“Too Hot to Handle?: the Reception of the Woman Taken in Adultery”
Professor Jennifer Knust, Boston University School of Theology
Though the story of Jesus and the adulteress found in the Gospel of John is now widely known, its early history is, in fact, quite complex. The pericope adulterae boasts both a unique transmission history and a remarkably diverse set of interpretations. Though potentially dangerous, the pericope was not suppressed. Rather, from late antiquity until today, it has been regularly invoked in liturgical contexts, in Christian art, and among Christian exegetes. Diverse representations of the woman – her guilt or innocence and her status as a sinner or saint — have been a particular focus of this nearly constant retelling. This paper proposes to examine one aspect of the reception of this remarkable tale, exploring diverse late antique and early medieval interpretations of the status and significance of the woman. Discussing the pericope adulterae we discover Christian authors, artists and priests thinking with and through the story in ways that define their own version of Christian life and practice, even as they guarantee the further transmission and transformation of the tale and transformation of it, by the next generation of interested readers.