A mighty fortress is our God, The whole world shall adore Him. Get rid of their organs, they get rid of their choirs. So you have a tiny little reformed Baptist movement in this country of about two dozen dead musicless churches. Because if you have any wavering in your confidence about the integrity of your translation of the Bible, it will suck the conviction right out of your heart. And that leads to some very interesting, heretical, and very important conclusions. Hello and welcome to another episode of Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Today is Friday, November 7, 2014. It's a beautiful sunny day here in central Virginia. And I thought I would sit down and do another one of these Word Magazine podcasts. I wanted to return to the issue of text criticism today, and I did a number of these related to statements made by James White. And so I'm going to pick on somebody else today. I'm going to review a sermon that was preached by John Piper The video was posted, I think it was June 20, 2012, so I'm assuming the sermon was preached sometime around 2012. And John Piper, of course, is a well-known Calvinistic evangelical, Calvinistic but not Reformed evangelical, who was the longtime pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Minnesota. I think he's now retired from that position, but this apparently was presented while he was still the minister there. Pike was an interesting man. I know some years back he used to be just talked about all the time and so many so-called young restless reform types loved him. And I gotta say, I was never overly enamored with John Piper. I don't know, something about his preaching style, his affect, just never really appealed to me. There were other people I enjoyed listening to more. I did try to read some of his works and have read several, written reviews of several, and appreciate some things that he writes. But I think in particular, in the final years, of his ministry, he sort of went in some directions that I felt uncomfortable with, doing things like embracing even more boldly a continuationist, non-cessationist perspective, and talking about speaking in tongues, and those sorts of things, or casting out demons, and I just felt uncomfortable with that, and honestly I make it a practice really not to recommend John Piper any longer. But at any rate, I ran across this video, I actually saw it on another website that deals with text critical issues, and Piper gave this message I think on a Sunday evening or maybe a Saturday evening, because his church does multi-site and multiple services, But it was a message on John 7.53 through 8.11, the so-called Pericope Adulteri, which is one of the two most contested passages in the New Testament. Actually, this presentation reminded me a little bit of the one that John MacArthur did a couple years ago when he completed his exposition through the New Testament, and the last book he was dealing with was the Gospel of Mark, and he preached a message or gave a message, I think on a Sunday evening, on the traditional ending of Mark, Mark 16 9-20, in which he rejected Mark 16 9-20 as actually being part of Scripture and made his argument that the Gospel of Mark should end at Mark 16 8. Again, this message by Piper reminds me of that because Piper is going to similarly make an argument that the woman caught in adultery passage, John 7.53-8.11, is not really a part of the text of Scripture. And he's going to put forward some ideas on text criticism. I think it's interesting because Piper is a well-educated man. He has a PhD in New Testament, but he pursued a career in ministry, sort of a pastor-scholar And I think you learn a lot from what he says about his understanding of text criticism and how and who has influenced him by some of the things that he says and some of his method of argumentation. So anyways, without any further ado, I want to pick up playing some of Piper's sermon. The sermon is Nearly 41 minutes long. I'm not going to play all of it, although I'm going to play a big chunk of it. And I'm going to just see how far we go here. If it gets to be about an hour, I'll probably stop and do this as a two part series. But let's go ahead and get started with John Piper's introduction. I've skipped the opening prayer. Let's go ahead and get started with John Piper's introduction to his message on John 7.53 to 8.11, which has the title, Neither Do I Condemn You. Here we go. Well, this is one of those messages that I will give once every 10 or 20 years. I even wonder if I should call it a sermon. You'll see why in a moment. The reason for the rareness of the kind of message it is, is because of the rareness of the kind of text we're dealing with here. Alright, so he says this is something he rarely does. He's going to address text criticism from the pulpit. And he says he only does this every 10 or 20 years. And so this is going to be a rarity that he's going to address text criticism from the pulpit. In this passage. Most New Testament scholars don't think this text belongs in the Bible. Alright, so he starts off, his first statement about the pericope adultery, the woman caught in adultery, is that most New Testament scholars do not believe that this was an original part of the text of Scripture. And I just paused it here, he's going to go on and mention some of the experts who agree with Piper in believing that this is not part of the original text of Scripture. And I just pause it here to say that the way he begins here I think is typical for most evangelical pastors and scholars. Now, of course, John Piper is way ahead of the curve of most pastors. He, again, has a PhD in New Testament from a German university. He reads the Bible in the original languages He is a scholarly pastor, so he's way ahead of the curve of where most pastors are. But, like most pastors, most evangelical pastors, in truth, I think what he's going to say is that really he has not given, I don't think, that much attention to the textual issues in the Pericope Adulteri. Instead, he has relied upon the expert advice of other people who have studied it. And this is called an appeal to authority. And I went in off my bookshelf and picked up a little book that my wife used with our children when she was doing homeschooling with them. And she still is homeschooling them, but my older children, she used this book. called The Fallacy Detective. It's written by Nathaniel Bluehorn and Hans Bluehorn. 