Roger Pearse

As Metzger remarks: "At the same time the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity. It is obviously a piece of oral tradition which circulated in certain parts of the Western church and which was subsequently incorporated into various manuscripts at various places."

Curious. Whoever this person might be, his qualifications for deciding what is, or is not, inspired scripture, do not appear at all evident to me.

This sounds very strange, and rather perverse. The ancient church chose to add it; not us! Who is this person, who seems to suppose that scripture may be made up on a whim, or that the Fathers did so?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

JoeWallack

JW:
I sense a major disturbance in the force of the Irony meter. I fear Aldebrain has been completely destroyed.



Joseph

http://errancywiki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Amaleq13

Does Metzger describe "all the earmarks of historical veracity" he finds in the story?

Toto

The quote is from The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, p 223, viewable on Amazon search.

His only reason is that "no ascetically minded monk would have invented a narrative which closes with what seems to be only a mild rebuke on Jesus' part: 'neither do I condemn you, go and do not sin again.'"

The bar for earmarks of historical veracity seems to have been set very low indeed.

Jeffrey Gibson

But assuming that the remark you quote is about earmarks of any kind, let alone those signifying historical veracity, why is the fact that what Jesus says and does in the narrative is consistent with the picture of Jesus attitude toward sin and sinners and stringent application of the Law that we know from the synoptics, but inconsistent with later more stringent Christian views on how sin and sinners should be treated, not a good earmark of the narrative's historical veracity?

Jeffrey

Toto

That's a pretty good assumption, since the sentence starts with "The story of the woman taken in adultery, for example, has all of the earmarks of historical veracity;"

You ask why this is not a good earmark of historical veracity? OK, lets look at this question. First of all, are there any earmarks of historical veracity in the gospels? I would say no; if there were, the question of the historical Jesus would be easier to answer.

So really you are only saying that this pericope is as likely to be historical as the rest of the sayings in the gospel. Metzger's argument in particular, is an argument against a later insertion of the pericope by a particular type of monk. But an argument against a particular sort of forger is hardly an argument in favor of historical veracity.

So what are the earmarks of historical accuracy in a little dramatic scene that has an unarmed Jewish wisdom teacher facing a mob of outraged men prepared to exact Biblical justice against a woman who defied patriachal strictures? That he defuses and calms the scene with a few well chosen words? This sounds like fantasy to me.

And one must ask how often women were actually stoned for adultery? My impression is that it was one of those theoretical punishments that was still part of the written law but almost never carried out. Some liberal commentators assume that this was just a trap that the evil Pharisees had set for Jesus, to force him to chose between the Law and common decency; but from what we actually know about the Pharisees from Maccoby, this seems highly unlikely behavior from them.

In general, adulterers were not stoned at the time, or for some time after. From here

So I fail to see any reason to treat this as historical.

Kelly

Saying that the story of the adulteress is not historical simply because it is not included in the earliest copies of the four gospels seems a bit of a stretch as there are hundreds of texts about Jesus not included in the Bible. For all any of us know the Vatican has a copy of the original text the story is included in but the Church of Rome chose to never release that text for their own curious reasons. Perhaps that same text contains other passages that bring into question certain established doctrines established by the Church of Rome, therefore they left the original text out but wrote the story in at a later date.

Arguing about it based on the four gospels that actually made it into the Bible seems an act of futility as neither side of the argument can be proved or disproved with any certainty. So why bother?

The act of a crowd of people stoning someone to death is an act of mob rule, is it not? To my knowledge mod rule is a very uncertain thing. While granted, some of the tribes of Israel may have indeed relaxed Mosaic Law concerning stoning a woman to death for adultery, are we to suppose that there were not some sects in the nation of Israel who were zealots in terms of Mosaic Law as well? To this day there are Jewish sects that demand strict adherence to the Laws of Moses and regardless of any recent tradition relaxing those laws they live pretty much in strict accordance with the Torah.

The passage quoted from Hosea reflects the attitude that men and women should be treated equally and this was hardly the case in most of ancient Israel. Israeli men commonly had multiple wives and concubines while their wives were expected to remain singularly faithful to their husbands. By the same token, though the law demanded that men be tried if accused of rape, in general it seems the most men were found not guilty of that sin for the town councils that determined the laws were made up entirely of men. Those councils were presided over by the Pharisees who pretty much ran things throughout the small towns of Judea. It was, for instance, more common in Jesus' time that a woman (or young girl) accusing a man of rape was found guilty instead of committing whoredom than it was common for a man to actually be found guilty of rape.

Quoting Hosea as "proof" that women were no longer stoned for adultery is also an act of futility in my opinion. Hosea was a revolutionary prophet. The particular passage quoted reflects the attitude of a God who demands that men and women be treated with equality which would have certainly been seen as a revolutionary concept by some and act of sheer "heresy" by others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Hosea

The Bible doesn't tell us what happened to Hosea. For all we know he ended up being one of the prophets that was persecuted.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered my children together, as a hen doest gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" (Lk 13:34)

If the nation of Israel would stone a prophet to death because they didn't like him, what makes anyone think they would not stone a woman accused of adultery as well?

Roger Pearse

There is certainly scattered material which may go back to Jesus in texts outside of the New Testament, albeit not much.

But not "hundreds of texts" -- I wonder if perhaps you are thinking of the so-called "NT apocrypha"? These have no such connection and consist either of much later novelisations or else later heretical forgeries.

However it is undoubtedly the case that material could exist outside of the four gospels which is historical -- indeed John's gospel tells us so -- and belief that it had such an origin is no doubt why the pericope is included (does anyone know of a patristic discussion of the passage?).

The idea that the Vatican library is a hoard of secret material has been a fertile basis for conspiracy theories for over a century and a half.

In the 19th century it was very difficult for scholars to gain access to the Bibliotheca Apostolica. This became rather an issue when the existence became known of the ancient manuscript of the bible, shelfmark 'Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209' (generally known as codex Vaticanus or B), but scholars were unable to gain access to it. Those scholars who did get access found their way obstructed. For instance there was a catalogue; but scholars were not allowed to see it. Instead they had to ask a librarian, who might or might not convey to them the information contained in it.

Beyond this there were certainly some texts which were not made available. The sole manuscript of the New History of Zosimus -- which is rabidly anti-Christian -- was made unavailable, although secret copies were taken and published.

Various conspiracy theories arose from all this, and are with us today.

The truth was rather more prosaic. Rome is in southern Italy, and the Popes employed local men as librarians. The laziness and fondness for obstruction of Italian librarians is a problem for researchers even today.

Around 1900 the then Pope grew weary of all the bad publicity and turned the library over to the Swiss guard. These are all Germans, and so very efficient. In consequence the Vatican library is today one of the better known libraries.

None of which stops the Vatican bureaucrats from closing the place for three years (!!), as they have just chosen to do.... <rage>

All the best,

Roger Pearse