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Textual Criticism and the Adulterae Pericope

By:

Sarah Wagner

Biblical Criticism

Professor Smith

12 December 2002

Textual criticism is sometimes also called “lower” criticism. It is the science that compares all known manuscripts of a work. This is done to trace the history of variations within the text to discover the original form of the text. To the most basic form, it tries to determine the authentic words of the author. Textual criticism is not limited to the Bible. Every manuscript for which we no longer have the original autograph for is subject to textual criticism.

Because Christianity is based upon the special revelation of God in a book, having the actual text of the Bible is indispensable to the study of the Bible. If the words themselves were written under the inspiration of God, it is critical that these very words are used when reading or translating the text. However, before the invention of the printing press in 1492, it was humanely impossible to accurately copy such a large text as the Bible word for word. Because of this, many variations occurred in hand written manuscripts of the Bible, becoming more and more variant the farther they were removed from each other. It is only by applying the careful use of textual criticism to the Bible that these variations can cancel each other out, and we can arrive at a text that is very similar to the original.

The need for textual criticism of the Bible in particular is based on three main factors. First, the original copy of manuscripts that make up the Bible were probably on papyrus. Since papyrus is so perishable these originals have most likely perished. Second, the New Testament was copied by hand for 1400 years, and they made many errors that tended to accumulate over the years. Third, there are 5,338 Greek manuscripts extant, over 8,000 copies of the Latin Vulgate, hundreds of manuscripts in Coptic, Syriac, Gothic, Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Slavonic, Arabic, and other ancient languages. and the numerous citations of the New Testament in the Church Fathers. There are no two manuscripts that are exactly alike.

Textual criticism uses the same method for all texts. A textual critic must go through all extant manuscripts of a text, and collate each manuscript with the other in order to find the errors and changes in each text and decide which reading at each point is more likely to be the original reading. The classical method of textual criticism arose during the Renaissance when many spurious works claiming to be of ancient Greek or Latin authors arose. Determining the antiquity and authenticity of a text rose to importance, and the methods of finding that was first applied to Homer’s Iliad.

There are three ways of studying a texts to determine the correct reading. Verbal criticism, external criticism, and internal criticism are all used in various degrees to compare texts. An eclectic use of these methods may be the best way to best sort out the variant readings, but the use of these methods depends most on the nature of the manuscript itself and the variation.

Verbal criticism studies the sources of corruption in manuscripts. Involuntary variations include dittography, where a scribe would repeat a letter, syllable, word, or entire section by mistake. There is also haplography, writing words that were supposed to be repeated only once. The extreme of this is homoioteleuton, which is the confusing of words, lines, or sentences that have the same ending and omitting the words between the first occurrence of a word and the second occurrence of the same word. Letters and words could also be confused because of the poor handwriting of the scribe in the exemplar, the use of arcane abbreviations, or in the earliest manuscripts, the lack of space between words, punctuation, and diacritical marks.

In verbal criticism there are also intentional variations. This was not done out of maliciousness. Rather, the scribes attempted make corrections to the text to make it more perfect and more fit to be studied. Scribes would sometimes change the spelling of proper names or change the dialectical forms of verbs from their Hellenistic forms to Classical ones. There were also attempts to improve the quality of style by improving the flow and vocabulary of the text. The text may also be changed to suppress divergences between parallel passages. This was especially prevalent is the Synoptics. Quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament would also be changed to agree with the Septuagint reading. In especially difficult passages the scribes would sometimes change the passage to make it more complete, more exact, less offensive, or less obscure.

Once errors of textual transmission are inconclusive external criticism is used. This method studies the respective value of the manuscripts. It relies upon the authority of the document itself rather than on any intrinsic value of the readings themselves. This method has long been dominant, perhaps because it seems to be the method that operates without any internal bias of what the text should read.

There are three insufficient ways of determining the correct reading. Those are the number of manuscripts, the antiquity of the manuscripts, and the general credibility of the manuscripts. Rather, it is more helpful to study the geographical location, the family tree of common faults, or taxonomy. External criticism cannot determine the primitive form of the New Testament text, but is does classify and distinguish the main text types.

Very different from external criticism is internal criticism. Internal criticism weighs the intrinsic value of variations according to the text and its context. In general, the shorter reading of a text is preferable to the longer one. This is because scribes would be more likely to expand a text with notes, variations, clarifications, or harmonizations. Also, the more difficult reading is preferred to the simpler one. Scribes tended to modify anything that they found faulty or difficult in order to achieve clarity. These principles are not airtight and there are many examples that violate these rules. They are simply a guide to basic ways a text can be changed. Usually variants of these kinds are easily resolved because the variant that best explains the origin of the others is supported by the earliest and best manuscripts.