36 lessons on how to recognize bad reasoning. And I pulled this down and opened it up to a chapter, it's lesson 9, and they discuss the logical argument of appeal to authority and how it can become a logical fallacy. Now I'm not saying necessarily here that John Piper is engaging in a logical fallacy yet, but an appeal to authority can be a reasonable logical argument, but it can also be a fallacious logical argument. And this is just a little bit of what they say about it. This is page 59 that I'm reading from. They say, we are appealing to an authority when we claim something is true because an authority said it was true. Appealing to the advice of an authority can be good when we do it in the right way. However, if the person we are appealing to is not actually an authority in the area we are discussing, our appeal is faulty. So that's one way an appeal to authority can be false, if we appeal to someone and they're not really an authority in that particular area. It's a faulty appeal. They go on to say, unfortunately, some people use an appeal to authority in the wrong way. They appeal to an authority when arguing with people just to over-awe them. And so it's also a wrong use of appeal to authority if you do so simply to over-awe or overwhelm your audience or the person you're trying to convince. And then finally, this is over on page 60, they say, when the topic under discussion is controversial among respected authorities, then appealing simply to the opinion of a single authority is a faulty appeal to authority. If many accepted authorities disagree on a particular subject, we can't say our favorite authority is the correct one. There may be many other equally respected authorities who disagree. Now, Piper is not going to appeal to just one authority. He's going to list several people who do not believe that the pre-adulterite is part of the original text of scripture. He's going to appeal to multiple ones. What he doesn't do, though, is he doesn't point out that there are people with reputable credentials who would argue in favor of the Pericope Adulteri as being part of the original text of Scripture. There's Maurice Robinson who teaches at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. There is David Punch who appeared at the Pericope Adulteri conference. There are people like Zane Hodges, Arthur Farstad, Wilbur Pickering, people who understand text criticism, Edward Hills, and they believe, Theodore Letus, they believe that the Percupaea Adulteri was a legitimate, original part of the text of John. And so, anyways, we have to be careful with appeals to authority. And once again, I think most people hold the views that they do Most pastors, based on the authorities that they read when they were in seminary, and then I think most people in the pews, often hold the views that they do on the text of Scripture because of the authority of their pastor, elders in their church who have taught them this perspective. They assume it's true because people they respect hold this opinion. So anyways, let's listen to Piper's appeal to authority. Let me give you a few examples, and you need to know ahead of time I agree with them. And that raises really strange questions for us. So you see how strange and rare a sermon would be from a text that, if they're right, doesn't belong here. So what are you going to say? Well, it takes him a second to get to the authorities, but he raises another issue that's going to be key later on in the sermon, and he's raising it now, and that is, okay, if this passage is not original to the Gospel of John, then what is it? And is it appropriate for a Christian to preach from it or teach from it? Should we look to it as authoritative? And I think this is going to be a really key theological problem for those who reject the authenticity of the pericope adultery, but we'll get into that much more deeply later in the sermon. Don Carson, who I think is one of the world's greatest and most faithful New Testament scholars, Okay, so again, appeal to authority. We should believe it because John Piper believes that D.A. Carson is one of the best and most faithful scholars. If D.A. Carson holds the position and John Piper holds the position, then we should accept it. Again, that's appeal to authority. It's dangerous. I've got another podcast where I did a review of a debate between Bart Ehrman and James White. And in that debate, Bart Ehrman was challenging James White as to why he believed that it was possible for contemporary scholars to ascertain the original text of Scripture, and James White said, well, I believe it because Dan Wallace says it's true, and Moises Silva says it's true, and then Ehrman sort of closed the trap and he said, but wait a second, James White, the leading scholars today, and he rattled them off, D.C. Parker and the folks at the German Bible Institute, they do not believe that it's possible to ascertain the original text. If you