TD18 hours ago18 hours ago
"John 7:53 to 8:11; AKA the pericope adulterae (The story of the woman caught in adultery)
The evidence is pretty clear that this passage is a later addition."
This is so at present, it is not in the oldest fragment that we have of John 7&8. John itself shows evidence of being redacted/edited and so the contents, it would seem, are a little muddled compared to the original (which we don not have).
There is evidence that the Pericope de adulterae was read in the Meetings of the early Christians, on St Pelagias day if memory serves. So it was not a section rejected by the very early Church. This rather puts the Manuscript evidence in the shade. In the future an older version of John may well be found containing these disputed verses, that will put the cat amongst the pigeons !
I suspect this is probably a vestige of the real words of Jesus, and would really have made him unpopular with the Jewish religious leaders.
I suspect too, that the objections from St Augustine down to JW Org are that Jesus simply told the woman to "go away and sin no more", he did not advocate any punishment.
