The Woman Taken In Adultery

[Joseph Antley]

As I promised in the other thread, here is the relevant text from Didymus the Blind's Commentary on Ecclesiastes:

We find, therefore, in certain gospels [the following story]. A woman, it says, was condemned by the Jews for a sin and was being sent to be stoned in the place where it was customary to happen. The savior, it says, when he saw her and observed that they were ready to stone her, said to those who were about to cast stones, ‘He who has not sinned, let him take up a stone and cast it.’ If anyone is conscious in himself not to have sinned, let him take up a stone and smite her. And no one dared. Since they knew in themselves and perceived that they themselves were guilty in some things, they did not dare to strike her.

Didymus, Commentary on Ecclesiastes, 223.6b–13a. Translation taken from Bart D. Ehrman, “Jesus and the Adultress,” New Testament Studies 34 (1988): 25.

The story in Didymus shares enough parallels with John 7:53-8:11 that it should be clear that they are variants of the same story. But there are also some important differences: the woman's "sin" is never stated to be adultery by Didymus, and the context of the story is very different (in John, the Jews bring the woman before Jesus).

I'll also add here another variant of the same story from the Teachings of the Apostles, a third century text claiming to have been written by the original Twelve:

And when the elders had set another woman which had sinned before Him [Jesus], and had left the sentence to Him, and were gone out, our Lord, the Searcher of the hearts, inquiring of her whether the elders had condemned her, and being answered “No,” He said unto her: “Go thy way therefore, for neither do I condemn thee.” This Jesus, O ye bishops, our Saviour, our King, and our God, ought to be set before you as your pattern.

Const. ap. 2.24. Translation taken from ANF 7.408.

This version is closer to the familiar version in John than Didymus' is, but it still slightly different. In this version the Jews all leave her to Jesus and don't spectate to see his verdict, meaning that there's no "let him without sin among you cast the first stone."

The reason this is important is that the story does not appear in any manuscript of the Gospel of John until the fifth century. Even within the context of John the story is clearly out of place and the narrative of John flows much more smoothly with it removed. And in some manuscripts it even appears in different places in John. These, combined with the different variants listed above, all indicate that the story was later inserted into the Gospel of John and was not originally a part of it.

According to Eusebius, the story may originally have been included in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which may be one of the lost "gospels" that Didymus refers to. Regardless, Didymus' rendition of the story is important because it is actually earlier than the appearance of the story in any manuscript of John, suggesting that Didymus' version may be the more historically accurate.

For those interested, this and other significant New Testament variants will be discussed in Lincoln Blumell's upcoming paper in Studies in the Bible and Antiquity, from which I took the source references here.

[LeSellers]

Sorry I cannot add much personally, but this may be interesting.

On Didymus

Didymus the Blind (AD 313 – 398) was an important Christian exegete from Alexandria. He was esteemed by Jerome and by Bishop Athanasius, who appointed Didymus head of the school at Alexandria. Blind already in his youth , Didymus was heavily influenced by Origen (ca. 184 – 254) and composed numerous volumes of biblical commentary. When the writings of Origen were condemned as heretical by Justinian at the second council of Constantinople (553), Didymus’s writings also fell into disrepute. During the Middle Ages, no copies of Didymus’s writings seem to have circulated.

"P.BYU Did." identifies part of a late-5th/early-6th century papyrus codex that was scattered after its discovery during the Second World War and is now partially recovered in various locations. In 1941 British military engineers discovered a hoard of at least eight papyrus codices in a subterranean cavern at Tura, about 10 miles outside Cairo, almost certainly in the very spot they had occupied since Late Antiquity. The Tura find restored otherwise unattested treatises by Didymus the Blind, by Origen, and by another unknown author. Five of the Tura codices contain Didymus’s commentaries on principal books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Ecclesiastes, Job, Zachariah, and Psalms.

The Commentary on the Psalms filled Tura Codex V; and it seems likely that more than one codex would have been needed to hold the entirety of Didymus’s treatise on Psalms. Like the other Tura codices, the Psalms Commentary was dismantled and scattered almost immediately after its discovery. Within weeks many pages were recovered by the Cairo Archaeological Museum. Portions of the codex are in Geneva and London. The University of Cologne archives 182 of the 288 pages — 12 of at least 18 signatures — that originally comprised the Tura Psalms codex. Finally, a portion of the codex is at Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah. Since surviving signatures cover only the portions of the Commentary between Ps. 20 and Ps. 44, it seems reasonable to suppose a separate codex or more must have held Didymus’s work on the Psalms outside the range covered in Codex V, i.e. Ps. 1-19 and 44 ff.

P.BYU Did. comprises two discreet portions of the Tura Codex V: 1) the entirety of the codex’s eighth signature, a “quinion” — 5 papyrus sheets folded to make 10 leaves or 20 book pages (folio 10verso-01recto, 02verso-09recto, etc.) — which covers Didymus’s commentary for Psalms 26:10 – 29:1; and 2) half of the first sheet (bifolium) belonging to the sixteenth gathering (i.e. 01recto and 01 verso only), with Psalms 35:13f. The rest of the sixteenth gathering of Codex V is still at large.