appeal to authority, the problem with that is what do you do when the authorities shift their opinion? And this is a dilemma, I think, for any evangelical who buys into the appeal to authority, modern authority, argument to sustain their position on the text of the New Testament. So, okay, I'm going to be quiet now. Let's listen to his list of authorities. We've got D. A. Carson on the table at least at this point. He says, despite the best efforts to prove that the narrative was originally part of John's Gospel, the evidence is against them, and modern English versions are right to rule it off or Put it in a footnote and you'll notice in your text, unless you have perhaps the King James, that it's got a double bracket around it or it's in footnote. Bruce Metzger, one of the world's most authoritative scholars on the text of the New Testament until he passed away in 2007. I'm sorry, I've got to interrupt again. He refers to Bruce Metzger, and I would refer you to the Word Magazine podcast, if you haven't listened to it, in which I reviewed the life and legacy of Bruce Manning Metzger. In that podcast, I reviewed the influence that Metzger has had, the huge influence he had in the 20th century in leading to the rejection of the traditional text of Scripture and the acceptance of the modern critical text. And then also his promotion of modern translations, particularly those in the revised version tradition, whether the RSV, the NRSV, etc. And also I noted there that Piper is a big fan of Metzger. I read the tribute that Piper wrote when Metzger died in which he revealed that when he was a seminarian he had wanted to go to Princeton and study with Metzger but he hadn't been able to be accepted and so he went on off to Germany. Interesting how his course of his life might have been different if he had maybe gone to Princeton, studied with Metzger and focused more of his attention on text criticism. But anyways, his appeal to D.A. Carson and to Bruce Manning Metzger, so let's listen to some more. "...said the evidence for the non-Johannine, that means it doesn't belong in the Gospel of John, origin of this pericope, which is a fancy word for paragraph, of the adulterous is overwhelming. Leon Morris, who's gone to be with the Lord also, but one of my teachers and a great, great scholar. The textual evidence makes it impossible to hold that this section is an authentic part of the gospel. Andreas Kirstenberger, who teaches, oh dear, Southeastern or Southern? What? Southeastern, yeah. And I love his commentary, I usually get so much help from it. This represents, he says, overwhelming evidence that the section is non-Johannine. So, he cites Metzger, then he cites Leon Morris, and then he cites Andreas Kostenberger, who's a professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, and also the editor of the journal that's published by the Evangelical Theological Society. Kostenberger is originally Austrian, an interesting scholar who has written a commentary on the Gospel of John, and he rejects the Perikope Adulteri. It was interesting, I attended the conference that was held at Southeastern back in April on the Perikope Adulteri, And it was interesting because Kastenberger didn't even show up. I mean, I think that said something about his view of the Pericopa Adulteri, and I'm not sure how the organizers thought about that because it was organized by two of his colleagues in the New Testament department there, Maurice Robinson and David Black. And David Black made a comment at one point, he said, Maybe it was on a blog post after the conference, he said, something like, experts on the Gospel of John stayed away in droves. I don't know if that was a backhanded comment about the fact that Kostenberger didn't support the conference, even though he has interest in the Gospel of John, and it was on that, and there were credential scholars there. My goodness, Jennifer Knust, who's the head of the text criticism section of the Society of Biblical Literature, was one of the speakers. So you would think that that at least would have drawn Kastenberger, but I think it's probably Kastenberger's view is quite typical, again, of most mainstream academic scholars and also most evangelical scholars who want their research and their writing to be accepted in the academic mainstream, and that is they think it's not even worthwhile to spend the time talking about the validity of John 7.53 through 8.11. And one last one, Herman Ritterbos, whose commentary I also love, written a couple of decades ago, the evidences point to an unstable tradition that was not originally part of an ecclesiastically accepted text. So, there they are, these are the best that you can have, in my judgment, and they all agree, and I think they're right, that This text that was just read is not originally in the Gospel. It got added centuries later. Now, again, an appeal to authority argument is not improper. So it's right, and he does cite more than one person But there are people who have credentials, they may be the minority, they may be an overwhelming minority, but there are people who can look at the same evidence, who look at the same evidence and argue for the authenticity of the pericope adulteri. And I think it would probably be more legitimate to at least acknowledge that there is a divided opinion on this topic and it's not a slam-dunk. It's not as if there isn't, there's no one out there that's standing up for the authenticity of the Pericope Adulteri. That's the position I think is accurate. So, one of the things this gives me a chance to do now, and I don't think Sunday morning is Saturday night, is the best place to do this on a weekend, but I think it