A Message of Hope

 The text that we’ll be looking at over the next few days records one of the most powerful moments in Jesus’ ministry.  It’s a story that lets us look into the heart of Jesus, and because it shows us Jesus’ heart, it has given grace and  hope to many, many people who thought that they were beyond forgiveness, that they were not worthy to come to God, that there was no hope for them.  Some people, because they live without h ope, feel that they really have no choice but to continue to self-destruct.  In this story we see that there is always hope for forgiveness from the past, and a forgiven past is the doorway to a better future.   It’s a message that we all need to hear.  It’s the story of a woman caught in the act of adultery.

Take a moment to read John 8:2-11.

Whether you were reading in your Bible or online, you probably noticed something very troubling.  There is this note right in the middle of the text that says,

“The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53-8:11.”

Now that can be disturbing.  Maybe this story that gives us so much hope isn’t even supposed to be in our Bibles!  And if that’s the case, what are we going to do with it?

First of all, we need to acknowledge that no respected scholar today even tries to claim that this story was part of John’s original gospel.  It doesn’t show up in any of the earliest, most reliable manuscripts of the New Testament .  Also, the language that’s used is more like that of the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) than it is like John, although none of them record the story either.
 
Now occasionally you’ll run into someone who says that you can’t trust the Bible because the text has been copied and re-copied so many times and so many errors have crept in, that we don’t have any way of knowing that we have the original.  Muslims will even claim that, in its original form, the Bible was from God, but  they’ll say that anything that disagrees with Islamic belief  is a later change that was made.  But it’s not just Muslims, a lot of people who don’t want to follow the plain teachings of Scripture will often throw this out as an excuse.   And then there are all the honest folks who want to do what’s right, but they’ve accepted these claims and just don’t feel that they can trust the  Bible. 

But if you can trust any other ancient document, you can trust your Bible.  We have to remember that the Bible was written long before the printing press was invented and so the oldest copies of the Bible are hand written.  We call them manuscripts.  With most ancient works of history that no serious scholar disputes, we have only a few copies that were made hundreds of years after the originals.  But with the Bible, we have literally thousands of ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, many going back to very close to the time of the original writings.  Scholars have spent hundreds of years pouring over the copies of the New Testament comparing them, and –yes, there are differences – but the sheer number and quality of the manuscripts that we have to compare gives us a very high degree of confidence that we can determine the original writings.  And in those very few cases where we just aren’t sure, there is not a single issue of Christian doctrine that depends solely on one of these disputed texts.  

So, the fact that we know that this story of the woman caught in adultery was not part of John’s original text should not trouble us.  Rather, it should reassure us that we do know what the original text was, even though this particular story was not a part of it.  There is not some giant conspiract to keep things in the Bible that don’t belong there – you can’t be much clearer than the notes that we see in our Bibles.

So, in spite of all the evidence that this story was not part of John’s text, why is it that every major English translation includes it, most with a note similar to what we see in the NIV?

Well, one reason is probably simply that we love the story.  Many of us know have known it from our King James days, and it has become dear to us.  Now, that may not sound like a very good reason and, by itself, it isn’t, but it’s important to be honest.  The bigger question is, “Why do we love it?”  Do we love it because it shows us a different picture of Jesus, or do we love it because it is consistent with everything we know about Jesus?

I believe that it is the later – the Jesus we see in this story is the same Jesus we see throughout the gospels—it’s just that the story brings this loving, compassionate, wise Jesus to life.  In fact, this is one of the reasons that, in spite of the fact that this was not originally in John’s gospel, most people believe that this is an authentic, historically accurate story from the life of Christ.  Not only is it consistent with everything we know about Jesus, it is not the kind of thing the early church would have made up.  You see, the early church, especially in the second and third centuries when they were being severely persecuted, was very tough on sin.  These people were dying for their faith, and it was important to them that the church remain  pure.  So they were very hard on Christians who were sinning; they would not have invented a story like this.

In fact, in the earliest reference we have to this story, it was used to address church leaders and to encourage them to show more grace and mercy.  The reference comes from a church manual that was written to guide new converts from  in northern Syria in the early part of the third century (called the Syriac Didascalia, if you’re interested).  It tells the church leaders that, when someone sins and repents, they should do “as he also did with her who had sinned, whom the elders set before him, and leaving the judgment in his hands, departed.”

This is a clear reference to this incident, so this was a well-known story at a very early stage in the church’s history.  And it’s a story that they thought was important enough that it continued to be handed down and eventually worked its way into some copies of John’s gospel.  And while this story doesn’t tell us anything new about Jesus that we can’t get elsewhere, it beautifully reminds us of some aspects of his character, and our response to him, that we need to be sure not to miss.  More on that next time.