Were stories about an adulteress in the Gospel suppressed because of their raciness? School of Theology professor Jennifer Knust posed the question to about 40 Boston University community members last night at the School of Management.
“Too Hot to Handle?: The Reception of the Woman Taken in Adultery” addressed historical content in the Gospels and what Knust called the “instability of texts.”
Knust is writing a book on the topic, to be potentially released in the spring of 2008. Event host Christine Hutchinson-Jones said she wants to “raise the profile of the study of scripture in the BU community,” because the Bible is still engaging to western culture and “cultures at large.”
STH professor Carole Bohn said the event is “important for women” because it is difficult to “develop views of women in the Bible.”
Knust started by describing how the tale of an adulteress exists only in certain versions of the Book of John.
“In fourth- and fifth-century copies, only one Gospel included the tale,” Knust said, and “out of 11 Latin Gospels, only six contained it.”
Knust cited the difficulties of placing the text within the Gospel because of textual instability. The story is handled in different manners depending on each particular Gospel. In some Gospels, dots, called “umlats” by some scholars, mark the spot where the story should be included. In other texts, there is a blank space or simply nothing at all.
The theology professor said she wondered why a story about an adulteress would be suppressed, knowing the popularity of adultery stories during the time period. Other stories in the Gospels included adulteresses who elder men claimed were “caught in the act.” If these women were found guilty, they would have been subject to stoning, but the women were falsely accused and found innocent.
Since stories of such accounts exist, Knust concluded she was “no longer persuaded by her original view” that the story was suppressed because of its topic. But she said because a “fixed singular text is a fantasy,” the story of the adulteress becomes “much more complicated than usually assumed.”