has to be done when we're faced with something like this. Namely, I'm going to talk for half the time about the kind of scholarly work that is behind this, and the situation of textual transmission for the last 2,000 years that brings about situations like this. So, pretend like you're in school for a minute or two, and I will close by preaching. Now, honestly, I appreciate the fact that John Piper here is telling his congregation that he's going to do some teaching on the issue of text criticism. I think that is rarely done, and I wish more evangelical type men like Piper would take the time to examine the text from which they are preaching and give to their people a justification for the choices that they have made, and the translations they choose. If you're going to do expositional preaching, you're going to deal with textual issues. This is really how I got interested in the whole topic, because I was having to do expositional preaching, and I was having to work through the text week by week, and the foundational decision that you have to make is, what is the text? What are the limits of the text? What is the content of the text that I'm going to preach? What is the Word of God? And so I'm glad that he is taking the time, even though I disagree with his conclusions, I'm glad that he's taking the time to do that. Now, that said, he's going to go on and say a few other things that, honestly, if I were in the congregation, I might feel were a bit patronizing. You know, particularly in his congregation, I'm sure that he has many professionals. He may have people who are accountants and attorneys and physicians. I mean, even blue collar workers, mechanics, technicians. People deal with complicated matters every single day in the workplace. They deal with complicated matters on their computers, programming, and other things. And, you know, the things that we deal with as pastors and theologians can be complicated, but they're not so complicated, I think, that the average people in the pew can't, you know, pretty well understand the issues with some guidance. And I felt, and they're important, so I felt like some of what he goes on to say maybe was a little bit patronizing to the audience. And I will get a point from this text, and I will warrant it by saying that it agrees with everything else in the New Testament. So that's the way we're going to handle it. And I do believe that I can worship as I do this, and I think you will see reasons to worship as I try to open the situation for you. So let me summarize, first of all, the reasons that all of these scholars give for why they don't think this story was in the gospel when John wrote it, but got added later. Okay, so he's going to lay out now six points. Now, unfortunately, I wish he really had spent a lot more time on each of these six points. You get the sense that he culled these from probably his secondary readings, reading Metzger and others, But anyways, these are six points he's going to put forward as to why the pericope adulteri John 7.53 through 8.11 should be rejected as part of the original text of the Gospel of John and therefore as a legitimate part of Scripture. So again, let's listen as he goes through all of them and then I'll come back and give some responses to them. Like I said, I really wish that he had made it a six-part message and really dug into each one of these points because I don't think any one of them really is going to be adequately developed in the message. It's kind of like the appeal to authority. Here are six things that people who know a lot about the text of scripture say are the reasons they reject it. So it gives you the basic, the general topic, but it doesn't give you the boots on the ground detail that I think most people would be hungry to hear and are capable of hearing with some guidance. But, again, let's listen to these six points. Summarize those, and then give you some background about the transmission of the text in the New Testament, and then draw out a lesson for us, both biblically, for its authority's sake, and spiritually for our souls. Here are the reasons. The story is missing in all the Greek manuscripts before the 5th century. 2. The earliest church fathers omit the passage in commenting on John and pass directly from 752 to 812. 3. The text flows amazingly well if you drop the story and connect 752 with 812. Number four, no eastern church fathers cite the passage until the 10th century when dealing with this gospel. Number five, when the story starts to appear in biblical texts, surprisingly it occurs in four other places besides the one here. Some manuscripts put it after 736, some put it after 744, some put it after 2125, and some have it in the Gospel of Luke after 2138. And number six, the style and the vocabulary are more unlike the rest of the Gospel than any other paragraph in the Gospel. Those are the reasons Alright, so he laid out these six arguments, and maybe it would have been better if I stopped after each one, but because some of these I'm going to have quite a bit to say in response, but let me just review. So, the first one that he mentions, his first point is that the Prikpheidoltri is missing, he says, in all the Greek manuscripts before the 5th century. So how do we respond to that? Well first of all I would say that that statement is a little bit misleading. I mean the truth is we don't have many Greek manuscripts at all that date before the 5th century. We have some papyri manuscripts But we have only a handful that relate to the Gospel of John, and those are papyri that come from the so-called Alexandrian tradition, and they omit the pericope adulteri, but we wouldn't be surprised at that