John 8 Q&A

"Your live, online sermon today brought up the woman accused of adultery in John 8, but no one was there to accuse her. Go back to Numbers 5. The law was that if two people were caught in the physical act, both would be stoned. There has to be three witnesses and the husband has to be there at the temple with the witnesses to bring this charge. John 8:6 says, "And this they said, trying Him, so that they might accuse Him."

"The issue in the sermon was, is this passage even legitimate in the first place? It is missing in many manuscripts. The Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown Commentary documents the many Greek and Aramaic manuscripts where this passage is missing, "It is wanting in the four oldest manuscript—the newly-discovered Codex Sinaiticus (‘Aleph (‘)), the Alexandrian Codex (A), the Codex Vaticanus (B), and the Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C) – and in four other valuable Uncial manuscript, although two of these have a blank space, as if something had been left out; it is wanting also in upwards of 50 Cursive manuscripts: of ancient versions, it is wanting in the venerable Peshito Syriac and its Philoxenian revision, in one and probably both the Egyptian versions—the Thebaic and Memphitic-the Gothic, probably the Armenian, and two or three copies of the Old Latin: several of the fathers take no notice of it—as Origen, Tertullian, Cyprian, Cyril, Chrysostom: it is wanting in the most ancient tables of the sectional contents of the Gospels, though afterward inserted as an additional section: the variations in the manuscript which insert it exceed in number and extent those in any other part of the New Testament: and of those manuscript which insert it, four Uncials and upwards of fifty Cursives have an asterisk or other critical mark attached to it, as subject to doubt or requiring investigation."