What should we do with John 7:53-8:11—the famous story of the woman caught in adultery?

Those who seek to discredit the reliability of the New Testament enjoy highlighting this story, in particular, as a way to show that even the Bible doesn’t know what should be in it. The charge is often that there has been some tampering with the Scriptures and, therefore, we can’t know what belongs.

I’d like to offer what I hope will be a helpful correction to that point of view.

The fact that we know that there’s an issue with this story of the woman caught in adultery actually points to the solid reliability of the New Testament Scriptures. It’s not as if we’re wondering if the story is authentic—that it was originally written by the author of John’s Gospel—it isn’t.

Even the footnotes in the modern English translations of the Bible testify to that truth.

The modern critical editions of the Greek New Testament offer the same information about the story.

What this means for us is that we have a major story in the New Testament that isn’t original. We know this because the earliest manuscripts do not have this story.

Contrary to this causing discomfort about the text, it should actually give you assurance that we know what belongs. It’s not as if we have only 90-pieces to a 100-piece puzzle. We actually have 110-pieces, and this is good news.