Just before the Summer holidays we reached the end of John chapter 7 in our series on John’s gospel. We will be returning to John in September, but where do we pick up? John 7v53-8v11 is controversial. Not because of content, but because of its location, when we look at the most reliable early New Testament manuscripts, we don’t find the passage in its present location. Add to this that the use of language is not John like, and its insertion disrupts John’s narrative flow, it seems likely that the passage is, at least, in the wrong place, and maybe doesn’t belong to John at all. However, this does not deny its authenticity as a real encounter with Jesus. One of the leading New Testament manuscript scholars (Bruce Metzger) comments, “The evidence for the non–Johannine origin of the [passage] is overwhelming. It is absent from such early and diverse manuscripts as [list of most reliable early manuscripts] … At the same time the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity. It is obviously a piece of oral tradition which circulated in certain parts of the Western church and which was subsequently incorporated into various manuscripts at various places.”
Should this controversy undermine our understanding of Scripture as God’s Word? Absolutely not! It should give us confidence that generations of scholarship is confirming the text we have and not undermining it. The agreement across a huge wealth of early manuscripts is breathtaking. Also, we should be thankful that a passage like this one has been preserved for our learning even if, over the years, no one is really quite sure where it fits.
I have uploaded to our YouTube channel a sermon on this passage by Wallace. It’s well worth a listen.
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