Comments on: What If The Woman Taken In Adultery . . . Wasn’t?

By: Julie M. Smith

Julie M. Smith — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:48:06 +0000

Good point, Laurie.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 22:42:55 +0000

Julie, thank you for this important post. I agree that the account is compelling and has important messages to us regarding forgiveness and judgmentalism.

That said, I continue to find it more than annoying that treatments of this account in Church continue to ignore the role of the man “taken in adultery.” This is consistent with the treatment of women in the scriptures (from Eve on) as a prime source of evil and deception.

I hope to see the day when talks in Church relating this story point out that the man who was with the woman in adultery somehow escaped the threats of stoning and was not even mentioned in a disparaging manner.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 15:28:08 +0000

Some thoughtful musings on the text of the Bathsheba story are posted on the Feast Upon the Word LDS scripture wiki.

By: Julie M. Smith

Julie M. Smith — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:56:36 +0000

Thanks, Craig V.

By: Craig V.

Craig V. — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 17:53:49 +0000

Great post Julie,

I appreciate your careful handling of the text. For those who wonder if such analysis is really valuable, let me point out that Julie earns a lot of respect from someone like me who is outside of the LDS church. No doubt, because of my own prejudices, I would have never expected to see such concern for the meaning of the text in an LDS context. Julie’s posts have forced me re examine many of my assumptions about Mormons.

By: Julie M. Smith

Julie M. Smith — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 01:05:05 +0000

Suzanne A., please see the footnote to the original post.

By: Suzanne A.

Suzanne A. — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 01:01:05 +0000

Is the woman taken in adultery authentic? Anyone here read Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus”?

By: Idahospud

Idahospud — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:45:11 +0000

Kurt, there is nothing in either of your commentaries that suggests that you are presenting fact any more than Julie is. You are, as she is, presenting your *interpretation* of what is written.

By: Kurt

Kurt — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:00:56 +0000

Julie, yes, why let the facts cloud your judgement?

By: Julie M. Smith

Julie M. Smith — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 17:28:39 +0000

I have learned by sad experience that reasonable discussions with Kurt aren’t possible so I won’t engage him here, but I do want to point out to anyone else reading this that 2 Samuel 11 doesn’t indicate that Bathsheba was on her roof. As I said above, there’s no indication–during the story or in later commentary on the incident–that she’s done anything inappropriate but every indication that David has.