Re: adultery

From: Jeffrey Gibson (jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 20:05:49 EST


On Mon, 26 Jan 1998, Jim West wrote:

> At 06:19 PM 1/26/98 -0600, you wrote:
>
> >Jim,
> >
> >Are you seriously saying that a married woman in biblical times never had
> >an illicit affair, let alone was never caught in the act of doing so. It
> >seems to me that in this instance you are importing what happened to a
> >woman when her husband divorced her (according to Jesus' reading of such
> >activity) into a story which says nothing about the woman in question
> >being divorced.
> >
> >Jeffrey Gibson
> >jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu
> >
>
> No, no, no. Once more (and for the final time) the import of the passive is
> the simple fact that in 1st century Palestinian society, the woman was
> powerless- the man was powerful- and as a result the adulterer was the man
> while the adulterated was the woman.
>
> Did women have flings- yep! Did they reap the social wrath for it- yep!
> Did men get off "scot free"- yep! (there are too many contemporary events
> which parallel this to mention!!). In sum, this is what Jesus protests
> against in the synoptics and John. Where is the man in John 8? He must
> have been there!!! Where is the divorced husband in the Synoptics? Living
> life while the woman is left destitute.
>
> The use of the passive is intentional, clear, and probably stems from an
> authentic Jesus tradition (the famous criteria of dis-similarity).
>
Jim,

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. Rather
it comes from the lips of Jesus' *opponents* and appears in a question
that *they* ask *him*. 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.

Yours,

Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu



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