Abstract
In To Cast the First Stone, Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman analyze a claim that nearly all biblical scholars hold to be true, but very few have studied closely: that the pericopae adulterae (found in John 7:53–8:11) is not originally Johannine. Yet Knust and Wasserman contend that, while that fact is almost certainly true, this does not tell the whole story about the woman caught in adultery and her encounter with Jesus. Too often, they contend, this fact has forced the text into the periphery of modern Gospel studies. Rather, they argue that whenever this passage appeared within a copy of the text, it operated as Scripture for that Christian community and therefore was not treated as an irrelevant text. Regardless of its complicated origins, which many patristic and medieval scholars recognized, this captivating story became “gospel” for the people who heard it. As Knust and Wasserman note in their conclusion, “whether or not Jesus ever met and forgave an adulteress, Christians from at least the 3rd century onward believed that he did. This lasting tradition has been a pivot around which debates about the meaning of ‘gospel,’ the implications of textual change and the nature of God’s mercy have turned from nearly 2000 years” (341).
In order to prove this claim, the authors analyze the textual history of this passage in both the East and the West. Both authors are talented textual critics and they bring their skills to bear in this book. Beginning with how the pericopae adulterae ended up with double brackets in modern New Testament Greek editions in chapter 1, Knust and Wasserman trace how scholarly consensus arose around the nature of pericopae adulterae as non-Johannine but likely historical.
In chapters 2–4, the authors approach the textual history of the passage itself. They seek to answer whether it was a later addition to the Gospel of John or if it was intentionally omitted at some point. The authors here spend considerable time (over 120 pages) going through all the available evidence on this question. They look at each manuscript in question, analyze scribal habits of the key witnesses, and describe the nature of book-copying among early Christian communities. They conclude, “in our opinion, the simplest answer is the passage was probably missing from most copies of John and therefore less widely known … thus both the textual instability of the pericopae adulterae … is more likely to be a product of how the story was preserved than a reflection of any conscious effort to eliminate it” (171).
Having established that the text was in fact missing from most early manuscripts of John, the authors then turn to answer the question of what it means that the story manages to become a central Gospel story anyway. In chapters 5–6, they look at the reception of the story in the Greek East and Latin West. By tracing this reception through various communities, they argue that it is most likely the case that the passage was originally introduced into a Greek copy of John in the West, only to gradually move East in such a way that it was “retained as fully traditional in both contexts until its removal from the original text by nineteenth century critical scholars” (248).
In the final two chapters, the authors explore how the text was received in late antiquity and the early medieval period, exploring how the story functioned in various communities. Through a study of lectionaries, liturgies, and artwork, they conclude that this story was a key part of liturgical life within the communities that knew it, and that this fact ultimately trumped any concerns about its origins.
The book is a remarkably detailed and careful analysis at every level. While it might be a challenging read for a beginning biblical scholar, I would nonetheless highly recommend Knust and Wasserman’s book to anyone interested in the nature of Scripture, Johannine studies, and/or text criticism more broadly. To that last group, I would add that this book puts forward a compelling answer to questions about the usefulness of text criticism as it moves beyond previous attempts to uncover the “original text.” By tracing this one story through its transmission, Knust and Wasserman raise important and necessary questions about what it meant for something to be a “Gospel story” in early Christian communities, implicitly pointing their readers to the question of what it might mean for Christian and scholarly communities in the present.
Jennifer S. Wyant
Candler School of Theology