The Pericope Adulteræ (Latin pronunciation ; English pronunciation ; Latin for "the passage of the adulterous woman") is the name traditionally given to verses 7:53–8:11 of the Gospel of John, which describe the attempted stoning by Pharisees of an accused adulterous woman, and Jesus' defense of her. In English, the passage is usually referred to as "the woman taken in adultery."

The episode is famous for the words "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone", spoken by Jesus to the woman's accusers, and is a favorite for film adaptations, because it is one of the clearest and most dramatic examples in the Gospels of Jesus rescuing someone in mortal danger.

The passage reads as follows (taken from the English Standard Version):

7:53 They went each to his own house, 8:1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught



in the act of adultery. 5 Now in the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” 6 This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

Authorship

Arguments against Johannine authorship

The pericope is now recognized by some scholars of the New Testament as an interpolation: it disrupts the story told at the end of chapter 7 and in the remainder of chapter 8; it uses Greek more characteristic of the synoptic Gospels than of John; it appears in only one early Greek manuscript

Many scholars nevertheless accept it as an authentic tradition of Jesus that was added to the gospel by another writer for the sake of completeness. John Calvin, in his Commentary on John, wrote:

"It seems that this passage was unknown anciently to the Greek Churches; and some conjecture that it has been brought from some other place and inserted here. But as it has always been received by the Latin Churches, and is found in many old Greek manuscripts, and contains nothing unworthy of an Apostolic Spirit, there is no reason why we should refuse to apply it to our advantage."

Apologist James Patrick Holding argues that it was an authentic account from the ministry of Jesus, but more likely to have been authored by Luke, and his "loose leaf" was incorporated into copies of John's Gospel.

Arguments for Johannine authorship

On the other hand, Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad, in the introduction to their edition of the Majority Text (a version of the New Testament based primarily on the number of witnesses to a reading, rather than automatically or critically assuming the oldest texts are the most accurate), argue for Johannine authorship of the pericope. They point to the phrasing at 8:6, which follows a similar grammatical structure to 6:6, 7:39, 11:51, 12:6, 12:33, and 21:19, verses regarded as particularly Johannine by most critics. Further, the use of the vocative γύναι (woman) is a very typical Johannine usage. The phrase "sin no more" in 8:11 occurs only one other time in the New Testament, at John 5:14.

Hodges and Farstad also argue that the pericope is particularly suited to the point in the Gospel where it occurs in the majority of the 900 copies that contain it. The Feast of Tabernacles is being celebrated (John 7:14), so there would be a large number of pilgrims in the city, making it more likely that strangers would be thrown together. The pericope thus occurs naturally at this point. The confrontation would have to have taken place in the Court of the Women, and indeed John 8:20 indicates that that is where Jesus was. Hodges and Farstad conclude, "If it is not an original part of the Fourth Gospel, its writer would have to be viewed as a skilled Johannine imitator, and its placement in this context as the shrewdest piece of interpolation in literary history!"

See also

• Comma Johanneum
• New Testament
• Textual criticism
• John 21
• Mark 16
• Gospel