Selected Reading

I read these this week and recommend them to you.

Atonement

3 Reasons I Changed My Mind About Penal Substitution
“Actually reading the Scriptures in their cohesive entirety, and seeing the Old Testament repeatedly preview the gospel, showed me that Jesus bearing our sin and its penalty is central—not peripheral, and not artificially imposed—to the story’s vast sweep.” — Daniel Hames

(This is one reason we don’t want to “unhitch” from the Old Testament. The Old Testament sacrificial system, which was obviously substitutionary, foreshadows Jesus’s sacrifice, and gives us the needed background for understanding the substitutional nature of his sacrifice.)

Church History

Edward Dering and His Stuning Lenten Sermon
“Whatever Queen Elizabeth I might have expected by inviting Edward Dering to preach a Lenten sermon in her presence, it was certainly not an outspoken rebuke.” - Simonetta Carr.

Good Friday

Christina Rossetti, “Good Friday”
Michael Haykin says this poem “bears witness to a faith both thick and deep.”

“Man of Sorrows”
“God designed us as emotional beings. Emotions, feelings, and moods are God’s idea. Therefore, they are not, in and of themselves, sinful. In fact, they can be beautiful expressions of our creation in God’s image. Jesus was a deeply emotional being. His grief in the garden makes that abundantly clear.” - Bob Kelleman

He Can Help

I posted a reflection on Hebrews 2:18 at Out of the Ordinary today. 

Theological Term of the Week: Pericope Adulterae

 

Pericope Adulterae
The story of the woman caught in adultery which is usually printed in Bibles as John 7:53-8:11, but which most New Testament scholars believe is not part of the original text of the scripture because it is absent from all of the older manuscripts of John’s Gospel.

• From the ESV (These verses are double bracketed and there is a note that they are not included in the earliest manuscripts):

They went each to his own house, 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 midst4 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 e 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.” (John 7:53-8:11)

• From A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce Metzger:

The evidence for the non-Johannine origin of the pericope of the adulteress is overwhelming. It is absent from such early and diverse manuscripts as Papyrus^66.75 Aleph B L N T W X Y  D Q Y 0141 0211 22 33 124 157 209 788 828 1230 1241 1242 1253 2193  al. Codices A and C are defective in this part of John, but it is highly probable that neither contained the pericope, for careful measurement discloses that there would not have been space enough on the missing leaves to include the section along with the rest of the text. In the East the passage is absent from the oldest form of the Syriac version (syr^c.s. and the best manuscripts of syr^p), as well as from the Sahidic and the sub-Achmimic versions and the older Bohairic manuscripts. Some Armenian manuscripts and the old Georgian version omit it. In the West the passage is absent from the Gothic version and from several Old Latin manuscripts (it^a.l*.q). No Greek Church Father prior to Euthymius Zigabenus (twelfth century) comments on the passage, and Euthymius declares that the accurate copies of the Gospels do not contain it.

When one adds to this impressive and diversified list of external evidence the consideration that the style and vocabulary of the pericope differ noticeably from the rest of the Fourth Gospel (see any critical commentary), and that it interrupts the sequence of 7.52 and 8.12 ff., the case against its being of Johannine authorship appears to be conclusive.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions: Does John 7:53-8:11 belong in the Bible?
2. Daniel Wallace: My Favorite Passage That’s Not in the Bible
3. John Piper: Neither Do I Condemn You
4. Bible Research: Concerning the Story of the Adulteress

Related terms:

• autographs
• inerrancy of scripture
• inspiration of scripture
• manuscripts
• text criticism

Filed under Scripture

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