because the Alexandrian tradition omits the PA. That really kind of begs the question. But we really don't have a lot of early manuscript evidence to support the Gospel of John in general. The earliest unsealed manuscripts that we have are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus. They're from the 4th and 5th centuries. But, on the other hand, there are some early Greek manuscripts that do have the Pericope Adulteri The earliest one that has it is Codex D, Codex Vesa. And then we might add, it does eventually appear in the great majority of the Greek manuscripts. Again, when I was at the Percopaea Adulteri Conference. Maurice Robinson, who's collated the manuscripts, points out that the Pericpædultorite appears in 1,476 manuscripts of John. So it does become the majority reading. It's also there in some of the early versional witnesses. It's there in the Old Latin, which dates to the early centuries of the Christian movement. And I picked up Edward Hill's book, the King James Version, Defended, and I know this book sometimes is controversial. It's not a KJV-only really tight book as much as it is a defense of the traditional text of Scripture, but he has a section on the Priccipe Adulteri, as you might imagine, and he discusses some of the early witnesses to the Pricipe Adulteri, He points out, for example, that it is referred to in the church father Ambrose in the late fourth century. It's also referred to by Ambrose's protege Augustine. And Augustine even offers an explanation for why it was omitted. This is a quotation here from from Hills on page 151 from Augustine. where he said, "...certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if he who had said, sin no more, had granted permission to sin." See, that's an explanation for why, in Augustine's opinion, the passage had dropped out in some Greek manuscripts and he's writing that in 400 A.D. He goes on to mention that it is in the 5th century Greek manuscript D, Codex Besa. It's also Jerome who did his Vulgate in 415 A.D. mentions the fact that there are Greek manuscripts that omit the Perikope adultery. No one is protesting or saying that it didn't have a protested textual history. But Jerome did decide to include the Perikope Adulteri in his Latin Vulgate. Hills also points out that the Perikope Adulteri is cited in an early Christian work called the Didaskalia, or Teaching of the Apostles, and also in the related work called the Apostolic Constitutions, which date to the 3rd and 4th centuries. There is a reference to the woman caught in adultery in the Church Father Eusebius, In the early 4th century, there is some dispute about that reference as to whether he knew that it was in the Gospel of John as opposed to knowing it as an account that was told by Papias or that appeared in another early work called the Gospel according to Hebrews. It's also, according to Hills, cited in the Spanish church father Pacian, I'm not sure how you pronounce it, around 370 AD. So, again, it's a little bit deceptive to say we reject it because it doesn't appear in a Greek manuscript until the 5th century. We don't have many witnesses. We don't have many unsealed manuscripts of the New Testament. in particular that date any earlier than the 5th century. And there's a whole other principle here too, and that is that just because a manuscript is earlier doesn't mean it's the best manuscript. I always think of the example of the Old Testament. The earliest manuscripts that we had for years of the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament was the Leningrad Codex which dates to the year 1008 A.D. and so for years that was the oldest manuscript we have of the Hebrew Bible. If you assume that the oldest parts of the Old Testament were written in 1500 B.C. by Moses and the most recent parts of the Old Testament were written maybe Ezra and Nehemiah in the 5th century B.C. That means that for years, the earliest Hebrew manuscript that we had of the Bible, again, was 5th century BC to 1,500 years old, with the Mosaic literature, maybe as much as 2,500 years old. It's not really a matter of the age of the manuscript, it's really a matter of the accuracy of the manuscript. And of course the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered and this gave us earlier Hebrew manuscripts which by and large supported the traditional Hebrew text. But my point is it's really not a convincing argument to say we reject the Perikope Adulteri because we only have Greek manuscript evidence from the 5th century. If we use that kind of criteria we would be rejecting lots more of the foundation of the reliability of the New Testament. The second point that he makes is that the earliest Church Fathers omit the passage in commenting on John and pass directly from 752 to 812. I've already noted that there were Church Fathers who did address the Pericope Adulteri, notably Ambrose, Augustine, and others. So, you know, the Church Fathers, we don't have their complete comments on every passage in the Bible. There are gaps, there are things that they didn't comment on, and another related argument as to why it might be missing in some of their commentaries is, and this is a point that Maurice Robinson makes, he believes that the Pricpe Adulteri was not used as a lectionary reading or a liturgical reading in the early church and for that reason it wasn't commented on by many of the Church Fathers. So there are reasonable explanations, and there are Church Fathers who do show awareness of the passage. His third argument is the text flows amazingly well if you omit the pre-adulterized. So if you just take it out, and you go from 752 to 812, it reads okay like that. And he doesn't