# What was Jesus writing on the ground? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2001, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889 "2001-10-11T20:58:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/1 "2001-10-11T20:58:06Z")
John 8: > [@](#): > > 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group > 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. > 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” > 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But **Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger**. > 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” > 8 **Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground**. > 9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. > 10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” > 11 “No one, sir,” she said. “Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” So what was it? the names of the Pharisees Mistresses? 🙂 [sub]please, there’s no place for sneering anti-theist comments in this thread (like that would ever happen)[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/2 "2001-10-11T21:19:47Z")
You have written out the entire passage from the Gospel of John. That’s all there is, there ain’t no more! St. John didn’t see fit to tell us what Jesus was writing, and ANY answer you get is pure speculation. The notion that Jesus was writing down the sins of the Pharisees is completely unfounded, and comes from Cecil B. DeMille’s silent film “King of Kings.” The only valid answer is “We don’t know.” If we’re lucky enough to make it to Heaven, we can ask Jesus then. ---
**Author:** ![CheapBastid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8baadc/32.png) [@CheapBastid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheapBastid)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/3 "2001-10-11T21:26:53Z")
[This Site](http://jonathansresources.com/archives/arc013100.html) seems to think it was a physical dodge or a diversion of attention. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/4 "2001-10-11T21:31:38Z")
Perhaps this thread belongs in IMHO… ---
**Author:** ![CheapBastid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8baadc/32.png) [@CheapBastid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CheapBastid)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/5 "2001-10-11T21:32:48Z")
[More](http://www.bic-church.org/susq/grantham/pages/sermons/2001serm/john7.html) interesting analysis/speculation. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/6 "2001-10-11T21:34:37Z")
Although I would be interested to know whether the ‘at this in the bit that says “At this, those who heard began to go away…” refers to the writing, or Jesus’ last comment, is it possible to tell from the Greek? ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/7 "2001-10-11T21:42:36Z")
it went something like this: “okay, John, you’re the bottle cap. Peter hikes the ball to Me, and you go long, but cut back like this at the fire hydrant and I’ll hit you when Paul gets faked out!” ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/8 "2001-10-11T21:44:32Z")
[Here’s](http://www.blueletterbible.org/tmp_dir/c/1002837531.html#9) the Greek with commentary. “At this” is a paraphrase. I translate it as “And they who heard this”. It’s an odd sort of conjunction sandwich. Check it out. (Interestingly this was the chapter I was translating as I smoked pot in the hippie van. I translated this verse just minutes before my conversion!) ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/9 "2001-10-11T21:49:23Z")
Thanks **Lib** , so it was his comments that made them file away, the writing may well have been just a way of showing them that he wasn’t taking them too seriously then. ---
**Author:** ![Drastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Drastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drastic)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/10 "2001-10-11T21:51:34Z")
I remember this in one of C.S. Lewis’ apologetics essays. He felt he was simply doodling. Jesus was calmly doing something any bored, unconcerned fellow might be doing. Lewis took this kind of incidental detail as one of the bits of evidence that meant the gospels couldn’t be fiction. Since fiction-writing with that kind of incidental detail was something wholly unknown at that point in history, it meant that the entire shebang was completely true. (He seemed awfully fond of extremely large false dilemmas.) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/11 "2001-10-11T21:56:16Z")
I disagree with that, but surely, even giving you that leeway, you aren’t saying that this is an example of a false dichotomy (or false dilemma), are you? ---
**Author:** ![DPWhite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d26b3c/32.png) [@DPWhite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPWhite)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/12 "2001-10-11T22:29:22Z")
Fiction probably wasn’t invented yet when the gospels were written. Certainly not outside of poetry or theater, which were based on legands of what were supposed to have been true stories. The gospels were sincere as all of the people who could have written them would have considered it blasphemous to write falsely or fiction about God. We do not know for certain what Jesus wrote on this only occasion that he wrote. Perhaps the witness who passed on this story couldn’t read. Reading doesn’t matter much to the faithful at this time as so few can do it. This passage suggests that Jesus could both read and write, as do stories of his youth holding forth with the rabbis. Maybe he wrote the sins of the crowd, maybe he just doddled designs. But I have a thought: maybe he wrote the names of people in the crowd and their adulterous lovers, something the Pharisees could read and understand but the crowd could not. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/13 "2001-10-11T22:33:17Z")
