Alan Watson, «Jesus and the Adulteress», Vol. 80 (1999) 100-108

Many factors contribute to a re-examination of the story of the adulterous woman (John 7,53–8,11). This essay responds to these factors by its defense of the suggestion that the woman is a re-married divorcee, at fault not with the Mosaic Law, but with the teaching of Jesus on divorce.

may have brought the woman to Jesus and said, "Teacher, this woman was divorced and remarried, and so is caught in the very act of adultery...".

        My approach also helps with a well-known difficulty. The episode is regarded as having existed in the early tradition and as giving the authentic voice of Jesus, even if the episode is not historically accurate. Quite so. The original version must indeed be early because the penalty for adultery was changed to strangulation in the early second century³⁰. But then there is a problem with the fact that the pericope is not in the early manuscripts, and its location in John varies with the manuscripts that do contain it, and it even appears in Luke. This would suggest some discomfort with the episode, an unwillingness to ignore it yet a reluctance to accept it. But if my "Sitz in Leben" of the pericope is acceptable the difficulty disappears. The pericope shows Jesus as having great magnanimity of spirit. He also won the debate with the Pharisees. He does in every debate. But here there is a difference from his other confrontations. His victory here was only in the short term. Even those who were not Pharisees would realize with a little reflection that Jesus was caught in a trap he himself had made. The law of Moses was quite explicit on the penalty for adultery. Jesus had widened the scope of adultery. He could not deny the death penalty for adultery — he does not — unless he renounced the Mosaic punishment or disclaimed his own stance on divorce or adopted the rabbinic interpretation of the ordeal in Num 5,11-31. His supporters sought to control the matter by removing the specifics of the case — a remarried divorced woman — to make him generally merciful: but they still felt discomfort, and were unsure of how to deal with the situation. The problem for the early Christians, separated now from Judaism, was the greater in view of their hostility to divorce, and their strict attitude to sex outside of marriage.

        I wrote above that Jesus’ victory here was only "in the short term". But I need to be more specific. The problem for his response would appear only when early Christianity began to split from Judaism. Jesus’ response was very correct and subtle according to the Pharisaic tradition. I have claimed elsewhere that though Jesus was contemptuous of Pharisaic teaching he could also at times use sophisticated legal argument³¹. Here, I believe, we have another example.

        Hesitation to accept my thesis will reasonably continue because there is no direct textual evidence that Jesus was represented as considering the specific situation of a remarried divorcée. I understand. Arguments from silence are scarcely attractive. But I would invite the following considerations. First, the pericope, which cannot in origin have been as it now is, contains very serious problems for understanding what was going on. On my approach these problems disappear. Second, we can now, for the first time I think, understand the difficulties in the manuscript tradition: was the episode, historical or not, however reformulated, to be treated as canonical? Third, we can empathize with the reasons for the deletion of the immediate context.