spend a lot of time with arguments, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time responding to it. I would just say that you could possibly do that with many passages. You could make some sense of, let's say, the Gospels if you took out one miracle story. they would flow okay. It wouldn't hurt the whole narrative flow, but the gospel wouldn't be the complete gospel if it were missing any part of it. And so the issue is, yes, you might be able to take it out and it could read okay, but it would be incomplete if it's an original part of the text of scripture. Again, I'm not going to spend much time on that one. His fourth argument is, no Eastern church father cites the passage till the 10th century when dealing with this gospel. Again, that might appear on the surface to be pretty damning, but I went and once again turned to Edward F. Hills and his comments on the Pericope Adulteri in his book The King James Version Defended. And indeed I discovered that he has a whole section where he anticipates this often put forward objection. This is on pages 156 through 158. He has a section called The Silence of the Greek Fathers Explained. Now let me just read some of what he says in response. He mentions Bruce Metzger, who I think is the source of Piper's argument here. Bruce Metzger said, even more significant is the fact that no Greek father for a thousand years after Christ refers to this pericope, including even those like Origen, Chrysostom, and Nonnus, who dealt with the entire gospel verse by verse. Let me just pause there for a moment. I pulled up on my computer the commentary on the Gospel of John from John Chrysostom, who was one of the Eastern Fathers, and this is on Christian Classics Ethereal Library, and I've got listed here Chrysostom's commentary on John. What Metzger said is just completely erroneous, at least for John Chrysostom. John Chrysostom did not give a verse-by-verse commentary on the Gospel of John. What he did was he preached sermons on the Gospel of John that were collected into this commentary, and he did not deal with every single verse or every single passage. If you look, for example, at chapters 7 and 8, there's an entry for chapters 7, verses 1 and 2. For chapters 7, verses 9 and 10, which means he did not preach a message on verses 3 through 8 of John 7. Does that mean that it was omitted from his gospel? No, it just meant that he didn't choose to comment on those particular texts. He preached on John 7, 25-27, John 7, 37-38, John 7, 45-46, John 8, 20. So he didn't preach on anything in the opening verses of John chapter 8, which means we don't have a message from John Chrysostom on John 8, 12 when Jesus said, I am the light of the world. Does that mean it wasn't in the original Gospel of John? Of course not. It just means that John Chrysostom didn't comment on it. He preached the message on John 8, 31 and 32, John 8, 48 and 49, and that's it. Those are the only passages he preached on in John. Okay, let me put that little side comment out of the way. At least for John Chrysostom, I think Metzger's comment is not correct. Let me go back to Edward Hills. How does he respond to what Metzger says? He says, this argument, however, is not nearly so strong as Metzger makes it seem. In the first place, as Bergen, meaning Dean Bergen, pointed out long ago, we must knock off at least three centuries from this thousand year period of which Metzger speaks so ominously. For Tischendorf, meaning the German scholar Constantine Tischendorf, lists nine manuscripts of the 9th century which contained the Pericope de Adultera. in its usual place, and also one which may be of the 8th century. And so the silence of the Greek Church Fathers during the last third of this thousand year period couldn't have been because they didn't know of manuscripts which contain John 7.53 through 8.11 in the position which it now occupies in the great majority of the New Testament manuscripts. The later Greek fathers, Hills continues, didn't comment on these verses mainly because the earlier Greek fathers hadn't done so. But neither, he continues, does the silence of the earlier Greek fathers, such as Origen, Chrysostom, and Nonnus, necessarily imply that these ancient biblical scholars did not know of the pericope adulterized part of the Gospel of John, for they may have been influenced against it by the moralistic prejudice of which we have spoken, and also by the fact that some of the manuscripts known to them omitted it. And Bergen mentions another very good reason why these early fathers failed to comment on this section. Their commenting was in connection with their preaching, and their preaching would be affected by the fact that the Pericope De Adultera was omitted from the ancient Pentecostal lesson of the Church. This is the argument about the P.A. not being in the early lectionaries or the liturgical arrangement of text to be read in the church year and preached upon by the ministers. So there is a reasonable explanation for why the P.A. is not mentioned by the Eastern Church Fathers. His fifth argument is that when the story starts to appear, as he puts it, it appears, he says, in four other places. Now this is an argument that I have mentioned before. James White makes this same argument, and it is the so-called floating tradition argument against the pericope adultery. I did a blog post on this. It's on my blog, jeffriddle.net. And the title of that post is, The Periphe Adulteri, John 7.53-8.11, A Floating Tradition? And in that blog post, I pointed out that it is simply a fallacious argument to say that the Perikope Adulteri was a floating tradition that didn't really have a home in the Gospel of John and