This popped up ... so I thought I'd investigate.
What did Jesus write in the dirt on the temple floor in the story of the woman taken in adultery? (John 8:1-11)
"... and the answer is a very simple one, nothing, because this didn't happen."
OK, well that's a bit of a sweeping assertion.
"This is a literary creation, there is no historical event behind what is in the text. All that matters is what is in the text, and so there is nothing that was written in the dirt of the temple floor."
There is nothing new here; nothing sensational. McClellan refers to what scholars call the Pericope Adulterae, which scholars regard as an interpolation – written in a more polished Greek – between the events ending John 7 and the narrative that follows it at 8:12.
This does not mean, however, that the episode is necessarily entirely a literary invention. It could well be the case that it actually belongs to an older, oral tradition (if we assume John is late), that the scribe squeezed into the John at a convenient breakpoint – and one that it might suit the overall narrative thrust ... more of which later.
"but I want to suggest that there is symbolism just in the notion of Jesus writing in the dirt of the temple floor ..."
OK. What symbolism? I'll not keep you guessing – McClellan never explains what.
"The closest conceptual analog that we have to this anywhere in the scriptures is in Numbers 5, in what is known as the sotah or "the ordeal of bitter waters."
This ordeal is described in Numbers 5, and is quite detailed. Suffice to say if a man suspects his wife of adultery but has no evidence, he takes her to the temple, where the priest writes a curse and then takes some dirt from the temple floor, adds it to the water, scrapes the ink of the written curse into the water and the woman drinks it. If she is innocent nothing happens, she will remain fertile. If she is guilty she will be cursed with infertility ...
McClellan then goes on:
"One way to think about this story it may not have been what the author was intending but we have many of the elements of the sotah ..."
Clearly there are touch-points – a woman accused of adultery, notably the enigmatic writing in the dust of the temple floor, and the outcome. In the case of Numbers 5, God will decide, either she is fertile or not, although the text suggests a physical withering, and not just simply a failure to conceive. In the case of Jesus, the accusers fail to press their accusation, and Jesus will not be the fall-guy on their behalf.
A side point, however, is the existence of any story in the New Testament does not require an Old Testament 'conceptual analog' to validate it ... so this is a non-argument.
+++
"Now the temple didn't exist anymore when this story was written so there wouldn't have been any possibility for the sotah to be performed ..."
What? The temple existed in Jesus' day, it existed in the time period the gospel is set, so this is simply a false argument and a false validation of his 'literary creation' thesis.
"but it may be a subtle dig at the ritual of the sotah and maybe suggesting hey don't condemn women to death for this that's not how we do things anymore so just one way to think about that ..."
And the 'weasel' word is 'maybe' ... is it, or isn't it? I would suggest it isn't, and McClellan is just flat wrong here. This from Hart's commentary on the same story:
"For one thing, in late antiquity – Jewish, Christian, or pagan – it would have been far more scandalous than commendable in most eyes for Jesus to have allowed an adulteress to go away not only unpunished, but entirely without rebuke."
This seems more rational to me. Certainly the evidence of Scripture supports it. Paul, for example, would not dismiss adultery without rebuke, and took his congregations to task for less! I rather think McClellan is projecting a much later, dare I say contemporary, Christian attitude back into antiquity.
"But ultimately what I wanted to point out is that when we presuppose historicity behind these stories and we try to track down details of the events that exist behind the text we first got to make sure that there are events behind the text. In this case there are not, this is a literary creation ..."
Er ... No. That we can't 'track down' the 'events behind the text' does not mean there was not such an event. By that rule, most if not all of the New Testament could be dismissed as a fiction. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (McClellan, as a Mormon, should know this. He can't track down the events that support the historicity of the origins of his denomination ... quite the opposite, in fact.)
"it was not even in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John ..."
But, in the earliest texts of John there are diacritical marks at this point in the text, indicating that something – maybe this story, maybe another – had been omitted.
This was known. Augustine offered that perhaps it had been removed because of the offence it might give to pious souls unable to understand how Christ could excuse so grave a transgression with no more than an exhortation to sin no more.
"... and when it first pops up it is in different parts of the Gospel of John it's even in the Gospel of Luke and one manuscript ..."
And according to scholars is is written in a style far closer to Luke’s than John’s. It's in Luke in some Greek and Armenian manuscripts.
The story itself suits Luke, it's a better fit, and certainly a more compassionate Jesus is not a conspicuous characteristic of John's Gospel.
"Now, there are no data that support the historicity of these events so there was nothing that was being written in the dirt..."
No data?
There is a tale of a very sinful woman that Papias (110AD) mentions as being part of the lost 'Gospel of the Hebrews';
The Syrian Agapius of Hierapolis (died c942AD), cited an otherwise-unknown fragment of Papias, stated that Papias wrote a treatise on the Gospel of John, where he included the story within the Gospel itself. Another source said Papias, a disciple of John, wrote the entire Gospel, and yet another that Papias inserted the story into John's Gospel. Agapius seemed to have had extant and now-lost materials to work from.
