Adulterous woman

[Rev. Rye]

John 8:1-11 tells us how Jews wanted to stone an adulterous woman but Jesus told them not to, and therefore they didn't.

But why would Jews ask Jesus whether they should obey the Torah or not?! And then listen to him?

Compliance with Mosaic Law was not a joke. It was rigorously enforced; after all, that was what public stoning was for.

It's like if today law enforcement officers strap a convict to the electric chair in Kentucky to execute him, but someone, who has nothing to do with the judiciary system, says "Don't do it" and they don't do it.

Something to note: even if this was a real event (and, given that it doesn't even appear in the earliest texts, there's a good chance it probably wasn't even part of the original stories), this probably wasn't an actual judicial punishment. According to the Talmud, there was a specific set of rules governing capital punishment and a stupefyingly high burden of proof for these cases. They were just short of being so self-contradictory that the death penalty could never be carried out, but it was hard enough that if a particular court carried out more than one execution in the span of I'm not sure how long (I've heard the number being between 10 and 70 years), it would be branded a "killer court." And furthermore, at some point in the time generally concurrent with the early ministry of Jesus (the traditional date given is about 28 CE,) capital punishment ceased.

I'm inclined to think the people Jesus encountered were vigilantes. I know there are ultra-orthodox Jews in modern Israel who take it upon themselves to attack lawbreakers, and I can remember listening to the DVD commentary to Bruno and hearing Sacha Baron Cohen describing going to Israel and encountering a gang of them and being so terrified that he ACTUALLY BROKE CHARACTER in an attempt at sparing himself. Surprisingly, it turns out dressing like a Sexy Hasid and telling a gang of people who want to kill you that you actually are Jewish only gets them madder. I'm not sure if these are recent developments related to the massive clusterfuck that's kind of an inherent consequence of creating a Jewish homeland in the modern Middle East filled with enemies who want them dead or if shit like that also happened in the days of the Roman occupation, but I find that it makes more sense if you assume that the men who want to stone the woman are vigilantes taking the law in your own hands.

Imagine juxtaposing this version of the scene (easily my favourite depiction of this story; it's a wonder what actually showing the audience what Jesus would have actually told them can do for a story): 




With this scene from To Kill a Mockingbird:




Kind of makes it clearer, doesn't it? Telling people executing a guy in Kentucky to not do it and them deciding to do so is implausible. But going up to a gang of vigilantes and calling them out on their bullshit and hypocrisy before they can kill some woman, that sounds a lot more plausible to me. It might be like the old story about how Humpty Dumpty was a cannon that lived atop a castle until it fell and broke beyond repair and not an egg, but it still makes a lot of sense.