Hello, ladies and gentlemen. This is Dean Meadows for another episode of Dean's Dialogue in association with The Daily Apologist. And speaking of apologizing, I'm sorry that I haven't been as consistent over the course of the last several months. I've just got a lot of things going on with school, with ministry, family, all that stuff.
So hopefully next next year, actually, starting in January, I can be more consistent on the podcast because school at Biola is starting to wind down. I'm ending. I'm nearing the finish line from a master's in apologetics. So thank you for hanging in there with me.
Thank you for sticking with me through thick and thin. And now it's time for a shameless plug. If you are in the Charlotte, Huntersville, Cornelius, Davidson area from January 18th, 19th and 20th, I will be there doing an apologetic seminar on the case for the Christian worldview. So we're going to look at things like the resurrection.
We're going to look at things like the existence of God, the reliability of the New Testament. So hopefully you can join me for that. Thanks again to the leadership at the Lake Norman Church Christ and the people at the Lake Norman Church Christ for allowing me to come and spend some time with them over a weekend. So we're going to pick up right where we left off the last time that we got together or that I recorded a podcast.
We looked at the long ending of Mark from Mark chapter 16, 9 through 20. And today we're gonna look at another long variant that I like to call it from John chapter 7, 53 through John 8, 11. The famous story of the woman caught in adultery. And as you paraphrase the story for those of you who don't have a Bible with you, basically the scribes and Pharisees come to Jesus with a lady who was caught in the act of adultery.
And they say, hey, what do we wanna do? The law says we're to stone her. And Jesus famously, hashtag supposedly, right? Because we're looking at this historical reliability of it, said he was without sin, cast the first stone.
They all drop their stones, they walk away. He looks at the woman and says, who condemns you? They don't condemn you, I don't condemn you. Go and sin no more.
And so the questions that we wanna ask or that I wanna ask, and you can listen to and draw your own conclusions from, two questions. Is this an original piece of John's gospel and is it a historical event that took place? And so there are some differences that we need to note between Mark 16 and John 7, 53 through 8, 11. The story of the woman caught in adultery is different from Mark 16 in that the vast majority of the later manuscripts and even a few of the early manuscripts contain the long ending of Mark.
Whereas there's only a small percentage of later manuscripts that have the full text of John 7, 53 through 8, 11. So we need to just make sure that we note that we're dealing with a smaller set of texts that have John 7, 53 through 8, 11 than we were with Mark 16, 9 through 20. So here are some interesting things about this text that's located in John. A much larger number of the oldest and typically most reliable texts lack this story.
Now, there's some later manuscripts that have it, but there are asterisks in the margin, which basically the copyists are acknowledging that they had some serious questions about its authenticity. Another really interesting thing that we find when we look at those manuscript evidence is that there are these manuscripts that only have chapter 8, 2 through 11 or 8, 3 through 11. So there's not even the John 7, 53 up to 8, 1 or 8, 2 in some of these manuscripts. There's a whole section of verses that are left out.
Another thing that I found very fascinating about this section or these section of verses is that this story seems to move around a lot when you look at the manuscript evidence. For instance, there's a family of manuscripts called Family 13 that places this story, not in John, but actually after Luke 21, 38. And there are some minuscule, which are small cursive Greek scripts that they place this story after John 7, 36 and another at the end of the gospel of John, which seems odd to me. But also there are other minuscule that place this story at the end of the gospel of Luke.
So when we arrive at the first question, is this a part of the gospel of John? I think based on the evidence that this story is not original to John's gospel. Now, before you write me, email me or see me and throw tomatoes at me, we shouldn't be worried about that because even without this section in the gospel of John, it doesn't do anything to undermine Christian theology, core Christian theology. It doesn't alter the narrative regarding the relationship with Jesus and the Pharisees and the scribes, right?
It doesn't alter what we know about Jesus and his treatment of women. He elevates women to something more than a second or third class citizen. And it doesn't alter Jesus' teachings about adultery. Whether you have John 7 or you don't have John 7, Jesus still says that adultery is a bad thing.
So it's okay that this section isn't original to John. Now, you know, based on some of the sources that I've looked at, it does seem that this could be a historical event. You know, for instance, Bart Ehrman in his work, Jesus and the Adulteress, New Testament Studies, he wrote that in 1988 from pages 24 to 44. He seems to think that this is a historical event.
Craig Blomberg in his book, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament, notes that no one else in his world that we know of would have been so gracious towards an indisputable adulteress while simultaneously putting the scribes and Pharisees in their place so cleverly. And he says this has the earmarks of a historical event. So while the story might not be original to John, it is okay to view this as a historical event. And personally, just from, you know, the face of it, I think that that is a right way to look at it because the manuscript evidence doesn't seem to indicate that it was original to John.
But the manuscript evidence also says that this story jumps and moves around a lot. And plus the uniqueness of the story drives against the grain of something that would be a fictitious tale or something like that. And as Ehrman and Blomberg, who are on the opposite ends of the spectrum here when it comes to the historical reliability of the New Testament in that Blomberg's Christian Ehrman, is that they both seem to agree that this is a historical event. So in conclusion, what can we draw from this?
That number one, even if it's not original to John, it doesn't do anything to the understanding of Jesus, his teachings, his view of women, core Christian theology. And it's okay to say that it is a historical event, even though it's not located or original to the gospel of John. So that's the episode for today. Just wanted to give you a brief nugget about long variant that's located in John 53, 8 through 11.
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Some of those videos are there as well. And most importantly, equip yourself to engage culture. This is Dean Meadows signing off for The Daily Apologist. Have a great day.
God bless.