The Syrian Didascalia Apostolorum (written mid-200AD) addressed to bishops of the Church, states that a bishop who does not receive a repentant person would be doing wrong – "for you do not obey our Savior and our God, to do as He also did with her that had sinned, whom the elders set before Him, and leaving the judgment in His hands, departed. But He, the searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her, 'Have the elders condemned thee, my daughter?' She said to Him, 'No, Lord.' And He said unto her, 'Go your way; neither do I condemn thee.' In Him therefore, our Saviour and King and God, be your pattern, O bishops."
The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles Book II.24, composed c. 380, echoes the Didascalia Apostolorum;
Further, Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398) states that "We find in certain gospels" an episode in which a woman was accused of a sin, and was about to be stoned, but Jesus intervened "and said to those who were about to cast stones, 'He who has not sinned, let him take a stone and throw it. If anyone is conscious in himself not to have sinned, let him take a stone and smite her.' And no one dared," and so forth."
Jerome also mentions the story.
Hart offers:
"It seems that the story was something of a freely floating tradition, perhaps with very deep roots in Christian memory, one that was not originally firmly associated with any particular Gospel text, but that was inserted in various versions of Luke or John because it was too beautiful and too illuminating of Christ’s ministry and person to be left out of the church’s lectionary cycle (and hence out of scripture).
This last point is worth noting: The Church was a Liturgical Church before it was a Gospel Church. The letters of Paul, for example, were copied, circulated and read out as part of the Liturgy, for the instruction of the faithful. The Gospels were compiled to provide a background story for the teachings received in and around the liturgy and the sacraments.
So this tale might well have been part of the 'lectionary cycle' which, rather than be lost, was folded into the Gospel where the scribe thought fitting.
+++
Oh ... and my 'more of this later' comment?
John 8:59 closes the chapter with: "So they took up stones, in order to cast them at him; but Jesus was hidden and departed from the Temple ..." which echoes their desire to stone the woman at the chapter's start. John 8:1-11 discusses their relationship with Moses. The end of John 8 discusses their relationship with Abraham...
"... but even if there were historicity to this story what we are interpreting is some author's representation of it and they represent it in certain ways with certain rhetorical goals ..."
The story of that development is indeed interesting and informative, as he points out, but sadly even though he mentions it as the more important aspect, he says nothing about it ...
What did Jesus write in the dirt on the temple floor in the story of the woman taken in adultery? (John 8:1-11)
"... and the answer is a very simple one, nothing, because this didn't happen."
OK, well that's a bit of a sweeping assertion.
"This is a literary creation, there is no historical event behind what is in the text. All that matters is what is in the text, and so there is nothing that was written in the dirt of the temple floor."
There is nothing new here; nothing sensational. McClellan refers to what scholars call the Pericope Adulterae, which scholars regard as an interpolation – written in a more polished Greek – between the events ending John 7 and the narrative that follows it at 8:12.
This does not mean, however, that the episode is necessarily entirely a literary invention. It could well be the case that it actually belongs to an older, oral tradition (if we assume John is late), that the scribe squeezed into the John at a convenient breakpoint – and one that it might suit the overall narrative thrust ... more of which later.
"but I want to suggest that there is symbolism just in the notion of Jesus writing in the dirt of the temple floor ..."
OK. What symbolism? I'll not keep you guessing – McClellan never explains what.
"The closest conceptual analog that we have to this anywhere in the scriptures is in Numbers 5, in what is known as the sotah or "the ordeal of bitter waters."
This ordeal is described in Numbers 5, and is quite detailed. Suffice to say if a man suspects his wife of adultery but has no evidence, he takes her to the temple, where the priest writes a curse and then takes some dirt from the temple floor, adds it to the water, scrapes the ink of the written curse into the water and the woman drinks it. If she is innocent nothing happens, she will remain fertile. If she is guilty she will be cursed with infertility ...
McClellan then goes on:
"One way to think about this story it may not have been what the author was intending but we have many of the elements of the sotah ..."
Clearly there are touch-points – a woman accused of adultery, notably the enigmatic writing in the dust of the temple floor, and the outcome. In the case of Numbers 5, God will decide, either she is fertile or not, although the text suggests a physical withering, and not just simply a failure to conceive. In the case of Jesus, the accusers fail to press their accusation, and Jesus will not be the fall-guy on their behalf.
A side point, however, is the existence of any story in the New Testament does not require an Old Testament 'conceptual analog' to validate it ... so this is a non-argument.
+++
"Now the temple didn't exist anymore when this story was written so there wouldn't have been any possibility for the sotah to be performed ..."
What? The temple existed in Jesus' day, it existed in the time period the gospel is set, so this is simply a false argument and a false validation of his 'literary creation' thesis.
