The story of the scribes and Pharisees bringing a woman caught in the act of adultery (where was the man?) before Jesus to see whether he will obey the law of Moses and agree that she should be stoned is a familiar one. It contains one of the Bible's most memorable sayings, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her" (8:7). The entire passage is, unfortunately, an interpolation. It is not in the oldest manuscripts we have of the gospel of John. It was evidently added by a later scribe during the copying process.
And what I find interesting even about this - the assumption that there's really anything special about the "oldest manuscripts" of the Bible - it is ALL written and interpolated by men from stories passed down for generations in the spoken stories of the day.
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