The text written is dated by paleographical means to the late 5th-Century or early 6th-Century, at least a century after Didymus’s death. The strokes of the clean literary hand are written with the characteristic iron-gall ink of the times and applied to sheets of papyrus, some of which was once written on with another text. This later, more visible, text is called a palimpsest (fr Greek: “scraped again”), a type of textual artifact commonly found in medieval codices but more rare in papyrus texts. Palimpsests typically manifest a second use of writing material that rejects a less valued document in favor of one that is more highly esteemed. In a few places the earlier text is slightly visible and especially enhanced by infrared light. The extent of the older text throughout P.BYU Did. and, indeed, throughout other remnants of Tura Codex V is a matter of ongoing scholarly investigation. Current readings reveal an otherwise unknown text suggesting that the older text contains documentary records of the Tura monastery.

A complete scholarly edition with translation of P.BYU Did. is forthcoming from BYU scholars D.W. Graham and J. Siebach.

The decipherment of the earlier palimpsest text is being conducted by BYU’s Ancient Textual Imaging Group.

BYU undergraduate David M. Nielsen’s background brief on the history of the Didymus Papyrus was sponsored by a scholarship from The Friends of the Harold B. Lee Library.

Additionally, a brief description of the papyrus has been published in: Brent Harker, "Didymos the Blind Sees the Light of Day," BYU Today (June 1985), p. 19-20.

BYU Papers, Didymus

See also The Tura / Toura Discovery of Manuscripts (1941) and Annotated Bibliography on Ecclesiastes.

Enjoy,

Lehi

Edited September 12, 2011 by LeSellers

[Joseph Antley]

Thanks LeSellers. I spent the summer doing restoration and conservation work on the P.BYU Didymus papyri (you can see pics of us working on it and holding a finished product here </shameless>). My understanding is that the first P.BYU volume which will contain the transcription and translation of the papyri will be out by next summer.

[CV75]

Thanks LeSellers. I spent the summer doing restoration and conservation work on the P.BYU Didymus papyri (you can see pics of us working on it and holding a finished product here </shameless>). My understanding is that the first P.BYU volume which will contain the transcription and translation of the papyri will be out by next summer.

Just curious as to why gloves aren't being worn in the photos where documents are apparently being handled--thank you,

[LeSellers]

Just curious as to why gloves aren't being worn in the photos where documents are apparently being handled--thank you,

According to The History Detectives, the use of gloves depends on the institution's policies. Some require them, some reject them.

And, I suppose, it might depend on the material in question. But I'm not an archivist or researcher.

Lehi

Edited September 14, 2011 by LeSellers

[The Nehor]

I've wondered if it was a late insertion. One bit suggesting authenticity is the irrelevant detail added about Jesus writing in the dirt. Usually details like that don't get added in later as they serve no purpose.

[cinepro]

As for the story itself, if Jesus is the OT Jehovah, is it ironic or poetic that the men were going to stone the woman according to the law which Jesus himself had given them centuries before?

[Joseph Antley]

Just curious as to why gloves aren't being worn in the photos where documents are apparently being handled--thank you,

Gloves can actually be more dangerous than they are useful. Gloves make your fingers that much clumsier and less sensitive which can be dangerous when dealing with fragile documents, especially papyrus that can have brittle threads that might catch on fabric. I don't think anyone conservationist would recommend using gloves when dealing with papyrus. The conservation team at the University of Berkeley told me that gloves are usually a bad idea with other forms of ancient documents (ostraca, parchment, etc.) for the same reasons, being that they usually cause more harm than good.

[The Nehor]

As for the story itself, if Jesus is the OT Jehovah, is it ironic or poetic that the men were going to stone the woman according to the law which Jesus himself had given them centuries before?

I think it more just disgusting that they took the offender to a travelling preacher in an attempt to discredit him as opposed to the courts.

Last time I read the Old Testament I got some niggling doubts about how faithfully the version we have captured what laws were actually given to Moses. I can't say anything definitively of course but I suspect those passages suffered a lot more over the centuries then just the oral law bloat the Pharisees were pushing. I could be wrong though.

[Joseph Antley]

I've wondered if it was a late insertion. One bit suggesting authenticity is the irrelevant detail added about Jesus writing in the dirt. Usually details like that don't get added in later as they serve no purpose.

But the pericope is unique among NT interpolations in that the scribe who added it into the manuscript of John was not just making it up -- Didymus and the Teachings of the Apostle evidence that it already existed, apparently in written form. Presumably the detail of Jesus writing in the dirt (although I'm not so sure it's "irrelevant") would have been part of the written or oral story that the scribe was drawing from.

[The Nehor]

But the pericope is unique among NT interpolations in that the scribe who added it into the manuscript of John was not just making it up -- Didymus and the Teachings of the Apostle evidence that it already existed, apparently in written form. Presumably the detail of Jesus writing in the dirt (although I'm not so sure it's "irrelevant") would have been part of the written or oral story that the scribe was drawing from.

I'm not arguing against you. It just seems an odd detail to add to a story so I take it as evidence it is an actual story from the life of Jesus even if it didn't make it into the gospel until later. It's evidence though...not really proof.