Your Favorite Bible Story That's NOT in the Bible...
Textual Criticism & Why You Can Trust Your Bible
I always wondered how I would preach a Bible passage that had significant textual issues in a sermon series. Well, that day finally came.
I preached a sermon recently on John 7:53–8:20.
As you might know, there are text-critical issues in this section of John. When our Lead Pastor, Justin Windham, told me we were going through the Gospel of John, I knew this text was coming, and the whole time I was thinking, “I wonder how we’re going to handle this from the pulpit.”
If you’re wondering what the issue is, one conservative New Testament scholar called this passage, “My favorite story that is not in the Bible.”
God was faithful, through His grace, much help from our pastor, and other resources (attached below), to help me teach our congregation these difficult but necessary truths for the sake of honesty and bolstering greater trust in the inerrant scriptures! (Disclaimer: I don’t claim to have done this in the best way it could have been done, nor am I claiming to be a Greek scholar who has observed every single manuscript.)
Below is a transcript of the intro and first point of the sermon or you can go here to watch/listen to it. I pray that by reading/listening, you are helped in handling these issues when you come to them in your reading or, if you’re a pastor/Bible study leader, your teaching.
I’m primarily posting this to serve our local church so they have something to reference after receiving a firehose of information.
Intro
For thousands of years, God’s people have confessed the truth of Psalm 119:105: “Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”
And the written, authoritative Word brings to our hearts the living Word. Who is the living Word? Well, in our studies of the gospel of John, we learned that the living Word is Jesus Christ. He is the true and final Word from the Father.
And He declares Himself in our text to be the true lamp and light for all His people — He is the light of the World. From the first 3 verses of the Bible, Genesis 1:1–3, we see God speaking light into a formless and void world that He made. And Jesus here is now declaring that He has full authority to call Himself the true light that has come from God into this dark world. Main point: We must see Jesus as the True light for His people who delivered us and continues to deliver us from spiritual darkness.
Jesus is the true light because…
He Expels the Darkness of Shame and Condemnation- Vs 7:53–8:11
To believe the living Word we must uphold the written Word, the Bible.
Excursus: I believe this is the Word of God. It is breathed out by God Himself, it is inerrant, and “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible standard of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience” (2LCF 1:1). I need to start this way today because I’m going to say something that may shock some of you. At the very least, may cause you to scratch your head.
But though I may bother you first, we’ll survey something that will hopefully unbother you later and cause you to rejoice.
Here’s the statement: Most conservative new testament scholars and pastors do not believe that the story of the women caught in adultery belongs in the Bible. It is not what John originally wrote. You need to know that I agree with them. I don’t believe this passage belongs in the canon of scripture. That’s why your Bible either puts double brackets around the entire passage and puts a heading above that says “The earliest manuscripts…”
D.A. Carson, one of the worlds finest and best New Testament scholars says, “Despite the best efforts . . . to prove that this narrative was originally part of John’s Gospel, the evidence is against [them], and modern English versions are right to rule it off from the rest of the text (NIV) or to relegate it to a footnote (RSV).” (The Gospel According to John, 333)
A well-known pastor I know many respect also confirms: “Because we have so many manuscripts, there’s really little doubt that this was added later. If something isn’t in the oldest and shows up later, obviously it was added…but the problem is if it didn’t appear in the original text, then it is not inerrant. There’s no guarantee that it’s accurate. There’s no guarantee that it’s without error, like every other part of Scripture.” John MacArthur
And before you think I’m the young guy going rogue at the pulpit, Here’s what our lead pastor who does most of the preaching said: “Ditto.” — Justin Windham
Why it’s not original- 4 Quick reasons
The earliest and oldest Greek manuscripts of the NT that we have today do not contain this story. That is, all the manuscripts up until the 5th century.
Related to that, no early church Father comments on this story when writing or preaching on the Gospel of John. They pass straight from vs 52 of Chapter 7 to vs 12 of Chapter 8. We don’t see commentary appearing until the 10th century.
The style of Greek writing is different from how John normally writes in the rest of his gospel.
In the manuscripts we do have that contain this story insert it in 3 different places than where you see it right now. Some add it after 7:36, after 21:25, or after Luke 21:38
What Happens in Transmission
Why did this get added? What you need to know for today is that the way that the New Testament came to us was through hand-written copies. We do not possess the original parchment or paper that Paul or the apostles wrote on, so we have copies of copies of copies. The first Greek New Testament did not come off of a printing press until the year 1516 by Catholic Scholar named Erasmus.
When you have a multiplicity of Greek manuscripts, as you can imagine from copying by hand and oral dictation, there are variations or scribal mistakes that occur. The Bible didn’t float down to us from the clouds on gold tablets. God used ordinary historical methods.
So this story, which was probably a story handed down orally, was added in by a scribe who was copying the New Testament. Then over time, with more copies being produced, it made its way into the main text and became a part of our modern Bible which modern scholars are unwilling to remove so they put it in brackets to let us know that it’s a later addition.
Why You Should Trust Your Bible and It’s Authority
You may be thinking, “Uh oh. What does this mean for the rest of the Bible? is any text up for grabs like this? Can I still trust my Bible?”
The answer is a resounding yes! You can have full confidence in the Word of God you hold there in your hands. These kinds of situations like we have today are very rare and few. The only real significant texts to wrestle with are this one and the ending of the book of Mark.
God in His faithful, sovereign providence has preserved the original text for us and we praise God for those on the front lines laboring to hand to us the original wording of the rest of the Bible.
False teachers today will tell you that the Bible cannot be trusted because of these texts, but I’m here to tell you: that’s a lie.
The method that we have today to determine what was original and what is not is called Textual Criticism.
It’s when Greek scholars take all of the manuscripts, put them side-by-side, compare and contrast, and observe things like, “This small family of manuscripts contain this story, but these over here which are many, older, and of a significant geographical origin, do not contain this story. So these over here are original and what John originally wrote.”
Comparing the NT with Other Documents
Here’s what is absolutely fascinating:
There are some other ancient documents we have from history.
Julius Ceasar’s Gallic Wars (50 or 58 BC)- Only 10 manuscripts dating from the 10th century AD or later.
Tacityus’ Histories and Annals from 100AD- only 2 manuscripts and they date from the 9th and 11th centuries.
No one sits there challenging these documents but just trust that these records are reliable. But think about this: We have roughly over 5,500 New Testament manuscripts today. And the oldest manuscript of the Gospel of John dates to 125AD which is only 35 years after the New Testament was written! That’s incredible!
The reason you should be excited about this is because with that many manuscripts available, which are in alignment doctrinally, we can more easily discern and determine with a GREAT level of certainty what is original and what isn’t God be praised for the evidence which shows us the faithfulness and the care taken by the scribes in copying the New Testament for us that the original wording has been preserved.
95% percent of the copyist mistakes are so minor and as insignificant as misplaced letters, repeating words, article changes or additions. Any other variations that we have less certainty about does not affect ONE Bible doctrine, the nature of Jesus, the Gospel story or the way of Salvation. The overall tradition of manuscripts and the methods we call Textual Criticism has enabled us to be confident to call the Bible we hold today, “the Word of God.”
What to Do With This Beloved Story
Who doesn’t love this beautiful story of forgiveness and love? While I don’t believe that this story is original nor authoritative over your life, I do believe that this story happened as it is written for us. I praise God that this historical event was preserved for us. It doesn’t contradict Jesus’ nature or the character of the pharisees in the slightest. So I will now begin preaching the point of this story and use it merely as an illustration for what the rest of the Bible teaches…
(Watch the rest of the sermon)
