The Woman Caught in Adultery, Part 2: Such a (Greek) Tragedy
The structure of this story shines a dramatic spotlight on its central theme. All the tragic goodness, including the crisis, climax, and fatal flaw, lies with the Pharisees and not with the woman, leaving the theme that usually distracts us backstage.
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The Woman Caught in Adultery
1 while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and, making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.”[a] And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”[b]
Footnotes
[a] Or Lord
[b] The most ancient authorities lack 7.53–8.11; other authorities add the passage here or after 7.36 or after 21.25 or after Luke 21.38, with variations of text; some mark the passage as doubtful.
New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
What if someone could hypnotize you and erase everything you’ve ever heard about this story, including its awful traditional title? If you were able to read it with completely fresh eyes, how would you answer the following questions: What’s the most exciting, pivotal part of this story? Where does your tension grow, where does it peak, and when do you relax? What is the climax of the story, the biggest clue to the whole thing?
Let your heart decide.
If it were turned into a movie, where’s the scene you couldn’t pause no matter how badly you had to pee? If you’re letting your emotions decide, you know it’s right around that famous line Jesus says, right? “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (vs. 7). But not everyone can trust their emotions on this one. The bias that has driven interpreters to name the story after the woman and her alleged sin has also compelled them to locate its climax and central theme in the last two verses. Augustine writes in his homily XXXIII on the Gospel of John: “There remained alone they two, a wretch (that’s the woman) and Mercy (that’s Jesus).” Gail O’Day points out that interpreters have since declared Augustine’s phrase the perfect summary and quotes Rudolf Shnackenburg, who considers it “a theologically precise lapidary phrase” (634). In other words, Augustine’s observations are so astute they should be engraved in stone. In many ways, they have been, influencing our reading ever since. Whether we’ve been taught the story’s main point is her sexual shame, or more mildly, that Jesus doesn’t judge her, so we shouldn’t either, it’s time to take back the narrative. Super readers, unite.
Our feelings already tell us where the climax is, but when taking on the patriarchy, I've noticed that pointing out how something feels won’t get you far. Luckily, we English majors have patriarchs of our own, so I looked up a classic one as I searched for proof that the weight of the story does not land squarely on the woman and her conversation with Jesus.
Uh Oh, it’s tragic!
Let me remind you of a guy named Aristotle. He wrote a foundational bit of literary criticism called The Poetics in 335 B.C., describing the plot structure of the Greek tragedies of his day. Perhaps you remember Oedipus, who kills his father and marries his mother? Or Antigone, who is buried alive for giving funeral rites to her brother? As I read, searching for clues about proving a story’s climax, I made a happy discovery. This gospel story contains the same elements Aristotle observed in the Greek tragedies! Do you know what this means? We can use the observations of one patriarch to school the others!
Before getting too carried away, we must ask an important question. Did our author read Aristotle? Jews and Greeks weren’t exactly buddies when the Gospels were written. However, first-century Judaism was immersed in Greco-Roman literary and rhetorical practice. Even if the gospel writers were unlikely to be personally familiar with Aristotle’s criticism or the tragedies he comments on, Dorothy Lee claims “these works need not have been read or heard for their methods and devices to be employed within the culture of the day” (44). Wherever our playful author got those methods and devices, he knew a thing or two about crafting a good drama. He also knew the axiom formulated by a brilliant friend of mine: “When the story veers, open your ears.” Our gospel story follows the pattern of a Greek tragedy, but it strays in one spot. We’ll pay extra attention there so we won’t miss the author’s critical point. You’re gonna like it!
Time to get (extra) nerdy
There are eight elements of Greek tragedy that I want to point out in our story as we zip through. Grab your pitas and hummus, and let’s do this.
Element number one: Desis.
Desis is all the action in a story that leads up to the climax. Its literal translation is “tying,” which refers to every plot thread woven together to form a more complex knot of tension. The first threads of plot in the story are exposition. We discover the setting, the temple, early in the morning, and the main character, Jesus, teaching the crowd. Nothing too tangly yet, but check out the following line. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees barge in, forcing a woman to stand, humiliated before them, while they proclaim that she “was caught in the very act of adultery” (vs 4). Can’t you just hear the murmurs rippling through the crowd? The teachers and Pharisees add another thread, reminding Jesus that the law calls for the death of “such women” (vs 5). Finally, pulling it tight, they ask Jesus, “Now, what do you say?” (vs 5). In case we were unsure, the narrator helpfully adds, “They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him” (vs 6). In just six verses, we’ve got a tense little knot comprised of a cornered Jesus, a scandalized crowd, a blood-thirsty mob of accusers, and a terrified woman with no one to defend her. It’s all that Aristotle calls desis.
Element number two: Crisis.
Jesus bends down and writes to cut the tension and shift the power balance, but the accusers won’t be deterred. They insist on an answer and create a do-or-die crisis moment. Our main character must act. Will Jesus defend the Mosaic law and allow them to murder her? Will he protect her and give them more reason to turn on him? This, by the way, is an excellent example of the “tragic dilemma” that Edgar Roberts and Henry Jacobs explain happens when the protagonist “faces two equally difficult or unacceptable choices, either one of which leads to disaster” (1048). The fixated crowd, the callous accusers, the wide-eyed, trembling woman all wait. We wait. How is Jesus going to get out of this?
Element number three: Peripetia or Reversal.
Jesus stands. He speaks. “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first one to throw a stone at her” (vs 7). In other words, “Go ahead! Follow the law you care so much about, but first, fulfill it. First, look at yourselves and see how dehumanizing your actions are. Do you see how you rob this woman of her personhood? Is that what Moses calls for in the law?” This reversal is the instant when “the action veers around to its opposite” (Roberts and Jacobs, 1049). Instead of the teachers of the law and Pharisees demanding that everyone condemn the woman’s sin, Jesus invites them to look at their own fatal flaws and then bends back down to the ground.
Element number four: Anagnorisis or Recognition.
In an extremely rare moment of humility, the teachers of the law and the Pharisees recognize their own sin. We need to pause a moment here. The religious elite are notorious for their self-righteousness. They are the ones Jesus calls “white-washed tombs,” pretty and clean on the outside but full of death on the inside (Matthew 23:27). Luke records a parable about a Pharisee who publicly thanks God for making him better than everyone else, but a group of these law experts now walk away in shame (Luke 18:9-14). This recognition of theirs should shock us. This should be the part of the story everyone fixates on! The early interpreters must have noticed this. It took impressive effort to continue staring at the woman during this strange turn of events, but they did it, anyway.
Element number five: Catharsis.
This is the element I asked you to pay attention to at the beginning involving your emotions. Roberts and Jacobs tell us catharsis is the “stimulation and subsequent elimination of strong emotions that occur as one watches or reads an effective tragedy” (1047). To create catharsis, these emotions must build and then be purged. In our story, tension and fear build with each thread added during the desis until we get to…
Element number six: Climax.
The climax is where that emotion peaks, where the plot threads are as tight as they will get. Aristotle observes that frequently the climax is the exact moment as the reversal, and that’s true in our story, too. Once Jesus proclaims in the climax that only a sinless one may throw a rock, the reader can begin to breathe again. We can start to relax because we know Jesus has dodged the trap, and the woman will receive mercy from the mob.
Perhaps you’ve noticed these last five elements all happen at once. We’ve got the crisis, where Jesus is forced to decide his next move. We’ve got the reversal, where Jesus turns the accusatory tables on the Pharisees, causing a U-turn in action, and we’ve got the corresponding recognition, where the accusers come to a new understanding. It all happens together, causing a peak and subsequent relaxation of tension. These elements are often bundled together in Aristotle’s tragedies, too, and the effect is to leave the one watching the drama in utter certainty about where the story’s main action and most important themes lie.
Element number 7: Lusis.
Lusis is the ‘untying” where every plot thread now unravels, and any remaining questions or mysteries are resolved. Here’s where we find out what happens to the woman. Jesus stands and speaks to her. “Does no one condemn you?” he asks. “No one, sir.” She says. “Then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more” (vs 10-11). We’re relieved the woman walks away uncondemned, but the central tension is long past. We never really feared that Jesus would condemn her because that would be entirely out of his character. Yet it seems early commentators expected and even hoped that Jesus would condemn her somehow. Why else would they be so surprised by his grace? They love to point out that he tells her to stop sinning, as though it’s their consolation prize. This is why we have to get to my favorite and last element. It’s where this lovely little story veers, friends. Get ready to open your ears.
Element number 8: Hamartia.
Roberts and Jacobs tell us Hamartia is “the error or frailty that causes the downfall of a tragic protagonist” (1048). You may recall it as the “fatal flaw,” which always gets the tragic hero in the end. Here’s where it gets interesting. Jesus is the protagonist in this story. He’s the hero, but he has no fatal flaw. Where’s the hamartia? Who sins in this story? Traditionally, we think of the woman. But when we consider the focus of all the other story elements, the climactic crisis, reversal, recognition, and catharsis, we see that the hamartia the author wants to highlight is not hers. It’s the sin of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees the author points to. Not only does the climax of the story land on what Jesus says to the Pharisees, but the twist in the structure also points to them. An interpretation that focuses more on the woman’s sin than theirs is far from what the author intended.
How have so many interpreters decided that the crux of this story lies in its last bit of dialogue between Jesus and the woman? How do you explain that many interpreters are more surprised by Jesus’ characteristic act of grace to an adulteress than by the notoriously self-righteous Pharisees’ moment of humble self-awareness? Why are we more surprised that Jesus forgives her than we are shocked that her accusers would trap her and drag her in, to begin with? Why do we brush off the treachery of the powerful men who use a defenseless woman to trap Jesus and focus instead on a woman’s sexual activity? My best guess? Sexism. It existed in Jesus’ day, it existed in Augustine’s, and it exists today. Deciphering God's feelings about women can already be challenging because the Bible’s stories take place in a patriarchal society and were written by men influenced by that society. In cases like this, where the interpreters are the ones who bend God’s story and package their interpretation as truth, it becomes even more important to take back the narrative. When we misread this story, the woman remains dehumanized, and the men remain empowered to objectify her. Gaining a better understanding of this story can help us notice how its themes keep being repeated today, which is the real tragedy. Next time, I’ll focus on the scholarship of two women who prove that equality is the heart and soul of this story, and that Jesus himself is the one who creates it.
Works Cited
Lee, Dorothy A. “The Fourth Gospel as Ancient Literary Artefact.” The Enduring Impact of the Gospel of John: Interdisciplinary Studies. Wipf and Stock, 2022.
O’Day, Gail R. “John 7:53-8:11: A Study in Misreading.” Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 111, no. 4, 1992, pp.631-40. JSTOR, https;//doi.ort/10.2307/3267436. Accessed 17 May 2023.
Roberts, Edgar V. and Jacobs, Henry E. Literature, An Introduction to Reading and Writing. 3rd ed., Prentice Hall, Inc. 1992.
