Annotation CXCVIII

”But Jesus went unto the Mount of Olives.” — John 8:1

Whether the beginning of the eighth chapter of John is authentic.

Thomas Cajetan, entering upon the exposition of the present chapter: “TAKE NOTICE,” he says, “that this first part of this chapter, with the whole history of the adulteress, is not altogether authentic: since it is not established that it is a part of the Gospel,” etc. Ambrosius [Catharinus], in the third book, marked this opinion of Cajetan with a censure of this kind: “Concerning the history of the adulteress — that it should be irrational to cut it off from the Gospel, or to assert [it] not authentic (and this only because in some codices it was formerly not found), when for so many centuries it has been received by all the holy doctors, and preached, and celebrated in the discourses of churchmen as true and evangelical — I do not think it [belongs] to a pious, and at the same time prudent, heart to suppose [it inauthentic], much less to teach [so]. But as to what he added, to press this point — that there is no continuation of the following history with this one — it truly moved my stomach; nay, this interposition of this history made the matter itself marked [notable] to us, without which the narrative would be maimed. For in the preceding chapter it is said that every one of them returned to his own house; but in this [chapter] it is said of Jesus that he went to the Mount of Olives, and afterward that he came into the temple, and that then, out of malice, some of the malevolent [men] brought to him that adulteress, to hinder his teaching; but the Lord eluded them, and consequently there arose an occasion of teaching: and it well follows,¹ ‘Again therefore he spoke to them’ — so that here thou mayest see the discourse so chained together that, if thou omit anything, without doubt it would appear maimed, or at least a discourse not connected, but having its own [separate] beginning.”