This kind of stuff fascinates the shit out of me. I would be interested in an examination of the translation. As the “doodling” theory is interesting, a way of “defusing” the situation. But the word is “writing”? Are there any other verses that would imply that The Boss was literate (presumably in Ahramaic?) I also recall the translation I was indoctrinated with saying that Jesus and the Disciples sitting down “to meat”. So Hitler was a vegetarian and Jesus wasn’t? Oh, my Goddess! ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/14 "2001-10-11T22:49:31Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by elucidator \* > \*\*I also recall the translation I was indoctrinated with saying that Jesus and the Disciples sitting down “to meat”. > > So Hitler was a vegetarian and Jesus wasn’t? > > Oh, my Goddess! \*\* I’ve got a feeling that’s just archaic English from the KJV; ‘meat’ being food generally. There are passages detailing Jesus eating fish, and he would have celebrated the passover, which involves lamb (I think), but I’m not aware of any passages where it specifically says he ate meat. So anyway, that’s the only difference between Hitler and Jesus then? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Drastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Drastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drastic)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/15 "2001-10-11T22:53:59Z")
> [@](#): > > I disagree with that, but surely, even giving you that leeway, you aren’t saying that this is an example of a false dichotomy (or false dilemma), are you? Which this? What I recall of Lewis’ argument was most certainly one. He very explicitly laid it out so the “only” logical choices were: A) Since one example of something that was extremely unlikely to be anything other than true–due to solid reasons DPWhite expanded on–was in the gospels, ALL of the events recorded there were true, no exceptions. B) ALL of the events recordered there were fictional, no exceptions. That’s one great big two-answer. Nowhere to be seen was: C) Many of the events happened in fact. Other events did not happen in fact. Those that deviated from fact need not have from dishonesty, but from the simple fact of being penned down, in some cases decades later, by fallible human agents. (It seems a reasonble option to me. Why exclude it?) Perhaps I misremember the essay in the intervening six or so years since my eyes tracked across the letters encoding it (entirely possible), but that’s my clear memory of it. It’s a much vaguer memory that Lewis pulled this kind of argumentative stunt pretty often throughout the collection of his writings that I read. (These things would be so much easier to check if I took notes on everything I read.) ---
**Author:** ![jack\_ss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c77e96/32.png) [@jack\_ss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jack_ss)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/16 "2001-10-11T23:18:03Z")
Well, the Lord was a carpenter, was he not? Maybe he was drawing blueprints for a house or piece of furniture… ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/17 "2001-10-11T23:27:17Z")
“Lets see, now. 5 fishes, three loaves, divided by 2,000 people…” ---
**Author:** ![Angela\_Adverse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Angela\_Adverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angela_Adverse)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/18 "2001-10-11T23:30:09Z")
I saw a film years ago that depicted Jesus writing the ten commandments. “Thou shalt not kill” and the murderers slunk away. “Thou shalt not steal” and the thieves left, etc. Makes good sense, but I kind of like the “defusing” idea better. ---
**Author:** ![HubZilla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ccd318/32.png) [@HubZilla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HubZilla)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/19 "2001-10-11T23:46:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Drastic \* > \*\*Lewis took this kind of incidental detail as one of the bits of evidence that meant the gospels couldn’t be fiction. Since fiction-writing with that kind of incidental detail was something wholly unknown at that point in history, it meant that the entire shebang was completely true. (He seemed awfully fond of extremely large false dilemmas.) \*\* Actually, there is some dispute that this story was even originally in the gospel of John. For a cite, I have to look no further than the Bible itself, where many versions (NIV included) question whether it was a later interpolation. One thing that I’ve always wondered about that passage. The woman is _caught_ in adultery and is brought out to be stoned. Um… why isn’t the guy brought out to be stoned, too? It’s not like you can be caught doing adultery alone. ---
**Author:** ![Navigator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/4af34b/32.png) [@Navigator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Navigator)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2001, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889/20 "2001-10-11T23:58:04Z")
‘I’m not impressed with LoLo’ just a stab in the dark… 😉 [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-jesus-writing-on-the-ground/86889.md?page=2)