John 8: Part 3

I hope that the thought process has been convincing to either embrace the episode of the adulterous woman (the Pericope Adulterae or P.A. from hereon) and learn from it as inspired by God, or to remove it from the texts of Holy Scripture and consider a nice story, but not as authoritative in how we learn of God's grace and Kingdom. We cannot have our proverbial cake and eat it on this.

There are basically three arguments against including the P.A. in the text of Scripture:
1. Some of the words used in this passage are not common in the rest of the account (i.e. terms like "Scribes," etc.).
2. The most ancient manuscripts (collections of Greek texts) do not have the story, or it is placed somewhere else (usually at the end of John's Gospel or after Luke 21:38).
3. The earliest church Fathers (Ante-Nicene) do not comment on the story.

The focus of this post will address the first argument.

It is entirely indecisive to determine that a Scripture text was not written by a particular author simply because of the use of vocabulary. The same argument has been made by many to claim that Paul was not the author of the book of Ephesians. This is far too assumptive and restrictive as it limits an author to a particular vocabulary, style, etc. which is far too narrow in reality.

Probably the nature of the story required John to use words that he didn't use elsewhere. John includes a comprehensive view of Jesus life and ministry, from His creative activity to time before calling out the first disciples to time spent after the resurrection. Therefore, his vocabulary would be broad and many of the individual stories would include words not used in other writings (i.e. the way John uses "Word" to refer to Jesus is unique in Chapter 1, this does not mean he didn't write it).

Beyond this, the story fits quite well into the surrounding context. Consider the following:
a. While subtle, the story fits into the theme of light and darkness, as Jesus is presenting himself as light in contrast to the darkness of the woman caught.
b. The religious leaders are consistent in John's account as being more concerned with the Law of Moses than with broken people (consider the cleansing of the temple in John 2, the discussion with the Samaritan woman at John 4, the healing of the lame man at John 5...)
c. The teaching of Jesus is consistent with what he has been teaching in regards to the religious leaders. Namely, that they expect people to keep a law that they themselves do not keep (consider the argument about circumcision at John 7:19-24).
d. The character of Jesus that John is stressing is also consistent. Jesus is presented in this account as coming not "to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17). Here he tells the woman, "Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more."

The grammatical argument falls far short of being convincing and we must dismiss it as a legitimate reason for doubting the authorship by the Apostle John and authority of the P.A.