Piper makes the same argument. I noted before that actually the passage moving to different places in John or in one case to the Gospel of Luke only occurs in very late manuscripts and in only a few isolated instances. It appears after John 7.36 in one manuscript. It appears after John 7.44 in no Greek manuscripts, but in a couple of Georgian manuscripts, that is translations of the gospel into the Georgian language. It appears after John 21-25 in a handful of late minuscule manuscripts 1, 565, 1076, 1570, and 1582, and in several Georgian manuscripts again, and it appears after Luke 21-38 in the documents that are known as Family 13 of the Farrar Group, and there are about a dozen of these, but they all have a single archetype from which they were made, so they're really just one witness. So, again, this argument just crumbles, and for some reason it's repeated over and over again. James White repeats it, John Piper here repeats it, and I made reference when I addressed this before to the fact that at the Pericopa Adulteride Conference that was held in April 2014, one of the presenters, Chris Keith, who teaches at St. Mary's University College in London, not a KJV-oneliest at all, not a kook, in fact somebody who doesn't in the end accept the authenticity of the Pericope Adulteri, but in the course of his presentation he said we can be certain of three things. He said first Christians were reading the Pericope Adulteri by at least the late 4th century at John 7, 53-8, 11. Secondly, we know that there were copies of John that circulated without the Pericope Adulteri. And then thirdly, he says the only location attested for the Pericope Adulteri is at John 7.52 through 8.11. In other words, following John 7.52 and before John 8.12, that's the only place it appears when it appears in John until the 9th century. In other words, the Pericope Adulteri was not a floating tradition in the early manuscript tradition of the New Testament. So let's please, please, please, let's put that argument to rest. The final argument that John Piper makes, his point six, is that the style and the vocabulary of the Perikope Adulteri are more unlike the rest of the Gospel than any other paragraph within the Gospel of John. This is what we refer to as an internal argument. He's arguing based on the grammar, the vocabulary, the style, that John 73 through 811 is not Johannine. It is not something that shows itself to be consistent with the rest of the grammatical and vocabulary usage that we find in the rest of the Gospel of John. Most people would agree that arguments like this are very subjective. You can find one person who could say this information here wasn't written by John and other people who would say no, this is Johannine vocabulary, this is Johannine style, this proves it's authentic. Some people, Chris Keith comes to mind again, would even say that the style of John 750 through 811 is definitely Johannine but he says it could also have been imitated, the style could have been imitated by someone who inserted the text. Well, I went and pulled another book down off my shelf just to read a little bit more on this issue of what are the arguments for or against John 753 through 811. Is it an absolutely ridiculous argument to say that John 753 through 811 could be from the hand of the same author who wrote the rest of the gospel. And the book that I pulled down was the Greek New Testament according to the majority text. This was the majority text Greek New Testament that was published by edited by Zane Hodges and Arthur Farrstad. This is the text I have is the second edition of it. And they have a section in the introduction It's Roman numeral 23, page 23 and following, where they discuss the Pericope Adulteri, knowing that it is a controversial text, but it was a text that appeared in the majority of New Testament manuscripts, and therefore it is in the text of their printing of the majority Greek New Testament. But they discuss, this is Roman numeral now page, let's see, this is starting on Roman numeral page 23 and going on to page 24. They discuss both the external and the internal arguments for the PA, but I think what they say about the internal arguments is particularly interesting and in complete contradiction to what John Piper says. Here's what they say. Again, this is the introduction to the Greek New Testament according to the majority text, edited by Zane Hodges and Arthur Forstad, 2nd edition, and this is published by Thomas Nelson Publishers in 1985. They say, Quote, it is clear that the textual troubles which overlooked the pericope began early. It is omitted by the most ancient witnesses for the Egyptian tradition, namely P66, P75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus. It was also evidently absent from C and even from A. Just pause there. It seems like we're unclear about what C and A or Alexandrinus read. but apparently it's absent from those also, which in the Gospels often sides with the majority text. But the joint testimony of these manuscripts, except perhaps for A, Alexandrinus, simply may point to a very ancient copy from which the passage was missing. In other words, they're saying P66, P75, Sinaiticus, and Vaticanus, and any others that may omit the P.A. may have had simply an archetype that omitted it. Now, that's the little statement on external evidence. What I really wanted to get to is what they say about internal evidence. They go on to write, there is no compelling reason to doubt that the story is originally Johannine, despite the prevailing contrary opinion. Among the marks of Johannine's style which it exhibits None is clearer than the phrase in chapter 8 verse 6, and it gives the Greek, tuta