Originally Posted by JamesABrown

I take an different view. I see the pericope in conflict with other Gospel narratives of Jesus' view on Jewish law, such as not coming to do away with the law but fulfill it, etc.

Originally Posted by JamesABrown

I take an different view. I see the pericope in conflict with other Gospel narratives of Jesus' view on Jewish law, such as not coming to do away with the law but fulfill it, etc.

The Deuteronomic penalty for adultery was death. Where the fellow caught in adultery was, I don't know, but for the woman at least, she was properly bound for the stoning. Jesus, called upon as an impromptu judge, didn't question the facts of the case. Instead, he questioned the motives of her accusers. When they slinked away (for often speculated, but essentially unknown reasons) he lets her off with a warning.

Let's move this milieu to a modern-day example of a capital crime: first-degree murder (in Texas, for instance). A man is hauled before a judge and accused of first-degree murder. The prosecuting attorney claims it was two people who performed the murder, but the other person's whereabouts are unknown. So the judge stares hard at the prosecutor and asks leading questions about kickbacks and the prosecutor's most recent election campaign. The prosecutor recuses himself from the case and leaves the courtroom. The judge then looks at the accused and asks, "Is there anyone here to bring a case against you?" The accused replies (via his defense attorney, of course), "No, your honor." The judge then says, "Neither do I. You're free to go; don't murder anyone anymore."

Would we look upon this with pathos and beauty? Would we praise this judge as a man of far-seeing wisdom and compassion? Some would, maybe. My courtroom analogy may be all wet, and feel free to correct me if I'm looking at this from the wrong angle, but I don't understand why this story "captures the essence of Jesus' teachings" when he clearly taught that the very law which his own Father God decreed was valuable and holy, not something to be discarded at random in order to make a ethical point.

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Um, Bart Ehrman is a renegade, engaged in bashing his former religion.

Originally Posted by Toto

Christianity Today: Is 'Let Him Who Is without Sin Cast the First Stone' Biblical? Scholars are cautious about the story of the woman caught in adultery

The same as the story about baby Jesus making clay birds and then animating them so they fly away? or striking his playmate dead and then reviving him?

Originally Posted by arnoldo

...
Umm... isn't the "clay bird text" based upon the second century gnostic text, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas . . . . if anything this gnostic document gives evidence of an original first century gospel. BTW, the text in question is also in the Qu'ran.

Originally Posted by Toto

Infancy Gospel of Thomas is a fanciful prequel of the gospels that fills in the missing years. There is nothing particulary gnostic about it.

Originally Posted by arnoldo

From you source: It is self evident that this so called Infancy Gospel was expounding on the earlier first century gospels which for clear purposes left out the majority of the childhood of Yeshua.

Originally Posted by makerowner

No, it's not. I see you've gone back to your old standby strategy of quoting anything that mentions the topic without checking if it actually supports your position. If you read the sentence you quoted carefully, you'll notice that it says nothing about the dating of Luke or any other gospel; all it says is that the Infancy Gospel was written in the 2nd century.

Originally Posted by Gamera

I'm curious why the OP feels the need to "save" the pericope's "authenticity" (whatever that means). I'm a Christian, and the apparent fact that the pericope comes from a distinct tradition from the texts in which it appears, doesn't shock or disturb me in the slightest. It's a beautiful little narrative (one that captures the essence of Jesus' teachings in my opinion), but the meaning of the gospels is hardly dependent on this mise-en-scene and if it had never gotten into the texts I suspect Christianity would sail on.

By the way, as noted above, I suspect it is the very economy and beauty in which the pericope captures what was considered the essense of Jesus' teachings that led to it migrating into the gospels from some other tradition, perhaps oral, perhaps textual. This arguably tells us something important about how the early church understood Jesus.

So, ironically, the fact that the pericope appears to be imported tells us more about the meaning of Jesus to the early Christianity than if it were part and parcel of the gospel texts. Thus, if sugarhitman had his way, the narrative would mean less, not more, to Christianity. So as a Christian I'm defending the fact that the pericope meant so much to the early church that it was inserted into the gospel texts, where it clearly did not originate.