Just an interesting side note today gleaned from Calvin: apparently, the controversy over John 7:53–8:11 is not new. For those who aren’t aware of it, modern textual criticism based upon texts that were unavailable until long after the publication of the KJV demonstrates that the story of the woman taken in adultery is a later addition not found in the original text. I had always excused the earlier translators for including it by virtue of their ignorance. But Calvin, writing in the sixteenth century, knew it didn’t belong. He writes:
It is plain enough that this passage was unknown anciently to the Greek Churches; and some conjecture that it has been brought from some other place and inserted here. But as it has always been received by the Latin Churches, and is found in many old Greek manuscripts, and contains nothing unworthy of an Apostolic Spirit, there is no reason why we should refuse to apply it to our advantage.
—John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries Volume XVII, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Volume I (Baker Books, 2009), 319.
He then introduces John 8:12–14 with these words:
Those who leave out the former narrative, which relates to the adulteress, connect this discourse of Christ with the sermon which he delivered on the last day of the assembly.—Ibid., 324.
So the “modern perversions” were not the first to cast doubt upon, and even omit, this apocryphal text.
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