Too hot to publish - for 900 years!

Preparing my sermon for Ash Wednesday tonight (well, yes, it was a little late) I found myself wondering why the first twelve verses of John 8 (the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday in our church) are missing in some Bibles and (more often) printed as a sort of footnote in others.  I'm sure I learnt that at theological college but I had forgotten. Turning to my reference books took me to an interesting journey of textual archaeology.

Apparently (credit goes to Raymond Brown's wonderful two volume commentary) although the passage does not appear in any standard texts of John's gospel until after 900AD, it was known to theologians much earlier, in the second and third centuries. There is plenty of evidence to show that it is a genuine ancient story about Jesus which must have been known to those who put the Bible together. So why was such a great story left out? Because, Brown suggests, and I suspect, it was just too hot to handle.

Oh, I forgot to mention what the story is about.  It's that one where Jesus is confronted with a prostitute, invited to condemn her and instead just writes in the sand, and then comes out with that masterly suggestion, "The one of you who has not sinned should throw the first stone to kill her."  In modern context it's rather like Jesus saying about a serial pedophile, "You deserve to die but I am going to love you instead!"  No wonder it did not get published for 900 years.

Is God's forgiveness really that shocking?