John 7:53-8

The context

This passage, the woman caught in adultery, is absent from the earliest manuscripts of John and appears in different places in later ones, sometimes after Luke 21. In the narrative as received, it interrupts the Feast of Tabernacles sequence: Jesus has been teaching in the temple and the authorities have been trying to seize him.

What it establishes

The scene dramatizes the collision between a capital charge and the demand that the accusers be qualified to execute it, and it ends with the accusers leaving and the woman told to sin no more. It is a memorable depiction of mercy that does not dismiss the charge.

What it does not establish

It does not establish its own place in John. The textual evidence is against its originality, and it should not be the sole basis for doctrine or practice. Nor does Jesus abolish the law; he does not deny the offense, and the man is never mentioned.

Short note, first pass, October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• Hasn't the Bible been changed by men over the centuries? How can anyone trust it?
• With no original texts and 400,000 contradictions in the COPIES of the New Testament, the bible is unstrustworthy. Read Bart Ehrman's 'Misquoting Jesus'.

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.