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.

        The problem of the pericope can be simply stated. The facts in the tradition cannot be as set out³². The episode must date from an early tradition. Early Christians were both troubled by the episode and deeply attached to it. My scenario gives, I suggest, a plausible early setting, and would explain why the pericope was changed yet retained.

        On the interpretation I am suggesting the pericope is quite remarkably neat. The scribes and Pharisees could reasonably claim that the woman was caught in the very act of adultery. Though for them there was no adultery, there was ipso facto for Jesus when a divorcée remarried. The Pharisees did not produce the witnesses requisite for proof of adultery. From the stance adopted by Jesus witnesses were superfluous: the adultery was flagrant. The phrase in v. 4, e)p' au)tofw/rw| "in the act", is an exaggeration, but very understandable.

        One final point. Once Jesus was believed to have taken a stance on divorce as in Mark 10,2-9 and Matt 5,31-32; 19,3-9, then a debate such as I postulate for the beginning of John 8 is almost inevitable. Jesus had not come to abolish the law but to fulfill; not one letter, not one stroke would pass from the law until all was accomplished (Matt 5,18-19). Moses permitted divorce and remarriage (Deut 24,1-4). Jesus opposed divorce. He regarded remarriage as adultery. This issue he debated with Pharisees (Mark 10,2-9; Matt 19,3-9). Moses commanded that adulteresses be put to death (Lev 20,10; Deut 22,22). The mode of execution was stoning. Obviously then, it would be of great interest to the Pharisees to know if Jesus would both follow the law of Moses that adulteresses should be stoned to death and his own teaching that to remarry was to commit adultery. The context in which I site the pericope is both plausible and one likely to find its way into a tradition about Jesus³³.