Article May 17, 1900 Issue

The Handwriting in the Sand

Selected

Prof. Caspar Rene Gregory, of Leipzig, the great New Testament textual critic, has found in an old manuscript a different reading of John. 8:9. When Jesus stooped to write on the ground, the woman's accusers interpreted the act as an admission that they had made out their case. Looking up he said, "Let him that is without sin amongst you cast the first stone," and again stooped down and wrote with his finger on the ground. The oldest man present looked down to see what Jesus was writing. "His name was Eldad. He read, 'Eldad stole a house from Joram's widow.' He knew that it was so. He had forgotten all about it. Nobody else knew it. He had done it under the form of law. But it was true. He could not stone the woman. He might as well go home. And he went out. Jesus swept his hand over the sand and began to write again. He wrote swiftly, for the next scribe had eagerly begun to read. His name was Nahum. He read: 'Nahum slew Azidad in the desert.' And the days long gone by came back to him. He saw his staff fall upon his friend when no one was there to see. And he went out. Jesus wrote faster and faster, and the scribes read faster and faster, and they went out faster and faster" until none were left. Professor Gregory, with a happy imaginative touch, draws all this from the new reading, "And they, when they read it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last, and Jesus was left alone, and the woman in the midst."—Selected.

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