Re: MOICHEUOMENH

From: Jeffrey Gibson (jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 28 1998 - 13:10:21 EST


Paul, Denny, Jim,

At the risk of dragging out a point I tried to make in an earlier post, it
seems to me that this discussion of the meaning of MOICHEUOMENH in the Jn
7:53-8:11 ignores the fact that the pressuposition of the story is
that the woman in question has actively engaged in an action which
according to the scribes and Pharisees was culpable and punishable. In
other words, we should take our cue on the meaning of the term here from
Pharisaic presuppositions of what does and what does not constitute
adultery, not what Jesus (in what is obviously for Matthew a new, and a
non Pharisaic, view of what *divorce* occasions) says happens when a man
divorces his wife.

So the comment cited by Denny regarding the meaning of the term in
Matthew, while valid vis a vis its use in Matthew (which, note, has the
qualifying POIEI AUTH; contrast Jn 8:4), has nothing to do with how the
narrator of the story in John is using the term.

Jeffrey Gibson
jgibson@acfsysv.roosevelt.edu



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