I believe at that point, Moses, already acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God, would have repented and aligned himself with the teachings of Christ. God himself was challenging the legal world that Moses created through God’s guidance. As Moses and the crowd prepared to legally stone this lady, Jesus came and said, “Hold on, people.” Jesus then proceeded to challenge the onlookers. This leads to my second reason Moses’ world would have been rocked. I believe, had Moses been in the crowd before Jesus came to address the situation, he would have been all for stoning her under the Mosaic Law. Moses therefore would have been ready and willing to listen to what Christ had to say, as opposed to the Pharisees, who did not. The first is that Moses would have recognized Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God by that point of Christ’s ministry. I think that if Moses witnessed Jesus’ response to this event, it would have rocked his world. Moses was a man of God and, while he made mistakes, he usually sought after Godly wisdom, either from God himself or other wise counsel. – So no, Moses would not have stoned the woman, but neither does this conclusion mean that Jesus abolished the obligation of states to execute adulterers according to the law of Moses. 49:10), so if Moses had been there, he would not have had the authority of the leader of an independent nation as he did when he was alive. Rome had removed the authority from Israel to use capital punishment (the scepter had been removed from Judah when Shiloh came – Gen. They didn’t bring the man as required by Deut. The accusers should have been the stonees, not the stoners.Ģ. It can’t mean without any sin, because we would have to abolish all crimes and all courts, because no one is sinless. “Without sin” must refer to not being liable to being punished for the same sin. Given that God Himself used the commutation to teach discipline, and enable correction, forgiveness, and restoration, it is highly unlikely that Moses, had he been there, would have disagreed with the way Jesus allegedly handled the case. Since people hadn’t been stoning women for adultery for over a thousand years, it is unlikely that the question they raised to Jesus would have ever come up. Though we do not know exactly when that happened, we do see evidence of it in the oracles of Hosea (2), Isaiah (50), and Jeremiah (3). Part of my concern about the genuineness of the passage is the fact that soon after Moses died (according to the Jewish rabbinic historians–cf Instone-Brewer’s “Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible”) the death penalty was commuted to divorce in cases of adultery. Assuming that the account in John 8 is genuine, which I sincerely doubt, Jesus may well have written those legal passages in the dirt. The chances of catching an adulteress “in the act” are highly unlikely, unless she was set up, and such a setup would make the “witnesses” a party to the event. The Law required there to be two independent witnesses in a capital case (Deut. Simple answer: No Moses would not have stoned the woman caught in adultery. Remember that the scribes and Pharisees were trying to set a trap for Jesus (John 8:6). They only brought the woman before Christ and were guilty of not fulfilling the Law of Moses by bringing the man as well. If a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband, and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city, and you shall stone them to death with stones, the young woman because she did not cry out in the city, and the man because he humbled his neighbor’s wife so you shall put away the evil from among you.” 22:22-24 “If a man is found lying with a woman married to a husband, then both of them shall die-the man that lay with the woman, and the woman so you shall put away the evil from Israel. 20:10 ‘The man who commits adultery with another man’s wife, he who commits adultery with his neighbor’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress, shall surely be put to death.ĭeut. Moses had written the law that God had given him, he knew the requirements of the Law. Don’t miss the excellent resources and submissions from newbie and seasoned apologists alike. Liam Baker asks: If Moses was in the crowd in John 8v1-11, when the Pharisees brought the woman caught in adultery to Jesus, would he have stoned the woman? The law saying that a woman caught in adultery should be stoned to death, came through Moses.īelow you will find first the officially submitted answers, followed by a more conversational set of answers gleaned from two threads started in the CAA Facebook group.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |