The Woman Caught in Adultery, Part 1: What a Terrible Title
This story’s title has made the woman caught in adultery the infamous star of the show, but is that what the author intended? Let’s check out his use of sentence and plot structure and uncover not just the grace Jesus offers but the justice he enacts.
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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.
How does the woman caught in adultery become the title character?
If experiencing the fifth circle of hell is on your bucket list, teach four periods of grammar to ninth graders for a few weeks. In my experience, grammar lessons cause students to shift from merely tolerating their student teacher to holding her in extreme contempt, as if she wanted to talk about subject-verb agreement. Believe me; I did not.
It is with fear, then, that I introduce grammar into our little English major haven. I have no desire to torture unnecessarily. There is an excellent literary reason to broach the subject because I’m trying to answer a question: How does an object become a title character?
Let’s briefly diagram some sentences, shall we? Find the verb or action in this sentence, verse 3.
“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.”
The action happening here is “brought,” the past tense of bring. Next question: who “brought?” Who did this action?
“The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.”
So, who “brought?” The teachers of the law and the Pharisees. They are the subject of the sentence. They are who this sentence is about. Brought is the verb. Now, who or what did they bring? A salad? Presents? Nope. They brought a woman. She is the direct object, the recipient of the action.
Next sentence: Find the verb.
“They made her stand before the group.”
It’s “made stand.” Awkward, I know, but it’s true. Now, who did the verb? Who made someone or something stand?
“They made her stand before the group.”
Well, they did. If we link this sentence with the first one, we know that “they” signifies the teachers of the law and the Pharisees. Again, they are the sentence's subject, so the teachers of the law and the Pharisees are what this sentence is about. The verb is “made stand.” Who or what did they make stand? Dominoes? Action figures? Nope. They made her stand, and we know “her” refers to the woman. Again, she is the direct object, the recipient of the action.
The woman continues to stand there for the entire story, saying nothing, doing nothing, until Jesus addresses her in verse 10. Finally, in verse 11, the woman becomes the subject of a sentence.
“No one, sir,” she said.
Said is the verb. Who said? She. It’s the only time the woman acts independently in the entire story. The rest of the time, she is an object, receiving the actions of the teachers of the law and the Pharisees, receiving their version of events, and standing there.
Passive aggression
Some could argue that the woman is also the subject of what the teachers of the law and Pharisees say about her in verse 4, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.” First, the powerful men are still the sentence’s subject because they are the ones who said that about her. But there’s something to be had in analyzing their claim, too.
“This woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.”
What’s the verb? Was caught. Who was caught? The woman. Yes. She’s the subject of their sentence. However, “was caught” is a passive verb. No one who’s proud of catching something has ever used a passive verb to talk about it. My brother has never said, “The fish was caught.” Heck no. He says things like, “I caught that beauty with a two-inch shad rap just off the rockpile in 15 feet of water.” To make the claim active, we have to change the subject. Instead of “This woman was caught,” the sentence changes to “We caught this woman.” Suddenly the teachers of the law and the Pharisees are the subjects again, and the woman is the object. But the men would never speak that way because they don’t want the focus on them. They want the focus on their object, the woman. All eyes on her, please.
Who they’re really after
Ok, enough of that grammar business. Now onto something equally exciting: the law. The teachers and the Pharisees continue in verse 5, “In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women.” They’re referring to Deuteronomy 22:22, “If a man is caught lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman as well as the woman.” Did you notice how that law calls for the death of both the man and the woman involved? Yet the woman stands without her sexual partner, and the teachers and Pharisees claim the law commands them to stone “such women,” implying that only she is vulnerable to the death penalty. We find out why in verse 6. The powerful ones are using her as a trap for Jesus. They don’t really care about adultery, and they certainly don’t care about the woman. They want a basis for accusing Jesus. She is nothing more than a pawn, a thing, an object.
It’s way too early for this.
Our story begins at dawn with Jesus sitting in the temple courts, teaching the people. He hasn’t even finished his coffee when the teachers of the law and Pharisees, notorious in John’s gospel for trying to destroy Jesus, barge in, dragging a woman with them. They force her to stand before the crowd, brush over the story of her entrapment, and then ambush Jesus with the question of whether to murder her. How do you suppose she was “caught in the very act of adultery?” To my knowledge, it’s not an act most people commit on the sidewalk. The teachers of the law and Pharisees didn’t just stumble upon her as they were strolling into work. There was treachery involved, and she was the perfect victim. Jennifer Garcia Bashaw describes her as “a woman with no one to stand up for her, she is an adulteress accused of a sexually shaming act, she is nameless (identified by her sin,) and she is unimportant enough to be dragged before Jesus as a criminal worthy of death”(77). Friends, if you’ve listened to enough episodes, perhaps you recognize this woman as the marginalized one and the teachers of the law and Pharisees as the privileged and powerful ones. Same themes, but this time, with a twist. This time, instead of Jesus turning toward the ones on the edges and bringing them to the center, it’s the Pharisees who are centering her. They’ve got a very different purpose, though. Jesus centers those on the margins to bring them life. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees are calling for her death.
She stands, terrified, before a crowd with all eyes on her. Her accusers ask, “What do you say, Jesus? Shall we throw rocks at her?” So Jesus bends down and starts to write on the ground with his finger. According to Garcia-Bashaw, his change in posture “draws the shaming glances of the crowd to what he is etching on the ground, deflecting attention away from the woman and the spectacle that the scribes and Pharisees were making of her” (73). Gail O’Day claims that rather than answering the accusers directly, “Jesus writes on the ground to indicate his refusal to play the game according to their rules” (632). Other scholars have speculated that it’s not Jesus’ act of stooping that’s important here, but what he writes, imagining that perhaps he’s listing the accusers' sins. From the perspective of an English Major, that last idea, though fun to imagine, doesn’t fly. If what Jesus wrote was important, the author would have enlightened us.
Whatever Jesus writes doesn’t make a difference to the teachers of the law and Pharisees because “they kept on questioning him,” pestering him for an answer. The accusers have posed Jesus an impossible question. Leticia Guardiola-Saenz claims that “No matter what Jesus says, he will be wrong. He is between two dangerous borders, the religious border of the Mosaic law, which he will violate if he’s in favor of the woman, and the political border of the Roman Empire, which he will violate if he allows them to stone her” (246). The woman is not the only one caught between a rock and a hard place. Maybe Jesus is buying himself time to think as he writes in the dirt.
Jesus stands and says that famous line, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Most of us read that to mean none of us is sinless, so no more flying rocks. Ubong E. Eyo has a slightly different take, offering that Jesus’ comment “was not intended to show their original sin but the sin of dealing with the woman without fairness,” (400). He suggests that Jesus isn’t just speaking in general terms of human sin, but is pinpointing the accuser’s treachery not just in trapping the woman, but also in their intent to ensnare him.
Jesus stoops to write again, and again, it’s not the writing that convicts the accusers. Verse 9 tells us “those who heard” Jesus’ interpretation of the law exit one by one, leaving Jesus and the woman alone. Away from the cruel stares of the crowd, Jesus stands once more and addresses the woman, turning to her as a person, not an object. He asks, “Has no one condemned you?” She then speaks, becoming the subject of the sentence for the first time, and Jesus refuses to condemn her. Why doesn’t he ask for her story like he usually does with those on the margins? Perhaps here, his message is, “Guilty or not, you are not a thing meant for others’ purposes but a person. Go, live into the life I have for you.”
You seem to have misplaced your bad guy label.
Now, here’s what gets me, my original question. Grammatically and socially, the woman spends nearly the entire story as an object, and objects are not the stuff main characters are made of. So, why do ⅞ of the Bibles in my house list “The Woman Caught in Adultery” as the title of this story, either in the heading or the footnotes? If she’s not the main character, if, in every translation I could find, there’s only one sentence where she’s even the subject, how did she become the title character?
Maybe you say, “It’s not such a big deal. It’s how we all know and refer to the story.” But we all know and refer to the story this way because early interpreters decided that the woman and her infidelity are the story’s main idea. The original author didn’t title this story at all; the interpreters did through their early sermons and writings. Ironically, these interpreters agreed that rather than using the author’s clues to understand the story, they would take the word of the duplicitous teachers of the law and the Pharisees and follow their suggestion to focus on the woman and her sin. In doing so, they’ve reshaped the text for the rest of us who now have a hard time seeing it any other way. According to O’Day, this textual distortion “is not a neutral act but a decisive reshaping” meant to prevent the need for social change not everyone is down for (631). She continues, “To summarize the story as sin (woman) and grace (Jesus) is to objectify and dehumanize the woman the same way the scribes and Pharisees do in verse four” (634). Honestly, that’s a complex statement to absorb. I have always viewed this story as one about the grace of Jesus. His grace is a theme, but I now believe there’s much more to the story. To understand it differently, we have to be willing to put the emphasis on a different syllable. Get ready for that next time.
Works Cited
Bashaw, Jennifer Garcia. Scapegoats, The Gospel through the Eyes of Victims. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2022.
Eyo, Ubong E. “A Feminist Interpretation and Reconstruction of John 7:53-8:11 in the Light of Violence against Women and its Implications Today.” International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science Vol. III, Issue VII, July 2019, pp 397-401.
Guardiola-Saenz, Leticia. “Jesus the Borderlander; Hybridity as Survival Strategy and Model for Political Change, A Cultural Representation from the Gospel of John.” 2009, Vanderbilt University, Doctor of Philosophy. ir.vanderbilt.edu.
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.
