![]() While the NT Apocrypha often conflict with the portrait of Jesus in the canonical gospels, the OT Apocrypha “expand the canonical OT in ways agreeable to, or at least not hostile to, its theology.” Such a designation for Bridges is only meant to refer to content (that it may belong to John), not its inspiration. Carl Bridges compares the passage positively to the OT Apocrypha. A passage does not just belong to the historical Jesus of historical reconstruction and validation, but to a canonical gospel of the church.Īn analogy for comparison raised by a few scholars is the Apocrypha. Stories are not free-floating scenes for interpretation, but intentional parts of narratives that need implicitly historical contexts, but need explicitly narrative contexts. For even if we knew it was true, we would not know how to interpret it. And its historicity hardly scratches the issue at hand. But this is vague foundation for its use in the church. The argument goes as follows: since the passage can be shown to be ancient (rooted in the oral tradition that supplied our gospels with raw materials) and authentic (matching the criteria used to determine what in the gospels Jesus truly did and said), the text is deemed appropriate for Christian use and reflection – and its interpolation into the Gospel of John suggests that earlier Christians deemed it likewise. Since the passage cannot be confirmed by textual criteria, the primary means of solidifying support for the passage has been by historical criteria. For nearly every contemporary Bible, even if the text is given double-brackets or italicized or given a smaller font, contains this passage, thereby declaring to today’s reader that it is part of the Gospel of John. This is hardly an answer, however, but an entirely new question. The text-critical evidence is overwhelming: this passage was almost certainly not in the original version of the Gospel of John. ![]() How should the church treat this passage? But there is also a more difficult reason that needs to be addressed: this passage was likely not in the original version of the Gospel of John, but was added later at an undeterminable time and for an unknown reason. The pleasant reason is that it is one of the most dramatic displays of the grace of God in the Bible. John 7:53-8:11, often described as “The Passage of the Woman Caught in Adultery” ( passage de adultera), is famous for several reasons.
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