From: Jim West (jwest@highland.net)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 21:03:44 EST
At 07:05 PM 1/26/98 -0600, you wrote:
>Jim,
(o.k.- so it wasn't the last comment....)
>
>I can see that Jesus protested against the situation that divorce created
>for a woman in Palestinian society, and I grant you that his
>pronouncements on adultery do just this. But here in the "John" pericope
>the term in question does not occur in a dominical pronouncement.
The story, nevertheless, revolves around a dominical saying- to whit: "are
there none to condemn you- neither do I, etc."
> Rather
>it comes from the lips of Jesus' *opponents* and appears in a question
>that *they* ask *him*.
Because the social structure is such that it must be they who make the
statement. Jesus opposes the structure, and the fact that it was the woman
brought in and not the man as well- or the man alone. Or any combination
thereof.
>The force of the question, along with it's
>intention (to "put Jesus to the test" - TOUTO DE ELEGON PEIRAZONTES),
>would seem to indicate that what the woman is being accused of (and what
>Jesus is asked to rule on) is not her having been forced into being
>"adulterated", let alone whther such a situation was fair to her or anyone
>else (are you assuming that there is a presupposition here of knowledge of
>Jesus' teaching on divorce?), but of doing what she herself as a faithful
>daughter of the law should not do, namely commit adultery.
No- this is not the point. In fact, the point is just the opposite. They
test him because they know his reputation as a "law breaker" or "tradition
buster". In light of the fact that they know this about him, they haul in a
woman, caught in the act, and ask him what to do with her. He says "kill
her if you are guiltless". They are not so they do not. When they are
gone, Jesus tells her to go, and sin no more. She is not condemned, but
forgiven. She must not return to her "live by any means necessary"
lifestyle. Instead she can now live freely. The new age has dawned when the
old ways are no longer sufficient. She need no longer be adulterated- she
can choose her own course.
In short I would argue that the adultery sayings and this story are part of
Jesus' program to revolutionize society (a la Dom Crossan) by destroying the
societal boundaries then existent.
And again I ask- if the whole point is not a social readjustment on the part
of Jesus, then where is the man?
>
>Yours,
>
>Jeffrey Gibson
>jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu
Best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Bible
Quartz Hill School of Theology
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