tradition: Ecclesial / Confessional Summary: The passage has been read, preached, and received as Scripture for many centuries; canon is a churchly as well as a manuscript question.
It appears in the Latin tradition, was commented on by Augustine and Jerome, sits in the Byzantine text and the King James Bible, and has shaped the church’s witness to mercy. Many hold that the Spirit’s guidance of the church’s reception, not only the earliest copies, bears on what functions as canon — so it may rightly be retained, with notes, and proclaimed.
Strengths
- Honors the long liturgical and homiletical reception
- Provides a constructive path for preaching the text
Weaknesses
- In tension with a strictly earliest-manuscripts criterion of canon
- Different traditions weigh reception versus attestation differently
Further Reading
- Augustine, On Adulterous Marriages II.7
- D. C. Parker, The Living Text of the Gospels (Cambridge, 1997)