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We haven’t been able to find out what Jesus wrote on the ground, but we may have discovered why he wrote on the ground in the well-known pericope involving the adulterous woman.
It is an episode that even New Testament scholars have trouble with, for many reasons. It appears at the very end of chapter 7 and the beginning of chapter 8 of the Gospel of John (John 7:53–8:11). But according to Harper’s Bible Commentary, “This famous story was not originally a part of the Gospel of John.”1 Some think it was originally part of Luke. And the oldest and best copies of the New Testament do not have it at all. That is why in the Revised Standard Version, it is placed in a footnote. (In the New Revised Standard Version, it’s in brackets.)
According to the story, Jesus was teaching outside the Temple when some scribes and Pharisees brought to him a woman who had been caught in adultery. “Teacher,” they said to him, “this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. What do you say?” They were trying to trick Jesus: In John 18:31 we are told that the Romans had denied Jewish courts the right to impose the death penalty. Thus Jesus was faced with an impossible dilemma: If he followed the Roman law, he could not say that she should be put to death; if he followed Mosaic law, he must say that she should be put to death. He had to disobey one law or the other. Regardless of what Jesus answered, he could be reported to the appropriate authorities as having broken the law.
At this point in the story, “Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground.” When they continued to question him, he gave his famous reply, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”
Then he again bent down and wrote something on the ground. As Professor Pheme Perkins, of our editorial advisory board, wrote in a recent commentary on John, “There is no clear indication of why Jesus wrote on the ground.”2
The scribes and Pharisees left him, one by one. When Jesus and the adulterous woman were alone, he taught her, first asking her, “Has no one condemned you?” When she replied in the negative, Jesus told her, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”
It remains a mystery as to what Jesus wrote on the ground. But we do have a possible explanation of why he wrote on the ground: It was the Sabbath.
The suggestion comes from my old friend David Noel Freedman, the general editor of the Anchor Bible series and one of the world’s great biblical exegetes. We were discussing some of the intricacies of ancient Jewish law when I mentioned that not all writing was forbidden on the Sabbath. According to the Mishnah, the oldest rabbinic legal compilation (about 200 A.D.), certain writing that did not leave a lasting mark was permitted. Thus, one could write with fruit juice, with dirt from the street or with writer’s sand (Shabbat 12:5). This seemed broad enough to permit writing on the ground.
When I mentioned this to Noel, he immediately saw this as a possible explanation of why Jesus wrote on the ground: It was the Sabbath. And Jesus was demonstrating to his attackers both that he was well versed in the law and that he was a good Jew.
But what he wrote remains a mystery. In the words of the Mishnah, it “did not leave a lasting mark.”
We haven’t been able to find out what Jesus wrote on the ground, but we may have discovered why he wrote on the ground in the well-known pericope involving the adulterous woman.