de elegan parizontes alton, which translated is, and they said this tempting him. This, they say, is a pure and simple Johannism. which is evident by comparison with John 6-6, John 7-39, John 11-51, John 12-6, John 12-33, and John 21-19. Likewise, the use of the vocative, gunai, or woman, in chapter 8 verse 10 by Jesus to address a woman is a Johannine characteristic. Compare John 2.4, John 4.21, John 19.26. Compare also John 20.13, and John 20.15. They continue, the phrase, Meketi hamar taneh, send no more, chapter 8, verse 11, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament except John 5.14. And the historic present, Agusi, which is the bring, in chapter 8 verse 3, is consonant with John's frequent use of this idiom. They continue, nor is the narrative improperly suited to the place where it is found in the overwhelming majority of the 900 copies which contain it. This was written in 1985, now Maurice Robinson says it's actually in over 1,400 manuscripts. On the contrary, they continue, a setting at the Feast of Tabernacles, compare John 7.2, John 7.14, is ideal for the story. It was on just such an occasion when Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims that strangers might be thrown together with the resulting sin around which the story centers. An interview with a woman in a court of the temple would likely have been in the court of the women. and that is evidently where Jesus was as the reference to the treasury in chapter 8 verse 20 indicates. Moreover, they continue, the way in which the woman's accusers are driven to cover by the moral exposure which Jesus brings upon them furnishes a suggestive introduction to the initial Johannine reference to the Lord as the light of the world in John 8.12. The setting of the incident at daybreak is likewise suitable, chapter 8 verse 2, since the rising sun furnishes the natural backdrop for the same title. It is in fact to the sun, not the temple candelabra as Hort thought, that the title light of the world refers. Compare John 9.4 and 5, John 11, 9. Finally, as the Qumran finds have shown, the thought of forgiveness of sin experienced here by the woman is properly linked to the phrase, the light of life, John 8, 12. And here's their concluding paragraph. I know it was a long passage to read, but they say, in view of the features of the Johannine style that have been noted, and the narrative's almost unique suitability to this context, the idea that the passage is not authentically Johannine must finally be dismissed. If it is not an original part of the fourth gospel, its writer would have to be viewed as a skilled Johannine imitator and its placement in this context as the shrewdest piece of interpolation in literary history. Accordingly, the consideration of the narrative text that follows assumes its Johannine authenticity. So we've got John Piper telling us the style and the vocabulary of the Perikphe Adulteri is unlike the rest of the Gospel. It's more unlike the rest of the Gospel than any other paragraph that we can find within the Gospel of John. But on the other hand, We have Zane Hodges and Arthur Farstad, who are credentialed New Testament scholars and text critics, who say, no, the style, the vocabulary is completely consistent with Johannine usage. And many other people say that as well. Again, in the end it almost becomes a sort of a battle of the experts. Which experts are you going to believe? Are you going to follow the experts who support the modern critical texts, or are you going to follow the experts who support and defend the traditional text of the New Testament. Well, I said we were going to go about an hour before I would stop, and I think I've made it through about seven minutes of the sermon. I'm not going to do the whole sermon. I'm actually probably only going to do about 20 or 25 minutes of it, but I've only got about seven minutes of it down at this point. So I think this is going to have to be continued at another time. I will come back and try to review the remainder of the sermon. I do think we covered a lot of the really important points related to the external-internal evidence, but I think what's really going to be the crux of the matter is the problems that the rejection of the Pericope Adulteri presents theologically. regarding the doctrine of Scripture. And that's really going to come to the fore as Piper struggles with this and puts forward his suggestion, and that suggestion is going to be that this really isn't Scripture. He's going to say it's true, but it's not Scripture. And that is a strange thing to say, that something is true, but it's not Scriptural truth. Well, I will address that, hopefully, in a future episode of Part 2 of this review of John Piper's sermon on the Pricate Adultery. I hope you're doing well, and I wish God's blessings upon you. and look forward to coming back and doing another Word magazine with you in the future. Take care and God bless. Your deeds, Lord, make me glad. I'll joy in what you've done. I'll praise your doings, Lord, found in your thoughts each one. Fools won't be shown the foolish and exceptless truth to him who unknown. Though sinners grow like weeds, ill-doers blossom late, Their gloom should be destroyed through Lord Exalted's sake. Lord, Your foes fall. See how Your foes, many evil men, are scattered all. You raise my vows by morn, pour fresh oil on my head. You make me see the Spice and hear what God has said. Like thriving palms, the righteous proselytizers hauled on and on. Protected by the Lord shall in God's courts be seen. When old hills still bear fruit, And forests fresh and green, And loud frogs quake, How upright is the Lord, my rock, No wrong in Him.