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LESSON 84.
THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE PERICOPE.
682. That this narrative of the woman taken in adultery
has the living truth of God in it is proved by its amazing
vitality. What but truth could hold its own and progress
through the ages with such adverse winds against it? For all
through the ages, particularly since the supplanting of
female kinship by male kinship, men have held that woman
must be more chaste than man, as otherwise man might have
more children than his own reckoned in among his progeny; in
female kinship no such danger must be guarded against, in
genealogical tables. Herein is the chief cause of the
persistent maintenance of two standards of chastity, one for
men and one for women. But the teaching of Jesus Christ is
that man must first show himself to be chaste before dealing
with woman’s unchastity.
683. The Talmud, for instance, during a discussion
between rabbi and scholars, reproduces words incidentally
which show that some of the most honored among them,¾married
men¾expected
women to be furnished them when away from home in the
performance of their duties as religious leaders; and yet
the Talmud teaches that a man should repudiate his wife
as a proved adulteress, if merely found abroad with her
head uncovered. And we know of pagan customs dealing no less
cruelly with women guilty of the least indiscretion.
Further, we have only to read the discourses of some of the
“Church Fathers,” as
Tertullian, particularly on the veiling of women, to see
exhibited the same spirit of injustice to women. And surely,
no one can pretend that anything
more than lip-homage
to the teaching
of the pericope has ever been exhibited
in the Church up
to the present
day, excepting
in rare
instances.
684. Where ever has existed the man, in ancient times or
modern, so jealous for the rights of women, so skilful in
drawing a picture of absolute justice, and yet so
unscrupulous in character, and so influential, as to have
foisted this story upon the credulity of the Church, so that
the ecclesiastical authorities, who live so far beneath its
principles of justice in dealing with fallen women, are
compelled to let the story persist, and dare not wipe it out
of existence? No stronger proof than this is needed that it
is a true incident in the life of our Savior. That we should
find that a few attempts have been made to discredit it
(such as the Revisers), is no more than we should expect.
The textual critics, Westcott and Hort, are the chief one in
England to cast doubt upon its authenticity, and yet they
say: “The argument that has always told most in its favor in
modern times is its own internal character. The story itself
has justly seemed to vouch for its substantial truth.”
685. Besides the oppressive measures instituted by the
male in order to maintain male kinship making it necessary
to see to it that women are chaste, whatever men may be,
another factor has worked prejudicially against the
authenticity of this story. This is well expressed in the
words of Dr. Philip Schaff: “The story could not have been
invented, the less so as it runs contrary to the ascetic and
legalistic tendency of the ancient Church which could not
appreciate it.” We have only to think of the days when monks
fled to the wilderness, that they might never be defiled by
looking upon the face of a woman; and when celibacy was so
exalted that marriage was looked upon as a mild sort of
adultery (Tertullian spoke of married women as “women of the
second degree [of modesty] who have fallen into
wedlock”), to understand these difficulties in the way of a
preservation of the pericope. Augustine tells us
(died about 430 A.D.) that men “from fear lest their wives
should gain impunity in sin, removed from their manuscripts
the Lord’s act of indulgence to the adulteress.” Ambrose,
twenty-five years earlier, intimated that danger was
popularly apprehended from the story; “while Nicon, five
centuries later, states plainly that the mischievous
tendency of the narrative was the cause why it had been
expunged from the Armenian versions.”
686. Furthermore, to quote Dean Burgon again, “In the
earliest age of all,¾the
age which was familiar with the universal decay of heathen
virtue, but which had not yet witnessed the power of the
Gospel to fashion society afresh, and to build up domestic
life on a new and more enduring basis;¾at
a time when the greatest laxity of morals prevailed, and the
enemies of the Gospel were known to be on the
lookout for grounds of
cavil against Christianity and its Author,¾what
wonder if some were
found to remove the pericope de adultera from their
copies, lest it should be pleaded in extenuation of breaches
of the seventh commandment? The very subject-matter, I say,
of John 8:3-11 would sufficiently account for the
occasional omission of those nine verses.”
687. We need not fear, however, that this story has ever
done any mischief, or ever will. The story does not suit the
views of men who are over-careful as to the prudent conduct
of their wives, while loose in their own morals. Christ’s
blow was aimed at two standards of morality; at injustice;
at hypocrisy. It was not a blow in defense of adultery in
either man or woman. Those who have made use of the
narrative, or its principle of justice, in dealing with
fallen women, have discovered how it encourages the victim
of society’s cruel injustices to try again, in the strength
of Him whose sceptre is “absolute justice.” We have
known the story to bring a hardened woman sinner to instant
repentance,¾for
the reckless immorality of a fallen girl is generally to be
accounted for in the words of Jeremiah, which so vividly
describe the effect of hopelessness upon women: “And they
said, There is no hope; but we will walk after our own
devices, and we will every one do the imagination of his
evil heart. Therefore thus saith the Lord: Ask ye now among
the heathen, who hath heard such things: the virgin of
Israel hath done a very horrible thing: (Jeremiah
18:12,13).
688. There is absolutely nothing which destroys morality
out of the human heart so effectually and quickly as
injustice, and there is nothing which so quickly lights the
Divine flame of penitence and aspiration for holiness, in
the heart of the fallen, as the hope of justice. Justice is
the kindest thing in the world; Injustice is the cruelest
and the most depressing. We have seen, repeatedly, the
softening effect of this story upon the dark, pagan hearts
of women of shame in the Orient,¾“Our
gods have taught nothing so wonderful as this,” they have
said, “yours must be the true God.”
689. Jesus Christ would not have said to the woman,
“Neither do I condemn thee,” had she remained
impenitent,¾so
no harm was done. If the effect of the story upon the
fallen is so marked, we do not infer too much when we say
that the Savior’s sentence of justice was quite enough to
bring the woman to instant repentance. His kindness was such
a tremendous contrast to the Pharisees who had dragged her
into publicity while they let her male partner go free,¾for
the details of the story convict them of having had the man
in their power, had they cared to make an example of him.
Thus they had come, red-handed in compromise with male
adultery, to make a chance to strike at the Holy One. What
cared they if a woman must be made to suffer, too, with the
Christ,¾if
only they could entangle Him!
690. The truth is,
no quality whatever it happens to be, has anything of use or
morality in it unless it be founded upon the basic principle
of all morality,¾justice.
The lack of justice vitiates any moral quality which we may
seek to exercise apart from justice. Hence, no good was
every done, and no good can ever be done, by legal
enactments for the benefit of society, which, for reasons of
“prudence” omit principles of justice.
Here is where the great mistake is being made on the “woman
question.”
Is it “prudent” to allow women to do thus and so?¾men
ask themselves at every step of woman’s progress. The only
question that should be asked is, Does justice demand this?
If so, “let justice be done though the heavens fall;”
anything short of justice is mere mischief making.
(To be continued.) |