"but it may be a subtle dig at the ritual of the sotah and maybe suggesting hey don't condemn women to death for this that's not how we do things anymore so just one way to think about that ..."
And the 'weasel' word is 'maybe' ... is it, or isn't it? I would suggest it isn't, and McClellan is just flat wrong here. This from Hart's commentary on the same story:
"For one thing, in late antiquity – Jewish, Christian, or pagan – it would have been far more scandalous than commendable in most eyes for Jesus to have allowed an adulteress to go away not only unpunished, but entirely without rebuke."
This seems more rational to me. Certainly the evidence of Scripture supports it. Paul, for example, would not dismiss adultery without rebuke, and took his congregations to task for less! I rather think McClellan is projecting a much later, dare I say contemporary, Christian attitude back into antiquity.
"But ultimately what I wanted to point out is that when we presuppose historicity behind these stories and we try to track down details of the events that exist behind the text we first got to make sure that there are events behind the text. In this case there are not, this is a literary creation ..."
Er ... No. That we can't 'track down' the 'events behind the text' does not mean there was not such an event. By that rule, most if not all of the New Testament could be dismissed as a fiction. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (McClellan, as a Mormon, should know this. He can't track down the events that support the historicity of the origins of his denomination ... quite the opposite, in fact.)
"it was not even in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John ..."
But, in the earliest texts of John there are diacritical marks at this point in the text, indicating that something – maybe this story, maybe another – had been omitted.
This was known. Augustine offered that perhaps it had been removed because of the offence it might give to pious souls unable to understand how Christ could excuse so grave a transgression with no more than an exhortation to sin no more.
"... and when it first pops up it is in different parts of the Gospel of John it's even in the Gospel of Luke and one manuscript ..."
And according to scholars is is written in a style far closer to Luke’s than John’s. It's in Luke in some Greek and Armenian manuscripts.
The story itself suits Luke, it's a better fit, and certainly a more compassionate Jesus is not a conspicuous characteristic of John's Gospel.
"Now, there are no data that support the historicity of these events so there was nothing that was being written in the dirt..."
No data?
There is a tale of a very sinful woman that Papias (110AD) mentions as being part of the lost 'Gospel of the Hebrews';
The Syrian Agapius of Hierapolis (died c942AD), cited an otherwise-unknown fragment of Papias, stated that Papias wrote a treatise on the Gospel of John, where he included the story within the Gospel itself. Another source said Papias, a disciple of John, wrote the entire Gospel, and yet another that Papias inserted the story into John's Gospel. Agapius seemed to have had extant and now-lost materials to work from.
The Syrian Didascalia Apostolorum (written mid-200AD) addressed to bishops of the Church, states that a bishop who does not receive a repentant person would be doing wrong – "for you do not obey our Savior and our God, to do as He also did with her that had sinned, whom the elders set before Him, and leaving the judgment in His hands, departed. But He, the searcher of hearts, asked her and said to her, 'Have the elders condemned thee, my daughter?' She said to Him, 'No, Lord.' And He said unto her, 'Go your way; neither do I condemn thee.' In Him therefore, our Saviour and King and God, be your pattern, O bishops."
The Constitutions of the Holy Apostles Book II.24, composed c. 380, echoes the Didascalia Apostolorum;
Further, Didymus the Blind (c. 313–398) states that "We find in certain gospels" an episode in which a woman was accused of a sin, and was about to be stoned, but Jesus intervened "and said to those who were about to cast stones, 'He who has not sinned, let him take a stone and throw it. If anyone is conscious in himself not to have sinned, let him take a stone and smite her.' And no one dared," and so forth."
Jerome also mentions the story.
Hart offers:
"It seems that the story was something of a freely floating tradition, perhaps with very deep roots in Christian memory, one that was not originally firmly associated with any particular Gospel text, but that was inserted in various versions of Luke or John because it was too beautiful and too illuminating of Christ’s ministry and person to be left out of the church’s lectionary cycle (and hence out of scripture).
This last point is worth noting: The Church was a Liturgical Church before it was a Gospel Church. The letters of Paul, for example, were copied, circulated and read out as part of the Liturgy, for the instruction of the faithful. The Gospels were compiled to provide a background story for the teachings received in and around the liturgy and the sacraments.
So this tale might well have been part of the 'lectionary cycle' which, rather than be lost, was folded into the Gospel where the scribe thought fitting.
+++
Oh ... and my 'more of this later' comment?
John 8:59 closes the chapter with: "So they took up stones, in order to cast them at him; but Jesus was hidden and departed from the Temple ..." which echoes their desire to stone the woman at the chapter's start. John 8:1-11 discusses their relationship with Moses. The end of John 8 discusses their relationship with Abraham...
"... but even if there were historicity to this story what we are interpreting is some author's representation of it and they represent it in certain ways with certain rhetorical goals ..."
The story of that development is indeed interesting and informative, as he points out, but sadly even though he mentions it as the more important aspect, he says nothing about it ...