While this process of finding the original text seems a little conjectural, the sheer quantity of the manuscripts, and their antiquity, promises solid results. No other classical Greek work is preserved in such quantity. The quality of the manuscripts is also unprecedented. Although most complete copies of the New Testament are from a later date, there are manuscripts and fragments of the New Testament that date to a century or less after the time the original was written. The richness of manuscripts makes a very close reconstruction of the original text very likely.

The Adultera Pericope

Textual Criticism has been very useful in determining ancient interpolations of the New Testament and finding out where they came from and what kind of authority they have. One of the largest portions of the New Testament that is under extreme suspicion is John 7:53-8:11. This pericope tells of the woman who was caught in adultery and was brought for questioning before Jesus. These twelve verses are under suspicion because there are many manuscripts where it is lacking, is elsewhere in John’s Gospel, or is even in the Gospel of Luke. The places where it is found is so widely variant that it is very unique among all the disputed passages of the New Testament.

There is also some confusion as to, when the pericope is included, where exactly it belongs. In the Ferrar group of manuscripts, which are of a Caesarean text type copied between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, the adultera pericope occurs not in John, but after Luke 21:38. In MSS 225 the pericope stands after John 7:36. In several Georgian manuscripts, MSS I 565 1076 1570 1582 it stands after John 21:25. In several Armenian versions it also is in a separate section at the end of the Gospel. In Sinai Georgian manuscript 16 it follows John 7:44. In many manuscripts it is marked with asterisks and obeli, indicating that although it was included the scribes were aware that it might not be authoritative.

Some have suggested that the reason why this pericope is missing is because it seems to breach the seventh commandment. So scribes would intentionally omit it in order to preserve the unity of the Bible. Another reason for its omission is suggested by the fact that John 7:37-8:12 was used for the liturgy on Pentecost and it was judged expedient to do away with the unnecessary and inappropriate incident of adultery. These theories follow the common types of scribal errors, but there is no evidence to support them. There is no evidence, whether from marginal note or commentary, that these verses were deemed by scribes to be too morally imprudent to be included in the Bible. Also, these theories fail to take into account why the descriptive verses of 7:53-8:2 were also omitted.

It has also been suggested that this pericope is original because of the lack of clear demarcation from the surrounding verses. Verses 7:53-8:2 seem to immediately follow the antecedent narrative. Also, in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus there is no transition between 7:52 and 8:13, making the flow of the text seem awkward. In later manuscripts there is usually a two to three word transition at the end of 7:52. This may or may not fall under the second common category where the more difficult reading is preferred to the easier one. As we have seen, the passage has been in many different places in the Gospels. It is very possible that the original text of John 7-8 was rather disjointed and that this passage was added to even things out and to expound upon the disagreements between Jesus and the Pharisees.

This passage is a good example of why the sheer number of manuscripts that support a reading is not a conclusive way of determining the reading of the original text. Many study Bible’s point out the fact that this pericope is present in over 900 manuscripts of John. This in and of itself seems convincing for the genuineness of the passage except it ignores that the Nestle-Aland and United Bible Society critical editions of the New Testament are unanimous that the passage was originally not a part of the Gospel of John. The number of early and good manuscripts that support the omission gives a high level of certainty to exclusion of this pericope.

Altogether, the antiquity of the adultera pericope itself is maintained. The tradition of the story itself may be early and it was probably circulated among the churches before it was included in the Gospel of John. The pericope has all the trappings of historical veracity and it was most likely a piece of oral tradition that circulated in parts of the Western church. It most likely began to be inserted into the Gospels in the second century when there was greater freedom with the text. However, this insertion obviously did not spread to all already existing text families, thus the confusion as to its actual place in the canon.

The science of textual criticism is indispensable to Christianity. Through this method all variations and differences of our Scripture become a joy, not something to be feared. Using this method we can determine the original reading of a text and what passages were added later. The adultera pericope is one passage where this method has proved most fruitful. Not only can we safely say that the pericope does not belong where it is at, we can also determine where it came from and how it was included and spread. Because of all of this, although the pericope was not originally in the text and possibly should be excised from the Gospels, we can assume that it is based on an actual event in the life of Jesus and it is a story that all Christians should enjoy.

Aland, Kurt and Barbara Aland. The Text of the New Testament. Trans. by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

Burgon, John Williams. The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels. Arr. By Edward Miller. London: George Bell and Sons, 1896. Rpt. in Counterfeit or Genuine? Ed. David Otis Fuller. Grand Rapids: Grand Rapids International Publications, 1978. 133-158.

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Greenlee, J. Harold. Introduction to New Testament Biblical Criticism. Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 1975.

Lagrange, M. J. “Projet de critique textuelle rationnelle du Noveau Testament.” Revue Biblique 42. 481-498.

Metzger, Bruce M. A Textual Commentary on the New Testament. Stuttgart, Germany: United Bible Society, 1971.

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Vaganay, Leon and Christian-Bernard Amphoux. An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.