It must be admitted then that as far back as testimony reaches the passage under discussion stood where it now stands in St. John's Gospel. And this is my first position. But indeed, to be candid, hardly any one has seriously called that fact in question. No, nor do any (except Dr. Hort[610]) doubt that the passage is also of the remotest antiquity. Adverse Critics do but insist that however ancient, it must needs be of spurious origin: or else that it is an afterthought of the Evangelist:—concerning both which imaginations we shall have a few words to offer by-and-by.
It clearly follows,—indeed it may be said with truth that it only remains,—to inquire what may have led to its so frequent exclusion from the sacred Text? For really the difficulty has already resolved itself into that.
And on this head, it is idle to affect perplexity. In the earliest age of all,—the age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic life on a new and more enduring basis;—at a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the look out for grounds of cavil against Christianity and its Author;—what wonder if some were found to remove the pericope de adultera from their copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches of the seventh commandment? The very subject-matter, I say, of St. John viii. 3-11 would sufficiently account for the occasional omission of those nine verses. Moral considerations abundantly explain what is found to have here and there happened. But in fact this is not a mere conjecture of my own. It is the reason assigned by Augustine for the erasure of these twelve verses from many copies of the Gospel[611]. Ambrose, a quarter of a century earlier, had clearly intimated that danger was popularly apprehended from this quarter[612]: while Nicon, five centuries later, states plainly that the mischievous tendency of the narrative was the cause why it had been expunged from the Armenian version[613]. Accordingly, just a few Greek copies are still to be found mutilated in respect of those nine verses only. But in fact the indications are not a few that all the twelve verses under discussion did not by any means labour under the same degree of disrepute. The first three (as I shewed at the outset) clearly belong to a different category from the last nine,—a circumstance which has been too much overlooked.
The Church in the meantime for an obvious reason had made choice of St. John vii. 37-viii. 12—the greater part of which is clearly descriptive of what happened at the Feast of Tabernacles—for her Pentecostal lesson: and judged it expedient, besides omitting as inappropriate to the occasion the incident of the woman taken in adultery, to ignore also the three preceding verses;—making the severance begin, in fact, as far back as the end of ch. vii. 52. The reason for this is plain. In this way the allusion to a certain departure at night, and return early next morning (St. John vii. 53: viii. 1), was avoided, which entirely marred the effect of the lection as the history of a day of great and special solemnity,—'the great day of the Feast.' And thus it happens that the gospel for the day of Pentecost was made to proceed directly from 'Search and look: for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet,' in ch. vii. 52,—to 'Then spake Jesus unto them, saying, I am the light of the world,' in ch. viii. 12; with which it ends. In other words, an omission which owed its beginning to a moral scruple was eventually extended for a liturgical consideration; and resulted in severing twelve verses of St. John's Gospel—ch. vii. 53 to viii. 11—from their lawful context.
We may now proceed to the consideration of my second proposition, which is
(2) That by the very construction of her Lectionary, the Church in her corporate capacity and official character has solemnly recognised the narrative in question as an integral part of St. John's Gospel, and as standing in its traditional place, from an exceedingly remote time.
Take into your hands at random the first MS. copy of St. John's Gospel which presents itself, and turn to the place in question. Nay, I will instance all the four Evangelia which I call mine,—all the seventeen which belong to Lord Zouch,—all the thirty-nine which Baroness Burdett-Coutts imported from Epirus in 1870-2. Now all these copies—(and nearly each of them represents a different line of ancestry)—are found to contain the verses in question. How did the verses ever get there?
But the most extraordinary circumstance of the case is behind. Some out of the Evangelia referred to are observed to have been prepared for ecclesiastical use: in other words, are so rubricated throughout as to shew where, every separate lection had its 'beginning' (αρχη), and where its 'end' (τελος). And some of these lections are made up of disjointed portions of the Gospel. Thus, the lection for Whitsunday is found to have extended from St. John vii. 37 to St. John viii. 12; beginning at the words τη εσχατη 'ημερα τη μεγαλη, and ending—το φως της ζωης: but over-leaping the twelve verses now under discussion: viz. vii. 53 to viii. 11. Accordingly, the word 'over-leap' ('υπερβα) is written in all the copies after vii. 52,—whereby the reader, having read on to the end of that verse, was directed to skip all that followed down to the words και μηκετι 'αμαρτανε in ch. viii. 11: after which he found himself instructed to 'recommence' (αρξαι). Again I ask (and this time does not the riddle admit of only one solution?),—When and how does the reader suppose that the narrative of 'the woman taken in adultery' first found its way into the middle of the lesson for Pentecost? I pause for an answer: I shall perforce be told that it never 'found its way' into the lection at all: but having once crept into St. John's Gospel, however that may have been effected, and established itself there, it left those ancient men who devised the Church's Lectionary without choice. They could but direct its omission, and employ for that purpose the established liturgical formula in all similar cases.
But first,—How is it that those who would reject the narrative are not struck by the essential foolishness of supposing that twelve fabricated verses, purporting to be an integral part of the fourth Gospel, can have so firmly established themselves in every part of Christendom from the second century downwards, that they have long since become simply ineradicable? Did the Church then, pro hac vice, abdicate her function of being 'a witness and a keeper of Holy Writ'? Was she all of a sudden forsaken by the inspiring Spirit, who, as she was promised, should 'guide her into all Truth'? And has she been all down the ages guided into the grievous error of imputing to the disciple whom Jesus loved a narrative of which he knew nothing? For, as I remarked at the outset, this is not merely an assimilated expression, or an unauthorized nominative, or a weakly-supported clause, or any such trifling thing. Although be it remarked in passing, I am not aware of a single such trifling excrescence which we are not able at once to detect and to remove. In other words, this is not at all a question, like the rest, about the genuine text of a passage. Our inquiry is of an essentially different kind, viz. Are these twelve consecutive verses Scripture at all, or not? Divine or human? Which? They claim by their very structure and contents to be an integral part of the Gospel. And such a serious accession to the Deposit, I insist, can neither have 'crept into' the Text, nor have 'crept out' of it. The thing is unexampled,—is unapproached,—is impossible.
Above all,—(the reader is entreated to give the subject his sustained attention),—Is it not perceived that the admission involved in the hypothesis before us is fatal to any rational pretence that the passage is of spurious origin? We have got back in thought at least to the third or fourth century of our era. We are among the Fathers and Doctors of the Eastern Church in conference assembled: and they are determining what shall be the Gospel for the great Festival of Pentecost. 'It shall begin' (say they) 'at the thirty-seventh verse of St. John vii, and conclude with the twelfth verse of St. John viii. But so much of it as relates to the breaking up of the Sanhedrin,—to the withdrawal of our Lord to the Mount of Olives,—and to His return next morning to the Temple,—had better not be read. It disturbs the unity of the narrative. So also had the incident of the woman taken in adultery better not be read. It is inappropriate to the Pentecostal Festival.' The Authors of the great Oriental Liturgy therefore admit that they find the disputed verses in their copies: and thus they vouch for their genuineness. For none will doubt that, had they regarded them as a spurious accretion to the inspired page, they would have said so plainly. Nor can it be denied that if in their corporate capacity they had disallowed these twelve verses, such an authoritative condemnation would most certainly have resulted in the perpetual exclusion from the Sacred Text of the part of these verses which was actually adopted as a Lection. What stronger testimony on the contrary can be imagined to the genuineness of any given portion of the everlasting Gospel than that it should have been canonized or recognized as part of Inspired Scripture by the collective wisdom of the Church in the third or fourth century?